Top tools that make my life as a SMM stress-free (2021)
When I started out as a Social Media Manager (SMM), I would always search for new tools that would make my life and job easier. I want to save you the work & present to you the 4 tools I use every single day as a social media professional. Whether you are a SMM yourself or any other person who manages a social media page for a business, I'm sure you'll find this blog post helpful! (2021 version)
(All links marked with a * are affiliate links. This means I earn a small commission if you sign up for this tool at no extra cost to you. I only become an affiliate for tools I genuinely use & love.)
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1) AirTable:*
AirTable is a project-management tool paired with a cloud system. Its biggest competitors are Asana, Notion, and Monday.com.
In my words: an Excel sheet on steroids!
I use this tool for many different purposes:
Planning my content in list form but also in calendar view (see right)
To keep track of all my clients' details (no need for a fancy CRM tool!)
Forms to onboard my new clients
Storing my captions & some hashtag sets
Planning my podcast in advance
Tracking leads for following up
Planning content for all of my clients (they get access to the file & approve content directly in there)
Cost:
I use the free version but miss out on some premium features. So far, I have not felt the need to upgrade but if you want access to some extra features, the cheapest plan starts from $10/month/member.
A great alternative I have started using is Notion.
2) Flick:
Flick is a hashtag tool that allows you to research, store & analyse Instagram hashtags.
I use it to make collections with hashtags for myself and some clients so I can save time when I need to use hashtags. I also use it analyse my hashtag performance and to decide which hashtags I should or should not use anymore in the future. It even provides you with reports on your social media performance in general (limited to Instagram).
Some other features I like:
Flick recommends related hashtags to the ones you have saved in collections
Flick shows you the DAPC (= Daily Average Post Count), the average likes/comments as well as a competition score and the potential reach of each hashtag.
Flick flags any banned hashtags in your collections
Flick lets you select 30 (or 10) random hashtags from a collection to rotate your hashtags
Flick sends you notifications if your post has ranked for a specific hashtag
Cost:
£10/per month (about $19 NZD). For me, absolutely worth it as I have to research hashtags frequently and would otherwise postpone this task forever.
I have tried multiple other scheduling tools but I have always had issues with them starting from them not posting the posts at the right time or not posting them at all. Facebook Creator Studio is Facebook's native tool and allows you to schedule posts for Facebook as well as Instagram in advance - game changer!
Cost:
Free!
A website that lets you analyse an Instagram account so you can see its engagement rate, follower & follower growth, number of posts likes and much more! It's also a great tool to check out your competitors to see if they are using any shady strategies like buying followers 😌.
Cost:
I use the free version but there is also a premium version that provides you with a more detailed analysis.
Conclusion:
That all being said: those are the tools that work well for me personally but there's no point in using a tool just because someone on the Internet recommended it! If it doesn't work for you, don't use it. I just wanted to give you an idea of the tools that I use & why I find them useful.
If you have any questions about the tools or if you want me to guide you through them, I would love to do that!
Talk soon,
Hanna