Only 14 percent of small businesses outsource their marketing, PR and advertising, according to WASP Barcode Technologies’ State of Small Business Report from 2017. Chances are that you work at one of the 86 percent of small businesses that handle their own marketing, which means you’re tackling all of your social media efforts on top of everything else that you do to keep your business afloat every day. If you want to take your social media marketing to the next level and make your life a bit easier in the process, here are five apps to try out.
1. Grammarly
If you’re running your own social media, you likely don’t have the time or resources to get a second pair of eyes on your Facebook posts or tweets before you send them. But few things are more annoying than catching a typo once it’s too late. Grammarly prevents these mistakes by scanning your text as you type on Gmail, Twitter, Facebook or really anywhere you type on the web for spelling and grammar errors. Think of it as that second pair of eyes.
2. CutStory
Have you ever tried to post a video to your Instagram story from your camera roll, but the video is too long and gets cut off at just the wrong point? With CutStory for Instagram, you can cut longer videos from your camera roll into 15-second long snippets — the perfect length for your Instagram story. Simply import your video into the app and it’ll export your clips to your camera roll in chronological order so you know what order to post them in.
3. Captiona
So you’ve taken the perfect photo, you have a general idea of what you want to say about it, but when it comes time to write the caption, you draw a blank. We’ve all been there. Captiona can help get your creative juices flowing and save you some painful minutes trying to come up with the right wording. You can type in keywords that relate to your image and the app will generate caption ideas for you to copy and paste or work off of.
4. Stencil
Stencil is a great tool to use when you need to create a quick image with text over it for your social media or email. You don’t need graphic design experience to use it — simply choose your image from Stencil’s library of 1,800,000 stock photos and choose the right template and text for your graphic. This is the perfect tool for creating those “happy holidays” graphics for your Facebook or quick promotional images announcing a sale.
5. Adobe Premiere Clip
If you want to try your hand at incorporating more video into your social media presence, Adobe Premiere Clip is a free, easy-to-use app to create high-quality video. You can edit together videos from clips in your camera roll right on your phone. You can drag and drop your clips, add music and add effects and titles if you want to get more advanced.
What tools do you rely on to manage your social media efforts and keep your posts engaging? Let us know in the comments!
Photo: Unsplash user Saulo Mohana
