Hey, small business owners! Nice to see ya here! Your time is valuable. So let's get down to business, here are some of our favorite social media resources.
First off, if you haven't already switched your social media profiles to business profiles. Do it. Now. Seriously. Do it right now. I'll wait... Okay. Thank you. Switching to business profiles on whatever social platforms you use opens up so many more options for you. You get analytics, scheduling options, profile integration, and so much more.
One of the first things I tell business owners to do is schedule. Scheduling your posts can save you the most time upfront. I don't know about you, but I can spend anywhere from 10-40 minutes staging a picture, editing said pictures, uploading, crafting a witty caption, and posting. 10-40 minutes a post. That's not efficient. Plus some days the creativity isn't there. So forcing a post when the juices aren't flowing just isn't my favorite thing.
I spend a whole workday planning out our social media posts for a month. That's at least one post a day, five days a week, four weeks a month. If I'm being 100% honest with myself, some months I'm better than others at this. Because you know, life. But the months I do dedicate the whole day to planning out social media posts, are better. I promise.
Whatever your platforms - Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter - the two platforms below have got you covered.
Buffer - Buffer makes it easy for businesses to schedule posts, analyze performance, and manage all their accounts in one place.
Hootsuite - Similar to Buffer, just a different backend that appeals to some more than Buffer.
One of my biggest gripes about bulk social media schedulers like those I mentioned above, is that they don't have Instagram grid planners. The key to a strong Instagram game is visual aesthetics, so taking pictures and not planning where they will land on your feed is counterintuitive.
Here are a few pictures from my personal feed to prove the point. The first picture is okay. You can tell I love selfies and didn't care about all of the haphazard white space I was creating by posting 9:16 vertical photos.
Looking at the second picture - my feed is so much more aesthetically pleasing. I used examples from my personal IG, but imagine your business IG. Having a curated feed takes more time and intention but results in a feed that casual users scrolling through feeds, can't help but stop and notice. Which is exactly what you want. People to stop and spend time on your profile so that your messaging can make a connection and they hit that follow button. Then, pending they are in the market for whatever it is you're selling, they hopefully buy something from you.
Plann - We use Plann for all of the businesses we have an Instagram for. You can easily upload photos from your phone, Google Drive, and DropBox making it easy to curate your feed.
Planoly - I use Planoly for my personal IG because I like the hashtag integration just a little bit more than Plann's for my personal feed. And because my personal feed isn't a business feed, I've found it to be a little easier to navigate them by having them on separate apps.
There are plenty of other apps that can help with IG grid planning. These two are just my favorite.
They often say the best camera is the one you have available. Which my friends, I believe to be very true. But sometimes your phone doesn't take the best photos, so they need a little love.
You found the most amazing picture on Google to attach to your blog post - can you automatically use it? No. As a general rule, you should always assume that images found via Google search, or really located anywhere on the internet, are protected by copyright unless explicitly stated. So the safest way to navigate the world of internet images is to only use images that fall in the public domain.
Spark - Spark is part of the Adobe Creative Suite and what we use (okay, I use) for creating my social media posts.
Here are a few other services/apps that we use often! And love!
MailChimp - We use MailChimp for our email list. There is a bit of a learning curve, but be patient, because there are so many tools that MailChimp has that can be integrated into your website, Facebook, etc.
Survey Monkey - Need to do market research? Survey Monkey has been around forever, and it's the first place I go.
Linktree - Instagram only gives you one clickable link. So maximize it. Linktree offers a way to have multiple clickable channels via IG's one link. Score!
Bit.ly - Sometimes a link is too long. Sometimes you want to know how many people actually clicked your link. Bit.ly to the rescue.
We wear many hats here at Graphic Finesse, including family & lifestyle photographers. After our first engagement session, we quickly realized that we needed a place to host our photos for our clients. Pixieset was and is our answer. We love it! Our client's galleries are private, secure, and easy to navigate. Plus they can order prints right off of the site.
Social media for small businesses can boil down to time and money. If you find yourself with more time than money, we highly recommend that you learn social media basics. Your business will thank you for it.
