Every savvy social media managers would want to use these digital tools in 2020

A few years back, social media tools were mostly free and if not, weren’t as expensive as it is today. But things have to improve so as the management tools we use for work. And if you plan to become a social media rockstar, you know that investing on reliable digital tools is the right way to go.

Lucky for you, there are still decent applications that cost 0 to a minimum to access the essential features.

Here is my list of the applications that you may want to try:

Keep your content on schedule

Being a social media manager entails a long list of job responsibilities. The last thing you want is to chase your posting schedule to the brim. What’s great is that there are reliable scheduling applications to use for free or on a free trial period. Schedule your content during the trial period and then upgrade for a paid plan once you are prepared to commit.

Hootsuite is a social media managing platform fit for large agencies and corporations who handles multiple social accounts. 

Plan available: $19, $99 or $599 per month

Planoly is the go-to app for managing your insta-worthy post on Instagram. It’s excellent for wannabe influencers. But if you are a business, you can avail their paid plans for extra and unlimited features.

Plan available: $7, $15, $79 or $159 per month

Enjoy the free space and productivity tools

Do you remember the era of the offline version of the Microsoft Office? Today, you have the same productivity applications on top of a few storage spaces to store your files on the go. Google Drive has been providing the limited free space bundled with the productivity tools you need to create the presentations, spreadsheets and documents for your social media planning.

Google Drive is my No. 1 storage, file editing application with task management software. It makes saving and managing files easy after I got them from my email.

Plan available: Free

Take note of everything

When I didn’t have my website and parenting blog yet, I used to maximise the features of Evernote or Notes. I write my journey as a new parent and record learnings as a work-from-home mom. These note-taking applications are free to use, but you have the option to get the paid version for large file uploading feature.

Evernote recently had a new design. I’m currently trying the Beta version of it, and so far it’s looking better.

Plan available: Free, P 140, or $14.99 per month

Let your images speak for itself

Are you looking for a better way to communicate your message on your blog? How about adding visually appealing photos that will best represent the idea that you want to share? There are many free stock images at your disposal from Pexel, Pixabay to free vector resources that your social media accounts need. Remember to thank the owner of the content and apply the attributes when using others content.

Plan available: Free

Built-in analytics

Justify how hardworking you are as a social media manager with data from the very social media platform that you’re using. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn have the data you need to back up your work. Combine this data from Google Analytics to get what you need to support your monthly reports.

Plan available: Free

Create with the smartest tools

If there’s a set of tools that I’d recommend you to master that would be a good set of a creative suite. It will build up your skills in creating and designing content for social media and website. I know for a fact because that’s what I have been doing for the last few years with Adobe Creative Suite.

I use Photoshop, Premiere Pro, InDesign, Lightroom and Rush to create and edit my content for my website and social media.

Plan available: Plans starts at $9.99 per month. Check out the price here.

Canva is the latest graphic-design online tool that I use for design tasks. I’ve created a simple branding project for my four-year-old’s entrepreneur week, where we sold pretzels for a day. It’s also the same web app that helped me come up with a superhero-themed birthday invite within minutes. Not only that, the app works so well with its easy-to-use templated social media posts. So, producing content is almost instant.

Plan available: $0, $12.95, or $30 per month

Plan with a keyword planner

When planning content, you need a guide on what to produce and the right keywords to use to ensure your content ends up to the right audience. With Google’s Keyword Planner, you’ll have an idea on how your keywords stand and get ideas on what you could even use.