Social Media Tools We Can’t Live Without

Alexis Westlund, Director of Social Media

On an average day at Agency Media, we’re juggling 10–15 social media accounts at a time. That means efficiency and organization are key. I’m sharing with you the 5 top tools that we could not go without.

Sprout Social

While managing several accounts between a team, we’re all about efficiency. That’s why Sprout Social is our holy grail of social media tools. It allows us to schedule, post, generate reports, respond to messages, and so much more. We’re able to schedule loads of content ahead of time across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & LinkedIn. There are several other programs out there that are very similar, such as Hootsuite, that will help you and your team accomplish the same goals. We have found Sprout Social to offer more in-depth analytics that allow us to generate more specific reports on our competitors and audience. Being able to accomplish so much with one tool certainly is a life savour — and a time savour!

The messaging function is our favourite. Sprout Social grabs all mentions, direct messages, even custom hashtags, and filters it all in one place so you don’t miss a mention online. This saves our team a ton of time as we don’t have to log into each social platform separately to search through our notifications.

Trello

With several accounts to manage, it’s crucial to stay organized. That’s where Trello comes in.

Trello allows us to custom build a workflow system between our social media team, copywriters, and photographers. It is user-friendly and very visual, allowing us to easily create and plan out every piece of content, from visuals to captions, in one place and for multiple accounts.

Later

Although Sprout Social and many other similar programs allows us to schedule content across all social platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram & more), we find Later is our favourite tool for scheduling Instagram content. Their preview option allows us to see how your feed will look, so you can plan aesthetically pleasing content. And, unlike other Instagram scheduling apps, it has a neat feature of saving hashtags. No more copying and pasting from your notes! ;)

VSCO / Snapseed

Now for the editing apps, you don’t need to get too fancy with editing photos in photoshop or lightroom. We find using VSCO or Snapseed covers all the necessities for transforming photos. We find the biggest strength of VSCO is the several filters to choose from. They make a big difference but are subtle enough to fit a variety of brand styles. Snapseed’s biggest benefit is the ability to edit a specific area (my favourite tool is the ambiance selection in Snapseed!).

Cutstory

Lastly, I’m a big fan of Cutstory! This app cuts videos into 15 second intervals so they can be easily uploaded to an Instagram story. Being an agency that drools over a good video, this app has come in handy when we want to upload our video content to Instagram stories to share with our audience and our client’s audience. It’s extremely easy to use, so I definitely encourage you to try it out and up your Insta-story game!

For more tips on social media, check out Alexis’s article on common social media mistakes and how to fix them!