Welcome to my completely biased guide to my favourite (mostly free!) social media tools. I’m here to share the basics on the social tools I use daily and how I use them.
Here’s my take on the top 7 free tools that social media managers should be using in 2023.
1. Canva
Canva is regularly cited in many guides as a core social media tool—with good reason. The free version can help even the most design-averse social manager produce great visuals with ample access to various templates, fonts, and stock images. This one is a no-brainer.
2. Spreadsheets
Whether you use Google sheets or Microsoft excel, there’s one thing that’s for sure—spreadsheets can be a very useful weapon for social media managers. While getting acquainted with formatting and formulas may seem intimidating, the efficiencies that leveraging spreadsheets can create in the long run make it well worth the learning curve. One way to save time using spreadsheets is programming formulas to calculate manual reporting data each month—which can save social managers loads of time (and headaches 😅). Spreadsheets are also clutch for documenting both data and content. I use spreadsheets regularly to develop monthly social calendars, outline design plans, record data, and more.
3. Daily newsletters
Daily email newsletters are a low effort way to deliver curated, relevant information to your email inbox each day. Social media evolves quickly, and this is an easy strategy to ensure you’re staying on top of the latest industry and platform updates. I usually subscribe to 2 or 3 daily newsletters so I have fresh social media news, trends and insights in my inbox every morning ready for me to skim before I start my workday.
Some free email newsletters I’m currently enjoying are Social media today and Social media examiner.
4. Power thesaurus
Copywriting is a huge part of social media management. Whether it’s finding the right word for a caption, cutting down text to fit a 280 character tweet, or searching for alternatives to “excited” and “thrilled”, Power thesaurus always has our backs with an extensive selection of synonyms.
5. Google jamboard
Part of Google Workspace, Google Jamboard is a free virtual interactive whiteboard which can serve as a digital canvas for multiple users at once. This software is a game changer for brainstorming solo or in a group, especially if you’re working remotely as part of a team. It can also be handy for keeping track of ideas. I recommend trying out a strategy of giving yourself (and/or your team) 5 minutes of silence to produce as many ideas as they can, adding each one to a sticky note on your Jamboard. Reconvene after the time is up and discuss the brain dump of ideas in front of you—it might just surprise you what happens!
6. Research accounts
Get yourself a finsta! One of my favourite strategies for staying up to date with competitor accounts and scrolling for inspiration is maintaining unique Instagram and Twitter accounts solely for research—separate from your personal channels. I wouldn’t recommend trying this on Facebook or LinkedIn as duplicate accounts are against their policies (and often blocked), however there are no rules against maintaining multiple accounts on Twitter and Instagram (and it’s worth nothing that it’s actually a fairly easy user experience to manage and toggle between different accounts on Twitter and Instagram on your phone or desktop). My approach is simple: I follow accounts that I find inspiring, including brands, artists, and influencers, and it curates a personalized feed just for when I need to focus on social media research. It helps to cut out the noise and distraction of the other accounts I follow on my personal channels.
7. Notes app
Yes, this is super simple, but if you’re not already using a notes app to jot down your ideas, what are you even doing?! The Notes app on my iPhone and Macbook are the catchalls for my fleeting thoughts and spontaneous ideas. Some of my best concepts have been generated while I was in a meeting, working on something else or, well, not working—I quickly record the idea in my Notes app on my phone or laptop and it’s there to revisit later when I have time for brainstorming. Bonus points if your Notes app is synced with iCloud as any Notes you record on your phone will appear on your desktop Notes app for later revision.
Hope you found my detailed, opinionated list helpful. Happy socializing!
Signal Harbour 
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