Top 5 Free Tools to Step Up Your Social Media Game

Looking for ways to increase your social media presence? Look no further! Our Social Media team has the top 5 social tools to incorporate into your strategy and create more brand awareness for your business.

Best of all? They’re free.

1. Canva

Creating visually stunning posts for your social profiles is the goal, but the thought of learning the intricate workings of Adobe Photoshop in a short amount of time might be something you’re avoiding. Researchers discovered that coloured visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80% (Source: Hubspot).

Canva is a free graphic design tool available to help you save money and time. Canva’s user-friendly interface allows you to drag-and-drop images, text, illustrations, frames, backgrounds and more. The ability to maneuver elements of design this effortlessly means you’re able to maintain a social presence while still paying attention to what matters most – your business.

The ability to create a design using Canva’s preset dimensions without having to figure out the sizing proportions ourselves is a notable feature of the site. Whether the objective is to design a Youtube Thumbnail or Instagram Post, the options are right at your fingertips.

Examples of designs available through Canva include:

• Pinterest Graphic
• Twitter Post
• Facebook Post
• Facebook App
• Tumblr Graphic
• Infographic
• Youtube Channel Art
• Email Header
• Real Estate Flyers
• Food & Drink Menu
• And many more design layouts to choose from!

 

2. IFTTT

Automate everything!
Managing multiple social accounts can be tedious and increasingly overwhelming when trying to stay active on different social mediums all at once. If This Then That (IFTTT) helps alleviate these social pressures by connecting apps, tools, and devices together, allowing you to post once and spreading that message automatically to separate accounts. Designed to automate tasks and help increase productivity, IFTTT connects popular apps and services to work in tandem with each other.

You choose from popular premade recipes or create custom recipes that are tailored specifically for your business needs.

Some examples of recipes IFTTT allows you to create:

• Post your Instagram photos as native Twitter photos
• Add songs from Youtube videos you like to a Spotify playlist
• Get an email from the New York Times whenever there is breaking technology news
• Pin your new WordPress posts to a Pinterest board
• Save photos you’re tagged in on Facebook to Dropbox
• and plenty more!

 

3. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a comprehensive Social Media Management tool designed to help you schedule and analyze your various social media accounts through one interface. If you’re looking for a way to keep your social posts organized, Hootsuite’s Publisher allows users to schedule posts in advance. The dashboard displays current information about each network and sorts engagement activity accordingly.

Hootsuite’s mobile app is highly useful especially when it comes to posting to Instagram accounts. Once content is scheduled, Hootsuite pushes the post to your phone and sends users a notification when it’s time to post.

Streams users can manage through Hootsuite:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google+
• LinkedIn
• WordPress
• Instagram
• YouTube

The platform has 3-tiers to its pricing platform: Free, Pro or Enterprise. The Free version allows users to manage up to 3 social networks.

4. Sprout Social

This pick isn’t technically free, but the free 30-day trial does allow you to gain a glimpse into Sprout Social’s platform. Our Social Media Management team uses Sprout Social everyday to effectively monitor, publish and analyze social profiles. Among the standout features of Sprout Social are the reporting and analytics features, allowing users to track what’s working, what posts performed best, audience demographics and how your audience grew month-to-month. If you have a Twitter account connected to Sprout Social, you will be able to use the Smart Search feature which allows you to join real-time conversations and take your engagement to another level.

Other notable features:

• Feeds
• Filters
• Discovery
• Scheduling
• Team Collaboration & Task Management

 

5. Flipboard

Part of a dynamic social media strategy is curating relevant content to your industry. This can prove difficult when there are a plethora of news outlets throwing information directly (or indirectly) at you. We’ve found some content curation tools, such as Flipboard, have been able to assist our social media efforts and filter out the “noise” of excessive information.

Flipboard is laid out similar to a magazine and allows you to flip through the pages and content that you’re looking for, both on desktop and through it’s mobile application. It’s responsive, user-friendly, easy to use and great to open as soon as you wake up in the morning for your daily dose of current events. We incorporate Flipboard by tailoring our newsfeed to relevant topics and curating specific content. This tool provides the most recent articles from news outlets and includes information from your business/personal social networks as well.