Social Media Tools you need in your Arsenal

When it comes to managing your social media, there are plenty of handy little tools that all provide extra help where you need it. In this issue, I’ve put together my top apps to help you on your way to becoming a social media maestro.

Linktree
If you’re wanting to expand what your Instagram bio can do, this app is brilliant. It creates a link to go in your bio, that when clicked, brings up a landing page (which you can tailor to your business brand). In this, you can add multiple links going off to different places. So if you have a blog you wish to promote but still have the main link of your website easily accessible too, and also have an online store, you can add all these to your Linktree! It also has analytics, so you can see the popularity in what people are clicking on within your Linktree.

Creator Studio
The social post scheduler for Facebook and Instagram. Works very much the same as Hootsuite and Buffer in that it allows you to schedule multiple posts at a time so you can plan your week of social and then let it do it’s thing. Creator Studio has similar insights that let you track engagement, link clicks, shares, comments, etc, so you can see what’s working and what isn’t. You can also schedule stories from Creator studio and do post testing, which basically means you can try two versions of the same post, then publish the one that performs the best. As well as all this, you can also go live from Creator Studio if you have something you wish to notify your followers about, or you can even schedule live video events for the future.

Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a post scheduler much the same as Creator Studio, except it’s a stand-alone app and not part of any of the social platforms. With Hootsuite, you can also schedule posts ahead of time (up to 5 in the free version) and check into your insights to see how posts perform. Hootsuite also has an activity heatmap as part of their paid premium version, so you can see when your audience is online, to aid you in your post scheduling. With every post scheduler, it’s important to keep checking your analytics as user trends can change over time. You need to be ahead of the curve to change with the changing social activity trends.

Unsplash
Copyright free photos uploaded from users who have given permission. It’s polite to credit the photographer when you use the photo but it’s not a must to be able to use the website. Some searches can bring up random results however, so use with caution.

Trello
Even the most organised individual could still benefit from using Trello. It’s totally free to use and is basically an online planner that helps you stay on top of things. It can be used for making lists of jobs you have to do and is great if you have several people on your team you need to delegate to. It’s also live when you’re editing, so when you make a change, everyone on your team can see it and the app can also notify you of any changes made.

InShot
Editing video on the move? This is a great app to use as its very user friendly. It has full video editing functionality allowing you to trim, cut and split video to your heart’s content. You can also blur backgrounds, add music and transition effects and add text over the top too. This is handy if you’re wanting to showcase a new product in your shop and you want to give your followers details about it.

Canva & Canva Stories
This is for those who are not natural graphic designers, but still want their social feed to look pretty. There are premium paid versions of Canva and Canva stories that would offer much more usability, but the free versions still give you access to lots of templates to use across your social. It’s great that they have the ready-made sized templates for each social platform like Insta stories, Facebook posts and twitter feed posts too.

Bitly
Have really long links that you’re wanting to post across social? Shorten them using Bitly. It’s totally free to use to shorten links and just makes them look tidier. There are other link shortening apps out there, but this is the one we like to use.

Repost
Seen a fabulous post on Instagram that you want to reshare to your own followers? Repost works in conjunction with Instagram, so you copy a post you like in Instagram, then come out of the app and go into Repost and the post link appears in there! Then you can paste in the caption so you’re giving credit to the original post, add in your own bit and share to your own Insta feed. This is great if you’re trying to network and build positive working relationships with other wedding suppliers (remember sharing is caring). It also gives others the chance to reach a wider audience they may not normally reach.

Watermarkly
Great free tool to use if you want to add your logo to any images you share online. Just upload your images, add your logo (make it translucent if you like) and then download the new version. This is good practice if you’ve had someone trying to pass your work off as their own (photographers for instance).

Striphtml.com
Firstly, there are loads of these types of websites online, but this is the one we use if we’re updating blog content or taking information from featured supplier websites to update their profiles. Just put the text into the box, clear the html, then copy it into where you’re wanting to use it. It’s good practice to have clear unformatted text in blogs anyway, as it might look ok when you copy text in, but when you publish the page, if the text wasn’t formatted before you copied it across, it can end up looking a bit weird!

I hope you find some of these tools useful and hope they help in managing your online presence. If there are any tools that you use that aren’t mentioned here, let me know and I’ll update the list. All this information will be going online at some point, so you’ll be able to check back and see any updates for more helpful tools.