SMM stands for Social Media Marketing – marketing in social networks. The purpose of SMM is to attract customers from Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms through creating attractive content. Another important task of SMM is to increase brand awareness and work on reputation.
Do you want to make it big in the social media world with your small or medium-sized company? Then let’s get started! We’ve compiled a list of social media tools that don’t cost a lot of know-how or money. You can read about which ones here.
Tool #1️⃣ – Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a tool to manage the entire social media process and to complement and improve it through automation. With more than 10 million customers, Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media tools and is especially known for its good integration with Twitter. With Hootsuite, you can publish posts, schedule them, and answer requests from followers directly.
The user gets a detailed overview of all social media channels so that he can easily manage and control them. Especially for Twitter, Hootsuite offers practical functions, such as the integration of RSS feeds to share interesting articles automatically. Customizable analyses enable targeted monitoring as well as control of activities.
Algorithms determine the ideal time to post articles, which can then be published via auto-scheduling. Since the posts are thus posted at the ideal time, this leads to an enormous increase in reach. This method is particularly successful on Twitter. Due to the complexity and diverse possibilities, this tool is more suitable for experts.
Tool #2️⃣ – AiGrow
Are you just starting out with a new Instagram channel or does your existing profile doesn’t really want to reach extreme heights? Once you’ve got the social media marketing basics down, the work is just beginning. But no matter how slowly your follower numbers grow, beware of buying followers. They most likely won’t match your social media goals, nor will they interact with your content. Because let’s be honest: Is it more valuable to your brand to count 100,000 fake followers, or are 1,000 followers interacting with your posts more important to you? Also: by buying Instagram accounts, you’re putting your brand’s credibility at risk.
A fantastic helper to increase your follower count is the AI tool AiGrow. It follows, comments, likes or sends pre-made messages to drive organic traffic to your Instagram account. It’s legit and you reach suitable users through special targeting options. Especially great: besides the classic follower building, there are many other supporting features for your growth process. In addition to sending pre-programmed direct messages, posts and recently even stories can be created and pre-scheduled.
Learn how to properly set up the growth engine in this video.
Tool #3️⃣ – Canva
This user-friendly online platform has become one of the most popular graphic tools. We think so: For good reason! With the tool, you can create visual content for your company that will wow your followers. Whether it’s pins for Pinterest, animated graphics or LinkedIn banners – even creative non-professionals will find their way around here and build great visuals easily.
The many predefined templates offer everything your social media heart desires. In addition to the available layouts, there are also many images, text elements and backgrounds. Moreover, it is possible to upload your images via drag & drop. You can then easily download the designs you have created. You also have the option to unlock your colleagues for editing.
What we find especially great: Even in the free version, you can customize your created visual to match your company’s corporate design.
With Canvas, you create visually appealing content for your followers or content for companies.
Tool #4️⃣ – Giphy
In times of declining organic reach, where is there still free reach? Exactly, in the stickers in your Instagram Story! With these so-called GIF stickers, you can design your company logo, individual arrows or lettering, for example. You create them easily via the Giphy platform. All you need is an artist or brand channel and creative ideas. So, as an artist, choose ‘Artist’ and as a brand, choose ‘Brand’. Verification can take a few days – until then, it’s just waiting and seeing. Once you’ve received the verification email, uploading your GIF stickers can take a few hours.
Here are a few more tips for your in-house stickers: it’s best to create the stickers with raw material in 1,200-pixel width. Keep in mind that there is no semi-transparency with GIFs. Our opinion: Story stickers are a simple and modern way for brands to sharpen their recognition value and brand awareness. In the evaluations, you can even see how many views your individual stickers have achieved. Furthermore, good to know: You can also use the stickers in Facebook Stories or in your Snaps on Snapchat.
Tool #5️⃣ – Over Edit & Add Text to Photos
Finally: Over. An app that lets you spice up your pictures quickly and easily. Currently, it’s quite common on Instagram to embellish Stories with personally crafted Story elements. There are plenty of sticker templates, fonts, or graphics in the app that you can use to customize your Story.
What do you need to do about this? Open a transparent background in the app and then select a graphic, text or shape. This is how you add a personal touch to your branded story! In the paid version, you even create hip brushstrokes as the background of your caption in your CI color palette.
Conclusion
The decision as to which and how many tools are necessary for one’s own social media management must be made very individually. It is important to calculate the number of posts per week and the number of channels when making the decision, as price differences arise here depending on the social media tool. Another deciding factor is the number of people contributing to a project, as many free versions only offer one access to the channels at a time.