When you’re busy running a business, you need to work smarter, not harder, says social media consultant, trainer and Twitter wall/event manager at Social Progress, Janet Bebb. We asked her to recommend the tools she wouldn’t be without for managing social media.
Janet and her team manage social media accounts on behalf of others day-in, day-out, and teach many business owners in Yorkshire and throughout the UK how to make their social media shine. At workshops, people always want to know what free tools they can use to make the job easier, Janet says.
Canva
“A go-to tool, Canva is a firm favourite because you can do so much yourself with it – you don’t need to employ a graphic designer to create social posts, and you can even design business cards, flyers and presentations with it”, Janet says.
Canva’s won a lot of fans because it provides a range of pre-designed templates and a drag-and-drop user interface that makes creating designs easy. They also provide a whole section of their site dedicated to learning, with everything from typography to colour psychology.
Janet adds: “It’s always great to see the lightbulbs going off when we share this with our clients in our training programmes.”
“I was told about #HashMe by someone in a workshop and thought it was great”, says Janet.
She continues: “It generates related hashtags, so you don’t have to think of them all yourself. You put in a hashtag in the right area, e.g. #cake and it generates a further 30 related ones. You simply copy the ones you want, and it opens Instagram and puts them in for you. It also shows you how many people have used that hashtag.”
Make sure that you only use relevant hashtags for your post and never use one just because it’s popular and you want to boost your visibility. Instagram have cracked down on this behaviour and it can lead to you being ‘shadow banned’. This term, if you’re unfamiliar with it, means that Instagram will block all or some of your content in a way that won’t be obvious to you that the community are not being shown it.
Quik
“The Quik app helps you to create videos from pictures, boomerangs and video clips”, Janet says. “You can put them all together and tailor your video with different overlays and transitions. It’s a really easy way to put a video together even if you’re not very technically-skilled. It’s another way you can work smarter, not harder.”
Facebook Mobile Studio
“A little-known gem, Facebook Mobile Studio isn’t actually on Facebook”, Janet explains. “It’s a website that presents you with different apps you can use, and it gives you all the instructions you need to get the best out of them. It has Quik on there, for example.
“It gives you great instructions on how to take photos, get your lighting right, do Boomerangs, etc. It makes it really easy for you and isn’t just for Facebook either – you can use the tools it advises to create content for multiple social media platforms.”
Janet Bebb is one of only 24 Accredited Facebook #SheMeansBusiness Trainers in the UK. She is a social media consultant, trainer and Twitter wall/event manager for Social Progress in Yorkshire. The company specialises in social media account management, training and consulting.
If you liked this post, please share with your friends and followers. If you are interested in digital, why not check out the Digital Enterprise Top 100, a major initiative to identify those companies that are setting an example for others to follow within the world of digital transformation.
Comments