Often times in the industry that is social media, you’ll hear people stating “social is a 24/7 job” or sharing one of the many versions of a story that goes something like, “at the (insert holiday name here) party you can find me in the corner posting for a brand.”
Aside from the fact that this represents a completely unhealthy relationship with your work that has sadly been normalized within the industry, I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to buy into those ideas. New year. New you. New work life balance.
All you need is some planning and a few tools to help you execute that plan. Below I break down a few areas of social media work that people can get bogged down in during the daily grind. These tools exist to help check those tasks off the to-do list (or better yet, checks those tasks off for you).
Team communications
Usually the very first problem encountered with implementing a social media strategy is getting everyone on the same page about it. What content does this require we make, when is the best time to put it out, who is the champion of this particular campaign are all questions that can lead to endless email chains no one really dedicates time to reading. The following tools help simplify team communication and emphasize accountability.
✅ Slack
Eliminate inbox madness with Slack. This chat tool allows you to set multiple channels in your workspace to organize conversation by topic. Example: Add all co-workers to the CSU Channel, but then only add Rachael and Tony to the football channel while Kimberly and Joe are both in the basketball channel.
This tool is free, and you can upload files to and download files from the channels. Slack provides an incredibly effective way to streamline communication, seek feedback on work and share files easily.
Now for the accountability portion of this section. Trello is a free tool that allows you to create team workflows to complete projects, assign tasks to individuals, and set deadlines. You can add commentary, share files, and stay up to date on what step in the process your project is at and have a better idea of what you need to do to get it across the finish line.
Creating content
Now for the fun stuff — actually creating those beautiful graphics or videos. If you don’t have employees dedicated to creating graphics or video, and can’t afford to dish out the moolah for Adobe Creative Cloud, then these tools can help ease the weight on your shoulders.
✅ Canva
For beautiful design of whatever assets you need (literally they have over 8,000 templates for free), Canva is the place to go. A simple design interface allows you to upload your own images or use their library of free assets. They also have a ton of photos available for just $1 each.
You can use Canva for free, you need to upgrade to the premium version to unlock more features. Their plans start at $10 per month if you choose to go that route.
✅ Animoto
For creating videos, Animoto boasts a super simple interface that develops quick videos in multiple formats. Literally all you do is drag and drop video or photo into its pre-created templates to make the video you need. Then you can download in a few different quality levels.
Plans start as low as $8 per month! I know, not as cheap as free, but definitely one of the least expensive video creation tools out there.
Scheduling
After you’ve created all that awesome #content, you need to get it out on your channels. Some people think they have three options for posting: post it as soon as it’s ready, chain yourself to the computer so you can tweet it at approximately the most strategic time you’ve set, post it when you finally have time to get to that.
How about a new option? These tools can help you schedule any and all content you have (this doesn’t cover Insta, but more info on that here) at the time most aligns with your social media strategy.
✅ Platform Specific (Twitter Media Studio, Facebook Scheduling Tools)
Unlike the problem child that is Instagram, Twitter and Facebook have specific tools in their platforms to help you schedule content so you can hit that engagement window with your best content, no matter if you’re by the phone/computer or not.
Twitter Media Studio is often hit or miss when it comes to people who have have heard of it or not. It’s the way you schedule those long feature videos that get cut off in the regular tweet function or that third party scheduling sites say is too big of a file. Screen recording of how you get there and how to use it below. Note this is only available on desktop.
As for Facebook, it’s super easy to schedule everything you need right on your usual page interface (albums not included in this, unfortunately). Where things get super fun is with uploading videos. When you go to the video tab and upload a new video, there’s a new option called Premiere. It will notify followers that you’ve got an upcoming video premiering and send another notification when the post goes live. The benefit of literally going live, with the security of a pre-produced video piece.
One area that Twitter Media Studio falls short is in scheduling Tweets with multiple images. Enter the amazing tool that is Buffer. Available for both phone and desktop, you can schedule videos, photos, and your usual tweets with Buffer. The free version of this tool allows you to attach up to three Twitter accounts, and you can log in and out of them to switch the attached accounts if you need to use more than three.
You can also attach this to Facebook, but your post says “Scheduled in Buffer” at the top. As I referenced earlier, Instagram has granted permission to some third party scheduling sites in their API, but I’m not entirely sure Buffer was one of those even though they list that functionality on their pages.
For everything that the amazing tools we’ve already covered can do, they cannot schedule quote tweets. That’s where I turn to my trusty friend, TweetDeck.
This tool is also great for monitoring and tweeting all of your own separate accounts as well as curating lists of other accounts for inspiration. Plus you can schedule multiple photos, video and regular tweets as well. A multifunctional tool that really enhances your Twitter experience, plus it’s free! Note that there’s no app for this in the app store, it’s all desktop.
Analysis
Ok you’ve planned, you’ve created, you’ve posted, now what? Time to see how everything performed and what people are saying about it. It’s also a good time to scout out what others are doing, and take some inspiration from it.
✅Twitter Advanced Search
Another Twitter provided tool that sometimes seems to go unknown. I’ll leave the link for ya right here.
Essentially you can find what anyone tweeted at anytime ever. If that’s not a less than friendly reminder the Internet is forever then I don’t know what is. You can input as many accounts as you want in the “from these accounts” field, so it’s a fantastic way to search content of entire conferences or leagues around one specific event. I also use this when it comes to hiring, its a good way to check and see those old tweets of potential employees.
It’s free and it offers incredible competitive analysis across industries. I point you to this thread from Julian Valentin, the social wizard of the Colorado Rockies account, to illustrate the incredible power this tool has for companies.
To get access, just get in touch with your Facebook rep. If you don’t have a Facebook rep for your business page, head to their Media Support page to get in touch.