Tag: Canva

#GiftYourBusiness – Gift of Budget

There are new social media tools being created every day. Many of these tools make the process of curating and scheduling content more efficient and less time-consuming. When it comes to running your own business, saving time is one of the most important aspects of becoming profitable. Therefore, one of the best ways to gift your business this holiday season is to sign up and incorporate some free social media and online tools into your daily routine. Here are recommendations for some of my favorite free social tools.
Canva
Since visual content is so important to social media, a tool like Canva is invaluable. Canva allows users to create social media and marketing images quickly and easily. These high-quality, easy to design images can be used anywhere. Not everyone is a graphic designer or has access to photo editing software. Canva eliminates the need for either of those and makes image creation simple and amazing.
Buffer
For those maintaining a presence on Twitter, Buffer is a fabulous free tool. Buffer allows users to track their follower activity and gives suggestions as to the best time to post or schedule tweets. It has built in scheduling and analytics. The analyticsmeasures all major engagement statistics for posts on the major platforms.
Hootsuite
If we were to log into social mediaevery day, all the time, nothing else would ever get accomplished. However, it’s important that our brands remain reliable and visible on each of the social platforms to maintain our following. Hootsuite is a widely known and popular tool for scheduling out content. It has also RSS feed capabilities and allows users to interact on various platforms via one place.
Commun.it
Another tool that is nearly essential for Twitter users is Commun.it. This tool is based on the need to stay on top of relationship management within the platform. It tracks all the major interaction on your Twitter account and automatically works to nurture and engage fans and followers on the site.  The tool monitors what others are saying about you, your brand and your business. It also shows who is linking to your site, discovers new leads for you, tracks who follows and unfollows, and reports back on community engagement. There are options to auto-engage people who follow, mention, post or retweet your content. This helps keep Twitter accounts relevant on a platform that moves very quickly.
Paper.li

This tool provides an area online to automatically curate and organize content based on chosen topics. It is displayed in a visually appealing newspaper format. These newspapers are a great place to gather together content into a readable feed. Feeds can be organized by topic or by type of media. Users can create multiple newspaper feeds at a time and can follow people, lists, and hashtags. It also has the capability to follow Twitter lists without actually following them via your own Twitter account.
These are just some of the tools available to make life and work easier for business owners and marketers. All of these tools offer a paid upgrade option with additional features in case you stumble upon one you just absolutely love and want access to additional benefits. However, each of these tools can be incorporated into your company today at no cost to you. So, give your business the gift of both time and money this holiday season by finding tools that make you more productive.  Use all that extra time you now have to come up with even more ways to #BeAwesome!
~ Social Media is changing the way people do business.  Don’t get left behind ~ 


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Hollie Clere, of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn,FacebookTwitterBlogGoogle+ , YouTube,Pinterest, Instagram  and the tools to manage them. 

Click here for her 
Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars.

The Scoop on Canva

Social Seven – Social Media Podcast
With Erin Cell of Socially Powered and Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor


The Scoop on Canva!

Canva is a social media management tool. It allows you to create images for your website, social media, business cards, presentations and other branding needs. There is a free version and an upgraded version. There is also the option to select from premium images and pay for different templates and designs.
The crisp colors, cool fonts and other options in Canva are very nice. Plus, you can import your own images and edit them within the site. This helps to really brand. It takes it from a corporate brand to something a bit more personal. Social media users should be using a lot of images.
Canva is now coming out with Canva for work, which will allow social media managers to better organize design elements for their clients. That will enable this group to separate logos, images, fonts and colors by clients and keep everything separate but still accessible on the site.
When you play with different photo editing tools there can be a bit of a learning curve. This takes advanced graphic design knowledge out of the equation. No need to learn Photoshop or be a graphic designer to create something in Canva. When you use this tool, you feel like you are paying for top-notch design elements. Even the templates are affordably priced. You could make 100 different designs or images and store them within the tool for future use.
Also, Canva has all the major social media platform dimensions. It’s automatically formatted whether you want to make a Facebook ad or a Twitter cover image. Users can also create images using custom dimensions as well.
Canva at work does have an affiliate program for early access to this site feature.
Canva also provides learning tools including a design school. These will teach you how to use the tool. For those with writer’s block, there is a stream of designs from other users to help inspire you to make something new.
Those of you who haven’t used Canva before, check it out. Play with the templates. Go through some of the tutorials and try some different things. It’s an awesome tool. It will change your branding and put yourself into your brand for a change.
Think Canva has a place in your toolbox to design on the fly and spread your message? Follow us on social media to find out when our Social Seven podcast is streaming live!

Top Tools In Planning and Managing Your Social Media

https://thesocialmediaadvisor.com/Services.html

We talk frequently about content, consistency and planning ahead using editorial calendars.  We have gathered up a handful of content posting tools, management options and response platforms for you to try on for your business and success in online marketing with social media.  


Content Scheduling Tool

From TweetDeck and HootSuite seem to have the most similar options for Content Scheduling, but we prefer and recommend  HootSuite to our clients.  There are not only :”Free” options (for brands with under 3 profiles to manage), but affordable upgraded  options that provide value and (at times) critical options for Team Assignments, App Integration, Custom Reporting and  engagement options right in the platform.  There are over 75 (the list continues to grow and change frequently) application tools  such as RSS feed integration, newsletter integration and a variety of follower tracking options.
If you are looking to optimize budget and scalability, this is a great tool for that. You can register for a trial version of the upgraded option at: http://bit.ly/15gQM7t

Content Idea Tool

All of your content should be rich with ideas, perspectives, tips, testimonials, news and rich with images.  If you haven’t incorporated a Blog yet, definitely consider including one in your marketing strategies as it adds searchable evergreen content to the search engines providing updates to you’re your website, links to your site and a storehouse of content to be used and reused at later times (which helps with visibility and maintaining consistency).

Should you run dry on content ideas, you should consider sharing posts and blogs from influencers in your industry.  This increases your credibility and enhances the expertize in your brand. Sharing (with permission) from influencers is great for industry networking, co-marketing and enhances your viewers relationship with you.

**If you are only sharing your own content, your audience will feel bored and “spammed” with self promotion.

I recommend using “Suggestion” ideas from HootSuite and Buffer: http://www.buffer.com  I find a wider variety of suggested post ideas from my industry influencers, inspiring quotes, etc.  You can customize your options in both tools as well.

Management Tool for Engagement

Managing conversations, replying and pruning followers are key to keep up with fresh visibility and show your presence is active and engaging.  In addition to engagement options in HootSuite and Buffer, I like the functionality of Commun.it  which allows you to clean up your follower list, send auto (customizable) responses to engagement and a variety of scheduling and reporting options.  It really helps you learn more about your audience and how they engage best with you.

To try out Communi.it, click: http://bit.ly/1RKhPv2

BONUS: Tool for Creating Images for your Brand

As an added BONUS, because visual content is key in ALL of your online marketing, I recommend a popular tool called, Canva found at http://www.canva.com

Canva provides you with template and low cost options for creating branded images quickly and easily for your blog, website and social media posts that are already formatted in the dimensions you need for your brand.  It is an easy to use tool that is very cost effective, maintained well and a variety of tutorials are available as well.

Keeping your social media consistent and up to date with the most engagement options possible, I encourage you to try on these tools, build an editorial calendar to maintain visibility and remember, if you aren’t having fun, you are doing it wrong.

To your success!

~ Social Media is changing the way people do business.  Don’t get left behind ~ 



Hollie Clere, of The Social Media Advisor is a “Be Awesome” Developer, Social Media Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+ , YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them. Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars

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