A social media presence is non-negotiable for small and new businesses today. Your social profiles are where your brand really comes to life, interacts with your target audience, and tells its story.
Recent research shows that 74% of shoppers rely on some sort of social media to make their ultimate buying decision, which means establishing your presence on one or more platforms is a crucial piece of your business’s future success.
Unfortunately, the time where brands could go without putting much time or thought into their social content is past. It can actually be quite demanding, taking up a lot of time and leaving your frustrated. Excelling online is more than just sending a couple of tweets and posting photos. The copy must be engaging and graphics must be eye-catching. Not only that, but when and how often you post also plays a big part in determining how many times your posts are seen. Not to mention that each platform has a different set of best practices. It can be overwhelming for large and small businesses alike!
As a busy entrepreneur, marketing manager, VA, or anything in between, your time is valuable and should be used efficiently (not spending hours scheduling your content.)
The good news is that you can streamline a lot of your processes with automation programs. Here are a few stellar social media automation tools to save you time (and sanity) when promoting your business online.
Buffer
For the business owner or marketing manager who wants to be able to access all of their platforms from one place, Buffer is an invaluable scheduling tool. You can easily schedule each post across all platforms right there within the Buffer dashboard. You actually don’t even need to schedule a time to post, since the app optimizes your content and posts it for you. This tool also provides detailed analytics of content posted in the app, campaign tracking, the ability to connect other automation tools, and more.
Hootsuite
A multi-platform management tool with a multitude of features, Hootsuite lets you schedule content and even interact with your audience directly from Hootsuite. You can also use the platform to search what is being said about your company. In an age where things can get out of hand quickly on the internet, being able to address a negative tweet or comment is useful.
Later
Unlike some Instagram schedulers, this app doesn’t post for you (which is actually a good thing!) It’s suspected that the Instagram algorithm penalizes users for using third-party apps to post your content. Later simply reminds you when it’s time to post, then copies everything over to Instagram. All of the convenience, without getting penalized.
Canva
Good visual content always wins, so it’s important to have killer graphics to go with great social copy. Canva is a free graphic design tool that helps you easily create visually appealing graphics. How can this save time? You can create templates for pin designs, blog post promotional graphics, and other assets. Whenever you create a new post, simply change the title and/or image. You’ll save time by not needing to design a new graphic each time, and all of your posts will look consistent and professional.
Facebook Scheduler
Completely free and already available to you is the post scheduler within Facebook! Simply type up your posts, add a graphics, and instead of clicking “Publish,” click the drop down button beside it and select “Schedule.” Instead of logging on whenever you think it’s time to post, you can sit down and schedule a week’s worth of posts in less than an hour while never leaving the Facebook app.
Iconosquare
More than just a scheduling tool, Iconosquare is great for tracking data like engagement rates and follower growth on Instagram and organizing comments on your media for quick replies straight from the app. It even sends you a daily report with the option to create reports of your own for any time frame you choose. If you’re setting monthly and quarterly social media objectives (which we recommend) using a tool like Iconosquare can help you easily analyze your efforts and success with Instagram.
Board Booster
For a few days of quick Pinterest content, BoardBooster saves your pins to a queue in the Pinterest app using secret boards. You choose the content, timeframe of posting, and number of pins per day, then let Board Booster do the rest. Our favorite feature? Looping! The looping feature takes old pins and repins them to your board so they get more views. The old pin is deleted soon after so you don’t have duplicate content. If you can’t quite get around to pinning on certain days, looping has you covered and makes sure you are always generating new pins.
Tailwind
The official partner for Pinterest marketing, Tailwind helps you run and streamline all of your posts and marketing campaigns within the app. You can upload pins in bulk, schedule content, and use the optimization feature to determine the best times to post in order to get the highest engagement. The analytics feature even allows you to track engagement, traffic, and revenue on posts pinned within the app.
Planoly
For brands that rely heavily on a cohesive and consistent aesthetic, Planoly is the perfect tool to help visualize how content will look as a whole once posted. Instead of creating each post on the fly, using a visual planner like this to plan ahead can allow you to make adjustments where needed by using the drag and drop feature. This app< also allows you to discover, curate, and repost user-generated content from your community which is helpful when your creativity isn’t exactly flowing.
Oktopost
A social media automation app with a twist! Oktopost actually helps you track conversions from your social media activities with their acquisition dashboard. This allows you to see how your social media practices are impacting your sales funnels and helps identify your most lucrative channels so you can replicate what’s working and fix what’s not. It’s not the only feature of this automation tool, but it’s definitely our favorite!
Depending on the size of your business, you probably don’t need all of these tools! But picking a few can save you hours each week, opening up more time for you to focus on what is important – building your brand, creating strategies, growing a profitable business.