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Esther
Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast, I'm Esther, and I'm Melanie. And together, we're here to help you understand more about marketing, how it works and how you can grow your business. Today, we're talking about tips and tools to use for social media planning and scheduling.
Melanie
Right. We are going to reveal some of our secrets, what we use and what we've been using for a while. We are not going to be mentioning about ones we past used or ones we won't use. It wouldn't be fair, but, we have actually found out when we were doing our lists, we actually do share quite a few things in common, and that's because obviously were in a very similar sector myself, just doing social media training and social media management and Esther who does digital marketing and websites. So let me list for you the ones I use. I use a Agorapulse. HootSuite, Post Plana, Trello, AsthanA, Missing Letter, We Post, Facebook creator and WordPress. And what do you use?
Esther
Yeah, I also use HootSuite, Asthana, Google Drive, Creator Studio, Tweetdeck, Missing Letter and Social Pilot.
Melanie
Cool. So which one would be the one you use the most of?
Esther
We use the most Social Pilot because it's the one that we can schedule all the platforms to so we can schedule Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, obviously some of the other ones are only specifically for individual platforms. For example, creator studio is Facebook and Instagram only, TweetDeck is only for Twitter. So those are good for when you only need to schedule to those platforms. But I find social pilot and being able to schedule to all at the same time is really, really good. What about yourself, Melanie?
Melanie
I suppose what I would use most of the time would be Agorapulse, although it doesn't have every single platform available. I don't have the necessity, currently, to use all of them for myself or for my clients, which is fine. We are different sized businesses. I'm a one person company and you are an agency and you've got staff and more council than myself, which is why I thought this would be a useful exercise for us to do because we're coming from two different angles. And I'm hoping the listeners who are either startup and small all the way up to larger companies will hear an aspect from both of us that might be of value. So Agorapulse would be my to mainly because of the reporting and the fact it gives me inbox zero. And when I need to do outside of that, I use Facebook creator for the same reasons because it's for Instagram and for Facebook itself and Missing Letter, that's a great tool. As a blogger, it's an absolutely fabulous tool. Yeah, I create the content itself, put it up on my website where all content should originate from certainly yours. And then I put it into a missing letter campaign. It then creates a campaign or you can create your own if you'd like to, and then it will schedule content to go out for a whole year. And then you don't have to think about it.
Esther
Yeah, it's griots. And it can also pull across images from your website, quotes from the from the blog that you've written. We love it. We've only started using it recently, but it has been a great asset to our business and to our clients as well, who also have their blogs up on their website. Sometimes blogs can get lost or missed or forgotten about. But if you have a blog that's going out to your audience on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. For a whole year, you can decide whether it's 12 times that you're 20 times in the year, 50 times, it's up to you. You could do it daily if you really wanted or if you have 50 blog posts waiting that haven't been shared out in the last number of months, then definitely look at Missing Letter. It's one that we highly recommend.
Melanie
Definitely. However, I must stipulate that the ones we're talking about now, some of them are free, but most of them would be paid for. Now, when I started out, I started out with Buffa and HootSuite, and It would also schedules itself through Facebook because it was free to schedule free Facebook. And on HootSuite you can schedule up to three platforms for free. So that would mean four platforms were completely scheduled for nothing. It just took me time, that's all.
Esther
Yeah. So when we started again, we used HootSuite as well because it's like set free and when you're starting out it's all you need because you're only going to be sharing out your own stuff. But once you become bigger and you start sharing a client's stuff and having clients through yourself or through the agency, then it's definitely necessary to up your game and be able to provide proper reporting and proper services to your clients, which is why using paid for platforms are essential in our business anyway. But if you're only starting out or if you're a one man band and you're only doing your own marketing, then by all means look for a free platform that will cover your necessities.
Melanie
And how much time do you think you should dedicate to sharing other people's content? Is there a need for it?
Esther
Oh, there's absolutely a need for it, because if you're only sharing out your own stuff, then you appear online to be very selfish, in my opinion, on a lot of people would agree with me. There's definitely a need to share out other people's information and other people's posts because it puts you in front of that other person, too. So say there's an influencer that you want to get noticed by, start reading their information, sharing the information that is suitable for your audience. Not everyone's going to be suitable either. Only share stuff that would be suitable for your audience and it doesn't have to be created by you definitely use other people's information and other people's posts. What about you Melanie?
Melanie
Yeah, I mean, I've changed my methods over the years. When I first started, I was only posting maybe three or four times a week on Facebook, but now I post daily, at least one post today just to serve to have something deliverable to because the algorithms change so much. But I also feel it's important to post up relevantly as well. So if I was at events like a Facebook event or a Google event, I will post at the time that I'm there and it will be relevant to other people that are either in the industry or useful to my audience to know that I'm getting that sort of support and training. So it's it's very much I think it's still the same as it is still 80 percent of the people's content and 20 percent your own. And it's just to keep the people that are on your page interested and engaged, because if you constantly banging on about yourself, it does get rather boring.
Esther
It really does. And like you said when you first started out, you published less or you posted less stuff than you do know. And like you say, the algorithm is changing on every platform. The algorithm keeps changing and you have to change with it to keep on top of what the audience needs and what each platform needs. For example, on Twitter, it's a very fast moving platform, so you need to post more often to be seen, take part in Twitter chats. All these things are great things that we all need to do to be seen and to share our knowledge, which at the end of the day is what we're here to do and to show people that we are the experts or you're the experts in your field so that they know who to go to when they need your services and products.
Melanie
And, you know, because social media planning itself is still an essential tool we use, well we both we both use Asana and I use Trello, furthermore, run of the mill stuff. But when I collaborate with people like yourself, I use Asana is better for teams. It's well, in our experience. I mean, there are others, there are plenty of others. But we and I'm sure we haven't tried all of them. We've tried to get a good few between us. Yeah, it's down to personal choice. And do you shop around and do you look out for offers. They'll be coupon codes. They'll be special offers. You were telling me about one earlier on.
Esther
Yes, it was we use UpSumo, which is great for small businesses, it gives you lifetime deals on lots of different platforms, some that we've never heard of before, some that have been around for years and just bring you updates that want more people to to get to know. So definitely look for UpSumo and see that what it is that they have that you can use. There are free versions of lots of stuff as well. Asana is another one that's free. Trello can be free if you're not in the team. Take a look around, shop around, try them out. And lots of others have free 30 day or 15 day trials. Try them. What works for us might not work for you and vice versa.
Melanie
But definitely have a look around. I mean, influences are great for promoting stuff and that good a good dose of them will also have discount offers as well. But the important thing we hope you will take away from today's podcast is that there are platforms and apps that you can have on your phone, you can have on your tablets or on your laptop that can help you schedule and help you plan for your marketing, which is what this podcast is all about.
Esther
Absolutely. And I also have to say we are not paid by any of the platforms that we have mentioned, completely unbiased. We use we like them. We recommend them that we're here to do today.
Melanie
Yeah. So your homework for this week is to do some proper research. And you may have been using an app for a very long time and you might be unaware that it's actually been updated or there may even be discount codes on the one you're currently using. We had quite a bit of a shock earlier on this year and got the cut, the new prices something. So have a look around. I'm sure we can get complacent. We can forget that there are other app set that can improve on our time and cost us a lot less money. So shop around.
Esther
Absolutely. Thank you very much for joining us today. We'll be back next week for more good bye.
Melanie
Bye.