As a small business owner, you have to take care of a lot of stuff, and often social media marketing is not on top of your to-do list. You could hire somebody to help you with it, or you can do it yourself, but either way, it still takes time and money.
But there are often much quicker, more effective ways to market on social media. Using the right social media tools, you can streamline your process, enabling you to get more done in less time – and more effectively to boot.
Here are six social media tools for small businesses that can help make your life a little easier.
1. Awario
Why is it useful?
You can follow all the mentions of your brand across the web and interact with your audience instantly from the Awario platform.
What does it do?
With word of mouth becoming more and more influential, you simply can’t afford to stay in oblivion – you need to know what people are saying about your business. That’s exactly what Awario is for – the platform enables you to track keywords across social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, but also on Reddit. Awario also monitors various public forums, blogs and websites. Whenever someone mentions your brand, Awario will immediately notify you.
Awario’s interface is extremely intuitive, yet comprehensive at the same time. You can choose from a multitude of filters to tailor the search process to you needs.
Suppose you make your own hand-made jewelry and you want to know how your customers like the new designs. You can do it with this tool.
But that’s not all – Awario also gives you the opportunity to interact with your audience in an instant.
The second you get a notification of a tweet mentioning your brand, you can respond to it right from the Awario dashboard. You can see who left you a comment full of gratitude, or a negative review, and respond accordingly. Always stay on top of your mentions.
But the most useful feature for developing your social media strategy is Awario’s ‘Reports’ function. Here, you can see your statistics and top influencers (accounts that mention your brand and have the most followers). You can also see the potential partners, choose social media platforms that you might want to prioritize, and find out what reviews and comments you’re getting.
Available options
Awario offers a 14-day trial period, after which you can choose one of three price options that start at $29 per month. The most suitable for small businesses is the PRO solution that costs $89 and allows you to print the statistics.
2. Edgar
Why is it useful?
With Edgar, you can stop worrying about posting on time. Instead of spending hours on manual post scheduling, you can just focus on creating and finding new content.
What does it do?
We know that with social media, quantity is often just as important as quality. This social media tool takes on the boring part of content management: scheduling.
Having a small business can be hugely time-consuming, and sometimes you just can’t find a moment to post or tweet something. Edgar makes you forget about the ordeal of planning.
With this tool, all you need to do is fill the library with the content you have, then Edgar will decide when and how many times to post it. You’ll be able to reach the audience with all your inspirational quotes, special offers, product advertisements etc. by posting several times. Don’t let your followers forget about your existence.
Edgar is useful for those who already have content created and want to make sure that it reaches their audience. Accounts that mostly publish evergreen content will benefit the most from it.
Available options
For $49 a month, you get to manage 25 social media accounts on Facebook , Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest.
3. Post Planner
Why is it useful?
To post something, you first need to write it – or, alternatively, to find it. This tool helps you find the content relevant to your business, see how it performs and make a use of it.
What does it do?
When you start using Post Planner, you choose feeds from the companies in your field on social media or any blog (RSS feeds).
Say, you’re a small travel company. You could choose the feeds of your competitors and the biggest travel service providers in the world, and Post Planner would then pull the articles and the pictures from these feeds and collect them in your library.
And it doesn’t just do it once – every day you’ll have new content at your disposal.
Another great thing Post Planner does is it analyzes social media platforms, and decides which content will perform better on each. It rates everything based on the number of likes, comments and followers, and leaves you with the very best content on top of the page, which you can combine, modify and then publish on your social profiles.
Available options
Prices start from $3 a month. For $11, you upgrade to making a 100 posts per day and planing up to a 1000 posts.
4. BuzzSumo
Why is it useful?
Sometimes, to create new content you need inspiration – you want to know what to write, and how to write to maximize content reach. BuzzSumo provides you with insights into the hottest trends to use in your creative endeavors.
What does it do?
To establish a social media presence and attract new customers, you need great content, something that people want to read and watch. BuzzSumo helps you find new discussions and trends in your field, gives you ideas about what kind of content is performing best and insights into what tricks you can use to make your content memorable.
It can take hours each day to look through relevant pages and websites and figure out what people are talking about. BuzzSumo takes care of this for you – you just need to put in the keyword/s and the app will do the rest.
Moreover, since it’s able to analyze content published up to five years ago, BuzzSumo can also predict what trends will be popular at a certain time of the year. If during Halloween, forexample, skeleton GIFs go viral every year, you can use one or two in your October tweets.
You can also put an alert on certain keywords, so when someone publishes new content, you’ll know about it straight away.
Available options
You can get a 1-week free trial, after which the prices start at $99 a month. If you want special features you’ll need to pay $299.
4. Canva
Why is it useful?
Canva is the best tool to create graphic designs without having to invest huge amounts of time and effort.
What does it do?
People say “don’t judge a book by its cover”, but we live in a visual era, and a lot of customers’ decisions are based on appearance.
In comparison with other photo editors, Canva is a perfect combination of a user-friendly interface and broad capability – the tool offers you a plethora of options to choose from. With Canva you can create visual content for any social network out there: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest etc. You can also design your own newsletters, cards and posters.
Having a small business, you probably don’t have time to spend on learning photo editors, and with Canva you won’t need lessons and tutorials.
Available options
Canva is free to use, but some features like resizing and GIFs are only available with a paid subscription of $12.95 per month.
5. Animoto
Why is it useful?
The next step in your social media game is video, and with Animoto‘s simple editor, you can create your own video ads.
What does it do?
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter now favor video content with their algorithm. Don’t be late to this trend – create your own video advertising with this easy-to-use editor.
With Animoto, you can combine photos and videos from your camera roll, add captions and soundtracks from the huge music library, and publish them to the platform of your choice.
Animoto is most suitable for Facebook video. To find alternatives for Instagram and Twitter, you could try Flipagram or Magisto.
Available options
The personal subscription options start at $8 a month. For $22, you get a professional kit, which includes HD 1080p video, bigger music and font libraries and license to resell to customers.
Even if you don’t have much time, with these tools, you’ll be able to produce appealing and interesting content, establish your social media presence, and interact with your customers, which will surely help to grow your business.