Last week I shared an awesome social media calendar that will help you share the real you online. Today, I wanted to dive into the tools behind the scenes that we use at Classy Career Girl. The truth is that not all our social media posts are done in real time. There is a lot of batching that happens. I actually spend every single Wednesday as my social media day where I batch all my posts with these social media tools for the next week on all of my platforms including videos and getting Instagram posts ready to go as well.
It takes some planning ahead but it is so nice to sit back for the rest of the week and focus on the real task at hand of running a growing company! Social media is fun but it can also be a huge time waster. That’s why I love these tools because as you know, I am all about being as productive as possible!
P.S. I wish I could say I just use one tool and I know many of you are looking for the one with everything, I have yet to find it so I do use a combo of the below.
10 Must Have Social Media Tools I Can’t Live Without
For Scheduling:
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite allows you to schedule your social media posts from a variety of different social media sites. You can also monitor and track analytics with Hootsuite as well.The free plan works well for us. What I love most about hootsuite is that I can schedule posts to our Facebook groups. I run three large Facebook groups (one with over 2,000+ members in the Classy Career Girl network) so I have to schedule posts in advance so that they can go out first thing in the morning for you East Coasters when I am still sleeping here on the West Coast.
2. Post Planner
Since I love automation, Post Planner is what we use for automated posts week after week and month after month. This is just $7 per month and allows us to pre-schedule our best content over and over again. We have one post going out every single day sharing our free lead magnets and free guides so we don’t have to “remember” to post them every day. This is much more consistent and leads to many more people we can help coming through our doors every single day.
3. ViralTag
ViralTag is the current winner for us. Why? PINTEREST SCHEDULING. The other scheduling systems just haven’t caught up to the fact that for any business that markets to women, Pinterest is the #1 source of traffic hands down. Yes, I am a little obsessed. You can read about how we use ViralTag here. I love that I can schedule Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest. It’s the closest tool I can get to that provides everything for my weekly social media planning session.
For Photo Editing:
4. Picmonkey
Picmonkey is a free, online photo editor and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t use it. This is where I put the text on my photos and create quote images for Instagram. This is also where I crop my images for each social media platform and where I create my Pinterest images as well. Did I mention it’s free!
5. Wordswag
Wordswag is a fun app that allows you to upload a photo from your phone library and put text over it. You can also add your logo to the photo as well so no one copies and steals your content. I love that it also gives you quotes and designs to choose from if you are just stuck with what to post. Lots of fonts and styles to play around with. This is totally free as well.
6. Adobe Spark
You know I love a social media tool when I dedicate an entire blog post to it! Adobe Spark is a new graphics tool created by the well-known brand, Adobe. We all know Adobe for its products such as Photoshop. Now they have brought to us this amazing web-based tool that will allow you to take away the hard work of creating amazing social media posts and videos.
For Video Editing
7. Flipagram
Videos on social media platforms are taking over and one of the most popular things for organic reach right now. This means that more people might see your videos than your posts and pictures. If you aren’t posting videos, start now. Flipagram gives you a ton of options to create videos from your photos and to add your favorite songs to your videos too. It’s all about being creative and fun and that’s why I love this app.
8. iMovie
Imovie is another video app that is a must for us. This is what we use to crop our videos and to make multiple videos out of a longer video clip. We have a ton of 10-20 minute videos and we use iMovie to create small clips that are easily enjoyed and popular on social media. Apple users can use this on your desktop or your phone.
For Tracking
9. Bitly.com
Ever post something to social media and then not know how many people even clicked? Bitly.com is a free link shortening service will help you figure out what links people are really excited to read and you can track which days got the most clicks.
10. Google Analytics
It’s even more important than how many clicks it got is where people are coming from! Google Analytics is a major must because it will show you a lot of details about WHERE your top social media traffic is coming from. We get way more traffic from Pinterest than Instagram but I never would have known that if I wouldn’t have been paying attention to Google Analytics. That means I need to spend way more time creating Pinterest content than Instagram content to drive my sales and leads. See how crucial that is?
Click here to download our free social media calendar and get a copy of our favorite social media tools.
