Being a business owner means watching all the expenses, subscriptions & bills add up real quick (those payment processors are a killer)
So, I wanted to introduce you to a few tools that I use for social media that are completely FREE.
These will help you put your best foot forward for your business and brand without adding to the ever-growing pile of bills.
Social Media Planning
I’m not going to lie, 95% of my posts are pre-scheduled. This allows me to show up on social media when my audience is there without having to interrupt my own schedule. I can’t always be online exactly when my audience is, so I pre-schedule my content so that I am sure to be consistent showing up for my community.
Later
This is currently what I am using for myself. I did eventually upgrade to the paid version but the free version is still very good.
I love that you can see how your grid looks together and then can move things around in the grid if you need to make some changes.
They do have a hashtag tool but it’s not my favourite. I would rather do my own hashtag research to build my groups. But I do like that you can save a group of hashtags as a “Saved Caption” and add them into your post when you need them.
Planoly
Honestly, Planoly is a lot like Later. They both store your media for you and make it easy to customize your posts for each platform.
One thing I like about Planoloy is that you can have “Drafts” which makes it easy to batch write your posts and then place and schedule when you’re ready to post.
For both of these you have to pay for the upgrade to pull analytics but I like to capture them from the platforms anyways so, it’s not a huge deal for me.
Buffer
I often use this platform for my client work because the free option is nice and basic and you can connect up to 3 platforms without paying. It is super user friendly and has some basic analytics, which is a bonus.
Tailwind
This is the tool I use for Pinterest (although they have an Instagram scheduler too but I have never used it) and it makes it really easy to schedule your original pins, as well as your re-pins of non-original content. It also makes it super easy to repurpose and re-post popular content (Loops) and connect with other pinners (communities).
With Pinterest, it’s important to re-pin other people’s content as well your own (although the algorithm is changing again with a stronger focus for original content).
However, I currently get hundreds of users a month coming to my website from Pinterest even though I haven’t pinned a new pin in months (I swear I’m getting to it lol). The great thing about Pinterest is that it runs on evergreen content. This means it doesn’t matter as much about how current your content is because it is searchable by keyword.
So, if your pin keywords are what the user is searching, you will get traffic for it even months later.
Right now the pins that I get most traffic to my website from are from a blog I wrote almost a year ago. This is because I use Tailwind to re-pin this blog on a regular basis with Smart Loops.
**if you use my link to sign up for this app, I will receive a commission**
You can currently get a free trial of Tailwind of 100 pins (no time limit) or you can sign up here.
Content Creation
Canva
If you aren’t using Canva for your business, you are either a Photoshop master or have been living under a rock. Canva is a great tool for creating graphics for your business. And they have the incredible feature of having their templates pre-sized to popular social media graphic best practices, so that you don’t have to Google it every time you want to make a post.
They now allow you to build video graphics, use GIFs, and even partner with a stock photography website to use their photos.
Their upgrade is very reasonable and I would recommend making this a part of your wheelhouse if you are not familiar with the Adobe suite.
Pic Play Post
This is my go to video editor for vertical video (stories, Reels, IGTV) I use iMovie for horizontal video editing but they don’t have the best capability for editing vertical video. It’s pretty easy to use (see how I edit with it in this video) and it’s free if you can handle their branded watermark.
Instories
This tool helps you build engaging video graphics for Stories or ads that make your content look like it was made for a professional. It only has a few “packs” that are free but they are pretty versatile to build stories or ads with. I have used it multiple times for clients & myself (although I prefer it for product-based businesses).
You can import your own photos or videos and it builds an animated graphic that highlights your products and makes it look like you have a graphics team.
Lightroom
This is the free mobile version of the Adobe app, which makes it very easy to edit photos to make them look cohesive to your brand, apply professional filters or do basic alterations of your photos.
This is commonly used on social media and there a plenty of Lightroom pre-set packs available for purchase and easy to use.
Stock photos
We don’t always have the perfect photos to share on social media or the budget of a photographer. While I will usually recommend that you get your own branded photos done, it’s not always in everyone’s budget and stock photos can be a great resource to fill in the gaps of your visual content.
The thing with free stock photos is that everybody uses them so they are commonplace on the internet. That means people might seem them around and know they are not original to you.
Also, beware of using the photos in video. Check the licenses of each site to ensure that you are following their rules of use.
I use the following free stock sites:
Idea generation
Have you ever created a blog post and was just SURE that people would be banging down the door to read it only to find out that no one actually cares? You won’t have that problem if you use the following 2 tools.
These allow you to see how popular a search keyword or phrase is, therefore how likely it would be that someone is interested in that topic. Just plug your keywords into the websites below and look for the ones with mid-high search pool.
However, a word to the wise- just because something isn’t searched for regularly, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth blogging about. Sometimes, our audiences need to hear something that they aren’t searching for to get the full value.
Have you heard of all these tools? Which ones are your favourites? And which ones have I left out that should be on this list?
