Tips & Tools: The Best Social Media Tools for Small Businesses

In this day and age, having an active online presence is a critical part of running a business.

Since most of us spend the majority of our lives online, you want to make sure your company’s social media accurately reflects your brand while helping you achieve your goals. Not only can social media help you market your brand, you can also use it to inform your community about company activities and engage with your audience.

If you’ve reached the point where your Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts are up and running and you have gathered some followers, it’s now time to make sure you’re sharing great content on a regular basis. But how do you make sure you’re publishing content consistently when you’re a busy young business owner?

Fortunately, there are some great scheduling platforms out there that can help you manage your social media and save you a tonne of time in the process.

1. SmarterQueue

This platform is by far one of our favourites. Still pretty new to the market, SmarterQueue has a variety of functions. It can schedule posts, categorize different types of content, and even help you re-use your best content for more engagement. It’s one of the better – and more affordable – platforms out there.

One of the stand-out features of SmarterQueue is its content calendar. With its category queues and drag-and-drop functionality, it can help you schedule your social media posts in seconds. You can also set your posts to be re-published automatically, so you will always have a full content queue with minimal effort.

Finally, and this is pretty awesome, it can also schedule Instagram posts! As most social media managers know, working with Instagram can be tricky but SmarterQueue allows you to update your Insta feeds in just one click.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBR77Qv7aoU

2. Hootsuite

Part of why we like Hootsuite is its user-friendly interface. You can schedule your content very easily and engage with your online community across multiple social media platforms, all in one place.

Thanks to its easy-to-use Dashboard feature, you can not only monitor your various accounts, you can also create ‘streams’ to keep your eye on a particular hashtag, a curated list of followers, your blog’s RSS feed and more.

Like many social media platforms out there, the more you’re willing to spend, the more features you can unlock. For example, Hootsuite Campaigns can help you create beautiful landing pages in minutes and Hootsuite Insights offers powerful tracking and measurement tools. Nevertheless, what we like the most about Hootsuite is that you can set up an account for free and still enjoy plenty of its services.

3. Buffer

Buffer is pretty similar to the platforms mentioned above in that it can schedule posts for your different social media platforms and monitor audience engagement. However, the biggest difference with Buffer is its browser extension. Available for Safari, Chrome and Firefox, the extension allows you to share content from any web page in just a few clicks.

Unfortunately, one of the downsides of Buffer is its search functionality. It can be confusing to refine mentions or to simply create your own search queries. But again, Buffer is designed to be simple in its approach and affordable.

Whether you’re new to social media management or an expert looking to make your life a little easier, there are a variety of tools out there to help you become a social media scheduling master!

Written by: Charlotte Robert, Bilingual Copywriter, Futurpreneur Canada