You probably didn’t know that there are well over 1,000 social media software tools to help manage your presence on the social media scene. Or did you? A few years ago, Lacey Ann-Bartley of Bartley’s All In Wood introduced me to the social media management tool, HootSuite and it has become my personal favourite.

Related Post: There’s An App fo That!

My Take:
I am a Podcaster, Entrepreneur, CEO of Patwa Apparel, Speaker, and Author. I need tools that will help me stay productive every minute of the day. The free HootSuite account, which is what I use, allows me to schedule posts to up to three different social media accounts. I use it often to schedule daily quotes to my Twitter account as well as daily general posts to my LinkedIn and Facebook pages.

In this post, I asked nine other experts from varying countries and industries to tell me their favorite tool and how it has helped them increase engagement on social media.

2. Chris Ducker of YouPreneur choose MeetEdgar as his favourite: Chris Ducker choose MeetEdgar as his favourite social media tool Click To Tweet

What Chris says:
The only tool I use is MeetEdgar. It’s all run by my team, I’m totally hands-off. It gets programmed, activated and does its job perfectly. What more could you ask for?!

3. Nerissa Golden of Discover Monsterrat named Canva as her favourite:

What Nerissa says:
Canva is my go to social media tool. Whether on the PC or the mobile app version it offers layouts for a variety of posts, presentations, web images, etc. I love that I can replace their templates with a photo of my own. I can add filters and make them ready for Instagram or whichever platform I created them for.
While I think, it is a great tool, what increases engagement is frequency and relevance of posts to your audience. The more consistent you are with posting and sharing content they connect with, the more engaged your fans will be.

4. Dayna Wallace of Dayna Wallace International named Link Tree in tandem with Link In Profile as her favourite(s):

What Dayna says:
When we use Instagram for our business, one of the challenges we face is the issue of not being able to put clickable links in the description of our photos. What we all do is end up directing our community to use the “link in bio” since our profile bio is the only place we can put a clickable link.
The result? Scrolling through your news feed, finding an interesting photo that leads to a link I really want to access…but it’s too late. That has long been replaced with a new link to something that really didn’t interest me at all. Possible lost sale, new lead or new follower. My favourite tool, well tools really, are two that solve this one problem in two different ways.

For the business that is product based:

where your images typically feature specific products and the image itself is the best reference for your audience, I recommend Link in Profile. Link in profile will lead them to a custom web page which keeps a track of all photos with each photo paired with the specific clickable link you referenced in the photo description in your Instagram feed.

For my clients offering services, they typically are linking to the same 5 or 6 things so for them my recommended tool is Link Tree which presents a simple and easy to reference list view of the links you want to audience to be able to access.

5. Stephen Hart of TrailBlazers.FM Podcast named eClincher as his favourite:

What Stephen says:
My number one social media software, without question has got to be eClincher.  It’s a platform that allows me the ability to create evergreen content around my brand(s), categorize them and schedule/deliver them across all my social channels, even while I’m sleeping or working or spending time with my family. As a podcaster, I’m able to add 3-5 new items for a new episode each week, and that might be added to a category for podcast guests, that has 200 total posts stored for all past guests.

If, for example, I have scheduled 50 guest posts to go out on twitter each week, those 200+ total posts will then cycle through over the course of a month before repeating, but by time they come back around, a tweet that posted last on a Tuesday at 8am, may now cycle on a Friday at 4pm.

The benefit of using this type of software over is that my posts are seen by more people and generate more awareness and engagement for my brand. Today, I average over 200,000 impressions monthly on Twitter alone.  My brand is being seen, shared and engaged with, even while I’m elsewhere.
It’s the best $40/month I spend on my podcast and with helping me to grow and expand the awareness of my platform, using social media.

6. Theo Smith of Great House Caterers choose Canva as his favourite:

What Theo says:
I use Canva.com, a graphic design tool. It has definitely helped me in creating quite a few artworks for our social media pages and other marketing collaterals. For us at Great House Caterers, it’s not to replace our graphic artist. However, it has given us the ability to quickly create visually appealing content without having to reach out to our graphic artist whether it’s an icon on our website that we are creating, or an artwork to be used to improve our menus or any other document we may have.

7. Yanique Grant of Professional Training & Occupational Services choose HootSuite as her favourite:

What Yanique says:
As a Customer Experience Strategist, Entrepreneur, Podcaster and Single Mom – having tools in the world of Social Media that can simplify my life is a must. For the platforms that we engage with most – Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter – we have found that Hootsuite is magical. It allows us to easily schedule posts making it more manageable.

The reports provided are also quite informative as they advise us of the reach and also if the post had any great impacts with our followers. With the reports, we are better able to track and trend what our followers want to know more of so we can give them more of that. We have invested in the paid plan for Hootsuite because of the full suite of actions and reports it allows us to complete, all in one platform without having to log in and out of other platforms. The time that it has saved us is tremendous and our engagement and following has grown 40% organically based on the data collected from the reports.

I would recommend that if Social Media is one of the media you use to engage with your customers – invest in a Social Media tool like Hootsuite. It allows us to view all our social media sites on a dashboard.

8. Xavier Murphy of Jamaicans.com choose HooteSuite as his favourite:

What Xavier says:
Hootsuite is one of my favorite social media tools. It allows me to view streams from multiple social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr and Instagram.

I can post updates and/or respond directly to these multiple social media networks from one screen. I also love the team collaboration functions included in Hootsuite. We have global team and trying to coordinate the management of our social media networks used to be a challenge.

The tool includes functions for team task assignments and messaging, which helped to solve our coordination issues.

Posting and keeping your social media networks active is good but you are wasting time if you are not analyzing that data. The ability to monitor our progress with the Hootsuite analytics tool is invaluable.
It provides me and my team the analytic data we need to adjust the type of content we are posting, track the frequency at which we posting content and monitor our social media network growth.

9. Alicia Lyttle of Pow Social choose Canva as her favourite:

What Alicia Says:
I use so many tools for Social Media every single day and running a Social Media agency with a team of 30 involves many tools to stay on top of trends, to schedule posts, and to be as efficient and effective as possible.    But, if I had to pick one tool that I use every single day and that I could not live without, it would be www.canva.com!  Canva is a free tool that allows me to create amazing graphics for my social media posts.  

I use this tool to create all my cover photos for each platform, to create images for ads, basically for every image I need for Social Media. Some of the layouts say FREE while others indicate you would have to pay to use them.  The cost isn’t actually for the layout, it’s for the image.  So, you can pick the layout you like, click on the image on that layout and delete it.  You would then find a relevant image on a royalty free photo site.

The cost isn’t actually for the layout, it’s for the image.  So, you can pick the layout you like, click on the image on that layout and delete it.  You would then find a relevant image on a royalty free photo site such as www.pixabay.com or www.unsplash.com, upload it to your layout and then that layout becomes free to use! To get started with Canva, follow these steps:

1. Create a free account at canva.com
2. Choose the type of design you want to create.  For example a Twitter post, A Facebook ad or an Instagram post.
3. Choose the layout that you love.
4. Start designing!

10. Dr. Vernet A. Joseph of Live to Produce choose HooteSuite as his favourite:

What Dr. Vernet says:
There are several tools on social media that you I use to stay engaged in my communities. I personally like utilizing Hootsuite the social media management system that allows me to schedule my posts for an extended amount of time. This app was created in 2008 by a young man named Ryan Holmes. In the first 8 years, there were more than 15 million users maximizing the app’s robust social network integrations.
Hootsuite allows me to engage multiple social media platforms at one time from the dashboard. Hootsuite has enabled me to manage my social media postings and keep them on a consistent rotation. There are multiple levels of engagement from the free, professional, team, business and ultimately the enterprise version.

The app provides tiered level support and a plethora of additional features to be more productive. As a productivity strategist, this tool allows me to maximize my time and efforts. I teach my clients how to own their time so this app truly is the epitome of being productive.
Final Comments We are living in an extremely exciting time – the time in which we have access to some super-amazing tools to communicate our message to the world. In this post, we have looked heard from ten experts about their favourite software tool.

Now, we’d like to hear from you, what your favourite tool is. We’d be happy to get your feedback.

[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]http://henekawatkisporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/heneka.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Heneka Watkis-Porter is a serial-entrepreneur, IBI Ambassador, cultural ambassador, sociologist, author, speaker, fashion designer and podcaster. She wakes up every day with a grateful heart as she lives her purpose of “life transformation through inspiration”. She is the leading lady behind Patwa Culcha International, the company that owns the authentic Jamaica clothing brand, Patwa Apparel. Email: henekawatkisporter@gmail.com Twitter: @TheEntrepYou Website: henekawatkisporter.com[/author_info] [/author]