8 Social Media Tools Questions: Answered

Want to know the best tools for managing your social media content? How about what PandaDoc is and how it can streamline your client-consultant relationships? Agorapulse’s Ravi Shukle and Digital Women’s Lucy Hall are here to help! Their live Q&A series will be streaming once a month on Digital Women’s social media to help answer all of your burning questions around social media marketing, content marketing, using social media tools and more.

We’ve taken 8 commonly asked questions from Lucy and Ravi’s latest social media tools Q&A to help you save time, money and your sanity! If you want to watch this month’s full video and soak up all of their top tips (and we recommend that you do!), you can find it over on our YouTube channel or in the Digital Women Facebook group now. And make sure to subscribe to Ravi on YouTube for even more social media tips and tricks.

What’s the number one social media tool that you couldn’t live without?

The first one would be a social media management tool, but the next thing would be a project management tool. A couple of free tools that work well are Slack, which is more like an instant messenger, and Trello and Asana, which let you manage tasks based on end dates and assign tasks to people, which allows you to keep track of everything you’ve got going on as a social media manager.

Which tools are best for creating short video content?

Firstly we need to understand what your video editing experience is like. If you have lots of experience, you could use a bit more advanced tools like Adobe After Effects or Camtasia, where you have more control over exactly what happens in the video. If you’re looking for something a bit simpler for video content under 2 minutes, tools like Canva, In.Video and Lumen5 are great. These video tools offer templates for you to use, so you can simply swap out the text and customise the imagery to create a video for your brand swiftly and efficiently, without having to worry about any of the advanced tweaks.

What’s the best way of sending content to multiple social media platforms and measuring its effectiveness?

Each social network has its own individual features and types of content, for example Instagram has Reels, IGTV, Stories, etc., so the first step is to research the social media management tools out there and see which ones cater to the platforms and features you’ll be using. The next step is to look at the reporting part of the question: some software platforms charge for reporting (analytics), but regardless of what software you go for you need to make sure that the reporting feature is built in. If you’re not looking to use a posting/reporting software to track and manage your social media for whatever reason, you’ll need to make sure that you’re able to go directly into your accounts’ insights and store that information so that you’re able to measure the effectiveness of your content.

What is PandaDoc?

PandaDoc is a software that allows you to create templated contracts. So, if you wanted to create an agreement between a client and a contractor, Panda Doc allows you to create and store that online, and if you require things like a signature or payment, that can also be done through this software. It’s an easy way to manage the legal side of agreements and partnerships.

What are the best tools for creating images and branded imagery?

Canva is a huge image creation tool which is great for beginners and for designing everyday graphics and content, because it has so many templates to work from that will save you time. Other tools include PicMonkey, a simpler software, and Pixlr, a more advanced tool which is essentially online Photoshop, but free! PlaceIt.net is another tool which allows you to place your logo into any environment (e.g. a T-shirt, a billboard, etc.) and it will automatically add it in with no design experience needed. 

Should you have a tools budget within your business?

It’s important to have a tools budget to make sure that you don’t overspend, just as you would in your personal life. But for your business, be flexible with your budget. Consider whether you need lots of smaller tools that help you with the things you need to do, or whether there’s one tool you could pay a little bit extra for that covers everything you need – and could need going forward.

Are there any tools to help manage social media ads?

Going directly to the platforms is currently the easiest and most thorough way to set up and manage ads. Software platforms like Hubspot have ad management built in, which lets you set up the targeting, what the ad looks like, etc., but to manage certain details you still need to go into the social media platform you’re running the ads on. There are tools like AdEspresso and Agorapulse which allow you to manage the smaller elements to your ads, but there’s currently no tool which encompasses everything you need to consider outside of the platforms themselves.

Is there a tool for competitor research?

Platforms like Agorapulse have competitor research capabilities built in, so it’s an example of one of those multitasking tools that saves you time and money. You can also use the built in competitor analysis tools within platforms like Facebook, where you can search and find pages similar to your own. If you want to be more specific with your competitor analysis, it’s good to put together your own list of competitors and track and update that on a regular basis so that you can stay aware of the changes in your industry.

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