Time Saving Solutions for your Small Business

Are you always in search of time saving solutions for your small business? I know I am! Yet when it comes to social media management, I’m demanding: time savings, alone, isn’t enough! So in this post I’ll share the most valuable tools I’ve found to date—the ones I think are worth your time to explore.

To make it onto my shortlist, each solution had to allow you to schedule posts in advance, as well as help you organize your strategy and your content. Bonus points for being able to help you optimize results overall—that’s a truly cost-effective solution!

There are dozens and dozens (and maybe dozens more) tools and apps that claim to assist with social media. Some are hyper-focused on one type of valuable task, others roll up just about every task you’d ever want, on just about any social media platform where you could wish to maintain a presence (for a fee!).

Time-saving scheduling… and a whole lot more

SOCIAL PILOT

I have often said that while posting natively gives you a better and/or stronger reach, if using a posting service saves you time, then that can be just as valuable. I use Social Pilot to share weekly graphics that I also use as talking points for my live videos in social soundbites with Michelle on Wednesdays at 12:30 in my Facebook group.

Two of the top reasons Social Pilot is so useful is that it’s both user-friendly AND connects with so many platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram (Direct Publishing), Google My Business, Pinterest, TikTok, and more.

Individual business users can share 200 posts/day (and queue up to 2500), for about $25-30/month. Plus, you can review and analyze results all in one place. And if you sometimes struggle with ideas of what to post, you’ll appreciate the new content suggestions available from their Content Curation feature.

BUFFER

Buffer is another excellent choice for small businesses if they’re involved in social media on a smaller scale. The $12-15/mo plan gives you 8 social platforms (a.k.a. channels), and you can schedule up to 100 posts—but even their free plan gives you 3 platforms and up to 10 scheduled posts, so you can try it out with little risk. (Buffer doesn’t give you any content suggestions—and there are no analytics available unless you pay extra.)

Do you produce a lot of content? Here’s a unique

time-saving solution for YOUR Small Business

MEETEDGAR

If you produce a lot of content for your website—blogs or pages—MeetEdgar may be a good solution for you. Unlike other social media tools, this one helps create suggested posts from web pages that you share with it. You can also pull from other people’s pages (carefully!)

You enter the content page links, specify the type of content it is (for example, you might have posts categorized as “inspiration,” “education,” or “promotion”), then set the days and times you want these posts to appear in your various platform.

MeetEdgar will not only suggest timing for re-using posts, but suggest multiple re-wordings, so you always have fresh content. The four major platforms are covered: FB, Insta, LI and Twitter. (You’ll just need a fairly high volume of content in order to keep your recycled posts fresh.) $49/mo

Are your go-to platforms Instagram and/or Pinterest?

TAILWIND

If Instagram and Pinterest are where you most like to be active, you may find Tailwindapp.com a magical solution. This tool speeds up creation, scheduling, posting and optimization in both platforms—including hashtag solutions with just 1 click.

Visually plan your feed, create a customized strategy for your content plan, build your posts with the help of caption templates, find optimal posting times, even video scheduling.

And for Pinterest you get similar benefits as well as the ability to grow your reach through their 4000+ communities. According to their stats, Instagrammers using Tailwind get nearly twice as many likes as non-users (and nearly 7x as many repins on Pinterest as non-users!).

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