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Social media marketing is a common function delegated to virtual assistants offering marketing services. It’s important to recognize that there are a lot of different options when it comes to tools you can use to deliver quality service to your clients as a virtual assistant. From experience and research, here’s what we know to be highly valuable tools for efficient virtual assistants in social media marketing.
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a content research tool that equips you with knowledge about trending topics for any market. With a quick search, you can find out relevant buzzwords or keywords to create content about. Its main value is providing content creators with an overview of current trending topics based on what their target audience and competitors are talking about. From there, you can infer which topics your client’s brand can get on, what unique valuable information you should share, and which kinds of content end up causing customers to defer.
With a quick keyword search, Buzzsumo can show you the top trending content and topics, where they gain the most traction, and what kind of engagement it generates. As a content creator, you can use this to position and strategize your next publication, be it a blog post, a Tweet, a graphic, or any digital marketing output.
Feedly
Feedly is a great alternative or companion to Buzzsumo. This tool allows you to curate a feed that shows the latest updates and trending topics on a field of interest. You can use this tool to find inspiration and learn more about what your readers find valuable on the internet. Use it to gather information from various reliable sources on specific topics. Feedly comes with an AI research assistant that over time makes your feed more intuitive, speeding up your research process, without missing out on any valuable information.
When you set up your dashboard on Feedly, you pick a few topics to start following. As soon as you’re on the platform, you can narrow down your selection of resources to what’s most helpful to your brand’s research. Feedly can help you find your niche as a content creator overall, or for your client’s specific brand.
Later
Later is a popular scheduling tool that started out as an Instagram planning tool. Over the past few years, they’ve also added scheduling functionality to other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tiktok, and LinkedIn. If your client is on one or more of these sites, Later can help you automate your social media updates so you don’t have to make them as you post when you need to post them.
On the paid plan, Later also provides advanced functionality of collating analytics from your social media activity. This saves you time by preparing analytics reports on one platform, instead of gathering reports one by one from each site’s native analytics tool.
Planoly
Planoly is a visual social media planner initially developed for Instagram. Today their service extends to other platforms such as Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook. With this tool, you can schedule your upcoming posts, including the captions, and see what it’s going to look like as you build a visual portfolio for your brand. The platform also includes analytics tracking for your social activity so you can observe how to grow your profile best.
The advanced plans also include a comments inbox, post timing suggestions, and other functionality that can make your social marketing experience more intuitive. You may also integrate your eCommerce with their Sellit integration, to turn your Instagram profile into a digital storefront. This tool can make your brand more visually appealing, and your products more accessible to your customers.
ClickUp
ClickUp is a powerful task management tool that you can use to track social media marketing projects. With its multiple functionalities accessible for free, you can even build a customized CRM for your client. ClickUp lets you store files, track tasks, and communicate with teammates so you can collaborate and never miss a beat with your scheduled posts. It also has multiple views available including a very helpful and easy to navigate calendar view for your social media schedule.
The best thing about this tool is that it isn’t just for planning and executing your social marketing strategy. You can also work with other departments in the company, making it easier to collaborate on interdependent tasks. ClickUp also allows integration with a huge selection of apps that your other colleagues may be using for their tasks. Use ClickUp as a personal planner or as a collaborative project management tool with other teams in your organization.
Canva
Canva is an online creative studio that lets you create almost all kinds of content for your social profiles. Make engaging graphics and stunning videos with a huge library of free graphic elements, stock photos, audio, and video on a free plan. If you’re tasked with producing content for your client, you can use this tool to do almost anything. The templates are also very helpful when it comes to optimizing your designs per platform.
The paid plan called Canva Pro is very helpful for companies who recognize the importance of consistency in branding. Build your own brand kit so your designs stay consistent and recognizable to your target audience. Speed up your work without sacrificing design with Canva’s very user-friendly interface. Even if you’re new to creating promotional content, Canva can be a very helpful tool for you.
Buffer
Buffer is a management platform that recognizes the multiple roles a social media manager takes on. In one platform, you can schedule and publish your posts, engage with your audience, and analyze your productivity. This platform simplifies the robust process of running multiple social media profiles for a brand. In one dashboard and a few tabs, you get to easily publish and engage on multiple profiles, and get reports for your analytics reports.
Buffer lets you have a control station for the social media profiles you need to manage. As a virtual assistant, this makes your job easier for you by eliminating the need to switch between multiple social media sites. Popular alternatives for Buffer you can try are Sprout Social and TweetDeck.
Crowdfire
Crowdfire is one of today’s best social media management tools. Like the basic functions of a social marketing tool, Crowdfire lets you schedule your updates on different social channels at once. What’s unique about it is its ability to suggest content from your website or blog. It also has the feature of automatically strategizing and tailoring your updates per social media channel.
Crowdfire is a smart tool that works while you do. It even helps with content research by suggesting articles and hashtags for your future updates. The paid version unlocks access to more helpful tools, but even the free plan can get you far as a social media virtual assistant.
8 Tools to Use for Social Media Marketing
Virtual assistants in the social media marketing practice are expected to understand how these tools work. What you need to watch out for are the updates on each tool that constantly try to place them ahead of their competition. This way, you’ll also always be able to stay ahead in your field, providing your clients with the best service they can get.
If you are interested in becoming an excellent virtual assistant, submit your resume and fill out this form. We offer paid training and operational support to our pool of virtual assistants. You’ll also get access to our client profile instead of looking everywhere for the right client whose needs match your services.
We are previously hiring for the Executive Virtual Assistant (EVA) and Inside Sales Associate (ISA) role. Previous virtual assistant experience is not required, but at least six months of call centre experience is required.
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