Posted by We may come across hundreds of social media tools to choose from including video content creation tools, Image content creations tools and so on, but, you and I both know how difficult it is to pick one tool that is affordable and helps you manage your social media accounts under one roof, create and curate content, schedule posts. All of that, and also keeping in mind it does not burn a hole in our pockets.
As a Social media manager, there are many other miscellaneous to-do’s. Amongst those, here are specific things that are done on a day-to-day basis —
- Creating content
- Strategising for each social platform
- Posting at the right time
- Keeping an eye on trends
- Living in the analytics pool
- Creating reports
Here are the best tools you can extensively use (some are free) and some are paid but definitely affordable and worth the time and energy one saves.
Let’s get to the tools?
Image content creation
Canva
This tool allows you to create posts as per the social platforms you’d like to publish to.
The available templates and 5GB cloud storage is just enough for anybody starting off or more.
Canva is super easy to use the app and the fact that you do not have to look for the image dimension or rack your head too much on the creatives is a bonus of why it stands out amongst other content creation tools.
Unsplash
This tool provides free high-resolution photos that you could use to create a blog banner, wallpaper or background to make that Instagram post on your feed pretty.
Unsplash has images for all, and these images are submitted by the members of their community.
You can browse through their category or simply search for the image you’re looking for.
For example, if I want to look for a blog banner, I can simply look up for it, also pick an orientation, choose a colour and filter the search bar as per my specific need.
Pixabay (Free)
This tool helps you choose from a big pool of illustrations, graphics, videos and musics to make your content interesting and interactive. Similar to Unsplash, you can filter content based on orientation, size, colour and even category.
PhotoGrid
PhotoGrid is an app with many options for editing images, creating collages, as well as video slide shows accompanied by music.
With this app you can crop, rotate, add a filter, resize, blur and beautify your photos easily, you can even frame your images in Instagram’s 1:1 aspect ratio!
You can also add stickers, backgrounds, text, borders to the image.
Additionally, some basic features like adjusting the brightness, contrast, saturation, and layout of your photos can also be done with this app.
Currently, it’s only available on Android.
Video content creation
Lumen5
This video creation tool is mainly designed for brands and business to create quick video posts using the templates that are already available.
While this is free, it has certain limitations like creating 3 videos per month and having to choose the font, transition, theme and background for every video.
The paid subscription starts at $15 per month and $11 per month if you opt for a yearly subscription.
iMovie (Free)
This tool helps you import your videos, and photos into projects, and edit them.
You can split and slice videos, arrange them around on the timeline, and even add transitions (basic ones) to the video.
Currently, this is only available for iOS but there are many alternatives for Android and Windows users.
Type Studio
This app is an online text-based video editor that converts your video by just editing text.
You can edit a video without having any video editing skills. All you have to do is delete the text and that part of the video will be auto cropped.
While the free plan has limitations, the paid ones allow some super cool features like-
- Automatically add subtitles
- Annotate the video
- Language translation option
CloudApp
This tool is the one that helps you record quick videos, take some screenshots and annotate videos and images.
These are converted into a shareable link that can be viewed by anyone.
It’s one of the best apps used to share a tutorial, escalate something that doesn’t look right on the screen and so on.
CloudApp is available on iOS and Windows at the moment but you can always add the tool to your Chrome browser 🙂
Grammar freak
Grammarly
It’s a tool that automatically detects grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, and style mistakes in your writing.
All you have to do is copy-paste the text within the text box of the app or website.
You can also download the Grammarly Chrome extension that helps you over and select the text and also highlights the misspelt words and even punctuations.
The advanced features also include Tone adjustments, a Plagiarism checker, a Style guide and more.
Writer
This tool helps you score your content, manage company word list, create style guides and more.
It is priced at $11 per month and $99 for a year. You can also add the Writer tool as a Google Chrome extension.
To-do lists and notes
Trello
Trello is one of the best organiser and team coordination tool.
It has features like creating boards, lists, cards and checklist.
You can assign tasks to members and they will be notified each time there are changes to the card. One can also add a deadline, view the activity log and add attachments to each of the task cards for efficient usage and understanding.
The Free plan has most of the features and the paid plans start from $10 and have some cool features like a dashboard, calendar view, templates, custom Backgrounds and stickers too.
Evernote
This tool helps in creating quick notes and jotting down ideas from brain to document.
The free app is more than enough but even the paid app is priced at a cool $7 per user month with access to all the features.
Dropbox Paper
Dropbox Paper is a type of doc for teams to create and collaborate together at once even if they’re in different parts of the world. It’s one of the best apps to use at the moment while we’re all waiting for this pandemic to end.
You can currently, comment, create to-do lists, add a timeline, assign tasks and also mention team members using the @ symbol.
For complete social media management
Crowdfire
A social media management tool makes Social media managers work more manageable.
This is because it becomes that one-stop for all the social platforms they manage.
Amongst the different tools available, Crowdfire is the most affordable tool for social media management.
It helps with scheduling posts, Curating Content, Mentions, Analytics, Report builder, RSS feeds, Social listening, Content planning, Sentimental analysis and Profile/ Client management.
Here are the key features of how you could use Crowdfire to the fullest –
- With Crowdfire’s content curation tab, you can share relevant content from the feed. This helps to keep your social accounts active and engaging when there isn’t enough original content.
- You can Compose posts and schedule them using the “Best time feature” or a time and date you’d like the post to be published on your social media handle.
- The Mentions feature fetches all the posts on your social accounts where your account has been mentioned. You can reply to these with text, GIFs and emojis.
- The RSS feed feature allows you to add RSS feeds of sites publishing content relevant to you.
Crowdfire will then pull all of their content in the app for you to share. - The calendar view is basically a bird’s-eye view of all the posts you’ve scheduled on a particular social account. The master calendar allows you to view the scheduled posts for all your social accounts at once.
- Analytics plays a super important role to understand what works best for social platforms. Crowdfire’s analytics gives you an in-depth understanding of your posts, audience, engagement and more.
- There’s a cool Report Builder feature that allows you to fetch data and create reports within a few minutes. These are entirely customisable in terms of the metrics and data you’d like. You can download them and share it too.
- Crowdfire’s Listening feature allows you to track and monitor your and your competitor’s mentions.
This feature is important for your brand to know everything you need to know about your audience.Crowdfire’s free plan allows you to manage and schedule 3 social accounts.
In addition, to access the advanced features, you can opt for the paid plans and these start from $9.99 per month or $7.48 per month if you opt for a yearly plan.
Mental health management
Headspace
This app’s free version offers 10 “Basic” instructional sessions on beginning a meditation practice.
There are other options to access a few other guided meditations, including some for sleep and exercise.
They also have a paid version called Headspace Plus and is priced at about $12 for a year.
A free alternative to this app is the – Calm
Five Minute Journal
This app helps you practice guided gratitude journaling, whether you take time to write out your full thoughts or just spend a few minutes jotting down the things you’re most grateful for every day or lessons you’ve learned. Five Minute Journal app makes this process easy enough to do on the go with reminders.
With the premium (paid) plan, you can fill up the mood tracker, tailor questions, See a photographic timeline view of all your daily photos, a memory feature that takes you back to the previous year and more.
Presently
Presently encourages you to celebrate the richness of your daily life, helping you focus on what really matters.
The entries made on this tool each day can be shared with anyone via third party apps Such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter to name a few.
You can also set daily reminder notification to get push notifications about the same.
This is currently available for Free only on Android.
That’s all folks!
Let’s make great use of these cool affordable apps to level up our social media game⚡️
With Crowdfire, you can find curated content, schedule your posts, engage with your audience, deep-dive into analytics and create custom reports. Try it for free.
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