Our Favorite Social Media Management Tools

At Segal Communications, we pride ourselves on being extremely transparent with our clients. We give them access to all our work and even hand off valuable assets if our relationship pauses or ends. In the spirit of transparency and not gatekeeping, here are our favorite social media management tools to maintain active social accounts for your brand. 

Scheduling and Analytics 

Hands down, our favorite social media scheduling tool is Sprout Social. Sprout’s interface for scheduling content is highly intuitive and provides us with a wide array of tools in one. As an agency, we have a customized plan that suits our workload and provides resources that keep our services top of the line. 

Sprout compiles all the data we need in customizable, comprehensive reports. With the platform’s reporting tools, we can send our clients easily digestible reports that provide them with key insights into the performance of their social accounts in minutes. The detailed analytics Sprout provides are also valuable for informing each social media strategy we devise for our clients. 

While Sprout Social is our top recommendation for a scheduling and analytics solution, there are a number of cost-free alternatives that can be viable options depending on your company’s needs. Later, Buffer, and Meta’s Creator Studio are all worth looking into if you don’t have a substantial social media budget yet. 

Content Creation 

When it comes to content creation, there are tons of tools available that can help you produce engaging content. Here are some of our favorites, along with what we like to use each of them for:

  • Canva – an easy-to-use platform to create graphics, videos, or edit photos
  • Photoshop – used for more advanced photo editing, clean background removal, simple graphics, etc.
  • Premiere pro – video editing software for creating Instagram Reels, TikToks, ad content, etc. 
  • Lightroom – used for bulk photo editing
  • Veed – used to add subtitles to videos

When looking for stock photos or videos, we recommend these free sites: Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash

For royalty-free music to add to your videos, we recommend Artlist.io or Pixabay Music as a free option. 

Client Approvals and Team Workflows 

Our entire team at SC operates within Google Workspace, and we love it; most of our clients use it amongst their internal teams too, so our workflows operate seamlessly. 

When it comes to approval workflows, each client is different in what they prefer. We typically gather preferences during the onboarding period using an onboarding checklist. We let clients choose one of two options to interface with us for content approvals: our customized content calendar templates in a Google doc or our task management software, Monday.com

Our Google doc content calendar provides a month’s worth of content in one document. The client can review the copy of each post and the media accompanying it. Next to each post, we include a dropdown menu that indicates the status of the post: draft, waiting for review, approved, scheduled, or published. On Monday.com, the content calendar is separated into “groups” based on month. We add a link to preview the content, a status section for the client to let us know if the post needs revisions or is approved, and a comment section for the client to provide feedback and edits. Both options are similar in the interactions they allow, with the decision between the two often coming down to which interface a client finds more user-friendly.

Recap: Our Favorite Social Media Management Tools 

Scheduling and Analytics

Content Creation

Free Stock Photo and Video

Royalty-Free Music and Audio

Client Approvals and Team Workflows


Need help managing your social media accounts? When we work together, your brand does more than show up. It shows up with a story, a purpose, a unique reason for being – and it makes an impact. At Segal Communications, we become an extension of your team – we work fast to become brand experts and make sure we’re keeping your company relevant on social media. 

Connect with us at [email protected]

How to Increase Your Reach on Instagram

Instagram Collab posts have become increasingly popular since their unveiling back in 2021, and they’re probably one of the simplest ways to increase your reach on Instagram. Collab posts give users the opportunity to multiply their reach and engagement by adding a co-author to the post. If you’re not incorporating this trending feature into your current social media strategy, you’re missing out on potential customers. 

How do Instagram Collabs benefit your brand?

While originally intended to be a way for creators to maximize branded content, Collabs have proven to double as a sure fire way for brands to increase their reach and appear in the feeds of potential customers too. Collabs have also become a great way to beat the ever changing Instagram algorithm by showing up in two different feeds – your own and the feed of the account you’re collabing with. Brands now have the opportunity to insert themselves directly into the feeds of their target audience – be it through influencers, partnerships, or other relevant accounts. 

Additionally, Collabs have the ability to increase Instagram engagement. When utitlizing the feature, the post will not only appear in the brand’s feed but also the feed of the account they are collabing with. Likely, the collab account will have a different variety of followers, giving brands the opportunity to further build their communities.   

How to use Instagram Collabs 

Creating an Instagram Collab post is incredibly simple to do, however, it can be hard to find the feature if you’ve never used it before. Here’s a step-by-step process on how to invite a collaborator to your post. 

  1. Begin by starting a new post. You’ll need to do this directly within the Instagram app, rather than on a third party scheduling platform. 
  2. Once you’ve added your media, caption, and hashtags, click on ‘Tag people’ beneath the post. 
  3. Click on ‘Invite collaborator’ and begin typing in the handle of the account you would like to invite as a collaborator. 
  4. Publish your post.
  5. The collaborator will then receive a notification to accept your invitation to the collab post. 
  6. Once the collaborator has accepted, their handle will appear on the post within your feed and show in their feed as well. 
A graphic showing how to increase your reach on Instagram by using the Instagram Collab feature.

Use all platform features to your advantage  

While the Instagram collabs feature is a surefire way to increase your reach on Instagram, it’s essential to make sure you’re utilizing all of Instagram’s features in order to round out your efforts. Are you using Reels and Stories? Do you create polls and use the Question Box within your Stories? Are you incorporating Carousel posts into your content plan? Using all of Instagram’s features will not only maximize your chances of getting in front of potential customers but also increase your engagement as a whole. In today’s digital media landscape, you can no longer get away with posting a single image on social media


Need help maximizing your Instagram strategy? When we work together, your brand does more than show up. It shows up with a story, a purpose, a unique reason for being – and it makes an impact. At Segal Communications, we become an extension of your team – we work fast to become brand experts and make sure we’re keeping your company relevant on social media. 
Connect with us – [email protected]

How to Determine Which Social Media Platform Is Best For Your Business

An active social media presence is essential for businesses in the modern age. As a consumer of social media, likely your first instinct when hearing about a new company is to look them up on social media. Social media is also valuable for telling your story and connecting with your customers. Customers who feel seen and heard are more likely to become brand loyalists. With so many social media platforms at your disposal, how do you know which ones to prioritize and which may not benefit your business? Here are the fundamental points to consider when determining which social media platform is best for your business. 

What industry does your business fall under?

Understanding where each industry is most active on social media is the first step in determining the ideal platform on which to focus the majority of your time. Are you selling a product or service? Are you selling to other businesses? 

If you’re a direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand, you’ll want to focus on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Especially if you are selling a product- these three platforms offer a shopping feature, making it seamless for your customers to purchase directly from your posts. On the other hand, a business-to-business (B2B) company should focus its social media efforts on LinkedIn and Twitter. LinkedIn allows your brand to get directly in front of company decision-makers, and you can analyze your audience demographics based on job title and function. Twitter is a great place to send real-time updates about your company and seek out conversations your customers may be having about pain points your company could resolve. It’s also an excellent opportunity to speak directly with potential customers by inserting yourself into the conversation.

Who is your target audience?

Knowing your audience’s complete demographics is essential to understanding where they likely spend most of their time on social media. Sprout Social’s blog on social media demographics is a valuable resource for determining which social media platform is best for your business. 

A graphic of a hand holding a phone with different social media platforms stemming out of it.

Analyzing audience demographics and engagement metrics is key

If you’ve been posting consistently to multiple platforms for months now, your analytics will tell you exactly where your audience is strongest. While follower count is a vanity metric, it’s the first sign of where your customers are most active. Next, take a look at your engagements and engagement rate. Engagements on a post consist of likes, comments, saves, and shares for most platforms, and engagement rate is a percentage calculated by the number of times users engaged with your content compared to the number of impressions it received during its lifetime. You can find these analytics on each post when you are logged in to a business account on most platforms. 

Take a risk  

It’s okay to take risks and test out content on each platform to see how your audience will react to it. You just might find that your followers take well to a cheekily-captioned Instagram post. 


Need help getting started with a customized social media program? When we work together, your brand does more than show up. It shows up with a story, a purpose, a unique reason for being – and it makes an impact. At Segal Communications, we become an extension of your team – we work fast to become brand experts and make sure we’re keeping your company relevant on social media. 

[email protected]

Why You Can No Longer Post a Single Image on Social Media

As a social media professional, I’m constantly having to adjust my clients’ social media strategies based on new trends and algorithm changes. This is arguably the most valuable way to grow your audience and increase engagement on your posts. I’ve seen it and experienced it firsthand: the brands that fully embrace these changes on social media experience growth at an exponential rate compared to brands that stick with their outdated social media strategy.

If you don’t keep up, you’ll simply get left behind.

The rise of short-form video on social media 

During the height of the pandemic, TikTok grew immensely in popularity. All other social media platforms were forced to catch up and began offering their versions of short-form video content similar to the format of TikTok to do so. A recent report from HypeAuditor shows that Reels generate the most reach on Instagram, beating out both static image and carousel posts. Instagram, specifically, is working to keep up with its top competitor, TikTok, so it’s no surprise its algorithm pushes Reels out to mass audiences more than other post formats. 

As all social media platforms have moved in the direction of short-form video content, posting videos on social media has quickly become a top priority in the social media strategies we create for our clients. 

A woman capturing content of her day to day routine to post on her social media accounts.

How do social media algorithms work? 

Gone are the days of your social media feeds appearing in chronological order. Simply put, social media algorithms work to show you content they think you will be most interested in based on how you’ve interacted with content on your feed. All social media platforms have one objective in mind: keep users on the platform for as long as possible. When the algorithm picks up on a piece of content that is accomplishing this objective, it will continue to put it in front of even more users. 

Understanding how the algorithms work and keeping up with new algorithm updates is the name of the game when it comes to any content strategy. While we tailor our plans for each client to reach their specific goals and needs, we always keep algorithms at the forefront of our strategies. 

Investing in your content plan

It is vital to frequently produce new, quality content to support your social media strategy. In order to gain large numbers of Impressions on your content and grow your audience, you need to be publishing posts at least two to three times per week, and ideally three to five times per week (depending on the industry). Unfortunately, you can no longer get away with posting a single image. You simply won’t see the growth you’re aiming for because these types of posts no longer gain a substantial amount of traction. 

Since we work with clients with a variety of content budgets, we’ve gotten creative with the ways in which we source content. I’m fortunate enough to have an awesome team in-house that is creative and highly talented. We’ve put together numerous shoots for local clients and clients with a product that can be shipped directly to us. This is our ideal method of producing content because it gives us full creative control over the content we publish and saves our clients money. Another way we’ve been able to meet the challenge of producing regular content is by partnering with a client to help them hire a content intern. We were even able to get some press from the job listing! 

How to stay on top of trends

As a social media manager, much of my job consists of identifying current social media trends and making sure our clients are taking advantage of them. How we do this is pretty simple, and I’ve listed some resources below to help if you’ve not yet made the switch to a social media management agency. I also scroll through Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Reddit more than I’d like to admit. 

Resources:

Pro tip: subscribe to their newsletters so you can access the latest news right in your inbox!


Ready to get started with your customized social media strategy? When we work together, your brand does more than show up. It shows up with a story, a purpose, a unique reason for being – and it makes an impact. At Segal Communications, we become an extension of your team – we work fast to become brand experts and make sure we’re keeping your company relevant on social media.

[email protected]

5 Signs it’s Time to Hire a Social Media Manager

While social media used to be considered merely a supporting communication channel, it’s now much more. For millions of potential customers, it’s how they find, engage, and become loyal to brands. Despite this, we regularly come across founders and owners who either don’t think social media is important for their business, have someone on their team posting in addition to their regular job, or are doing the posting themselves, albeit infrequently.

While you don’t need to be on every platform, creating a consistent posting schedule is no longer optional for any brand or individual looking to establish credibility or attract new customers.

Here are five signs it’s time to invest in social media support.

Responsibility for managing your brand’s anemic channels is being passed around like a hot potato.

Creating social media posts is constantly being pushed off because of other responsibilities that take priority. You have good intentions to make social a priority because you know it’s important, but you just don’t have the bandwidth to keep up.

You’re feeling lost at sea.

The world of social media and social media marketing is vast – growing channels requires a well-thought-out strategy and the ability to adapt to new features and trends across platforms. It may seem daunting to attempt to do it all on your own. That’s where your agency will come in. An agency will craft a detailed social media strategy for your brand, figure out where your audience is strongest, and monitor performance to make sure the strategy is going according to plan.  

Your social media strategy isn’t based on insights and analytics.

Odds are you’re not a data analyst, and deciphering what each KPI (key performance indicator) means has been a challenge. And what are you supposed to do with the information? Your social media manager will know how to best use these insights and analytics to drive a well-thought-out strategy for your content moving forward. On an ongoing basis, they’ll make sure you’re meeting the goals you established by monitoring your channel’s data and adapting to trends. 

Social media manager holding a cell phone looking at social media apps and looking at it with another person beside them.

You’re experiencing a creative block.

Continually pushing out valuable, engaging content is no easy stint. Social media managers have a keen eye for making an aesthetic Instagram grid or strong marketing graphics. They also have the resources and a reliable network of creatives to tap into when the demand for content is extremely high.

You’re not keeping up with the Joneses.

Let’s face it, social media is an ever-changing landscape. If you already have a full plate, odds are you don’t have the time to keep up with trends across social media. An agency will always be on top of trends and know when it’s time to participate and when adding another post to ‘National Sandwich Day’ is just adding to the noise rather than value. 

Your audience on social media is arguably the most important and valuable asset to your business. If you don’t have the bandwidth to engage daily with your community, you’re losing out on potential sales and building upon your brand loyalists.


Ready to get started with your customized social media program? When we work together, your brand does more than show up. It shows up with a story, a purpose, a unique reason for being – and it makes an impact. At Segal Communications, we become an extension of your team – we work fast to become brand experts and make sure we’re keeping your company relevant on social media. 

[email protected]

Elements for a Strong Social Media Strategy

To craft a successful social media strategy, you will first need to determine your target audience and goals. Once you have established these elements, you will need to select the right platforms, most impactful imagery, and select hashtags that will amplify your campaign to your target audiences. Before starting any campaign, we recommend identifying each element clearly before getting started so that it’s easier to show progress, identify issues, and make changes along the way.

Continue reading to download our free Social Media Strategy Checklist!

Goals 

Identify your personal goals as a social media manager, the client goals, and agency goals. Your personal goals should be simple and easy to earn – but they are essential nonetheless as you should constantly challenge yourself. The client goals are generally straightforward as well. Are they selling a product, providing a service, or looking to drive brand awareness? This will determine what kind of content you provide to your audience. As for your agency goals, this generally has to do with agency reporting for the client. What did the agency offer the client in terms of deliverables for the campaign, and how do you plan to report on meeting those agency goals?

Target Audience 

An excellent social strategy needs its content to be appealing to the desired target audience. While you think it might, your intuition may not always be enough. Do your homework, look at successful content of the past and content that gets high engagement. The quality of the content you post and its alignment with your audience’s interests is more important than how frequently you post.

The quality of the content you post and its alignment with your audience’s interests is more important than how frequently you post.

Your viewer determines the imagery, tone, and subject matter of your content. You will likely have more than one target market, and you may find the demographic that you initially expected is not the one you have. This could require some experimentation, tweaking, and even starting from scratch. 

Identify your content pillars once you have identified your target audience. These are the categories of content you will share with your audience, and they will guide your presence across all media platforms. You can start with general categories such as blogs, company news, and graphics. Then, create more specific categories from these buckets of content. For example, if you create graphics using customer testimonials and graphics with inspirational quotes, these are subcategories of your larger content type. 

Additionally, don’t forget to make use of amazing user-generated content that consumers are posting. Posting user-generated content is a great way to acknowledge and engage with your audience, and it does some of the work for you in creating relevant content. 

Besides reposting follower content, a great way to increase engagement is giveaways and promotions. Encourage users to post images and tag your brand for a chance to win a product, a voucher, an experience, or branded merchandise. This increases brand visibility and is a fun way for your audience to participate. 

Platforms

Selecting the right platforms will depend on the brand you’re working with, their needs, and their target audience. You’ll need to research your target audience to see what platform they spend most of their time on, for starters. 

Currently, Pinterest dominates Gen X women with more than 400 million users; 78% are women 30-50 years old (Sprout Social, 2021). By the end of 2021, TikTok’s Gen Z user base is expected to top Instagram’s (eMarketer, 2021). These types of statistics will help you find where your target audience spends a majority of their time and better determine where you should spend your time placing content.

If you have the bandwidth to produce quality content, it is generally beneficial to engage on as many social platforms as your target audience is active. Even if the platform you’re initially gaining the most engagement on isn’t your top target, it may surprise you what leads to conversions. As for cadence, it is beneficial to post at least once a week, if not more. 

Brand Identity 

Tone

The tone of your brand copy, or “voice,”  is one of the main ways in which you define your relationship with your audience. Identify three to five adjectives that you want to convey in your brand voice. For example, a set of words that may describe your desired brand voice is “professional, confident, reliable.”

When you are addressing multiple audiences for different reasons, your brand voice can change based on the purpose of your communication. For example, you may sound more formal when addressing other experts in your field but more casual when addressing direct consumers.

Design 

Keep it clean. Clean design is key to user engagement and loyalty. While some people may love digging for that hidden treasure in the racks of some discount store – Target has become a household name for its clear message, clean design, and excellent branding. Most users respond to consistency and clean, visible graphics – text should be easy to read, the imagery should make sense, and the message should be clear. Developing design templates will help your audience feel more comfortable, familiar with the brand, and know what to expect. 

Most users respond to consistency and clean, visible graphics – text should be easy to read, the imagery should make sense, and the message should be clear. Developing design templates will help your audience feel more comfortable, familiar with brand, and know what to expect.

Imagery

Consumer-facing brands will likely require a significant amount of lead-time preparation to build visual content. That said, relevant and high-quality images can significantly impact other types of organizations as well. Strong images can communicate professionalism, expertise, and a bevy of other attributes and can help position brands as they would like in their field. 

A consumer brand may constantly update its social team on new products or innovative ways to show its brand. A B2B company may use stock images that reflect the people and operations they serve. 

Engagement 

Hashtags

To stay visible, make sure you use hashtags, but choose them carefully as too much repetition can inadvertently harm visibility. Invest a few hours each week researching the latest hashtag trends. Don’t spam non-target audiences as this will decrease brand credibility and can be annoying to viewers that search for unrelated content. Constantly check for trends in the industry by looking at competitors and similar brands. Trending hashtags change monthly and weekly, so be on the lookout. 

Call to Action 

This is going to look different for every brand. Defining a clear call to action in every post reminds audiences that we want them to do something. It could be “shop now,” “learn more,” or “visit us in-store.” Calls to action will change depending on the purpose of the post. A call to action can also be a question or a survey that engages with an audience to discover what interests the followers. Don’t shy away from a poll – and sometimes, the more simple, the better.

Don’t shy away from a poll – and sometimes, the more simple, the better.

Planning & Insights 

A planning tool must be used to manage a brand’s social channels properly. Ideally, you should plan out content at least a few weeks in advance to allow for unexpected news or changes. Many platforms offer a collaborative process, which can be very useful, especially if there are many people on the team that need to approve content.

Insights within each social platform provide a better view of your audience. On Instagram, you can view data directly from your user base to find out when your unique followers are online, as well as their demographics – so you know what to post as well as when. Keeping track of performance is essential to understanding which types of content work best. For example, a higher engagement rate on infographic posts could direct your future efforts.

Sprout Social, Later, Hootsuite, and Loomly are all excellent tools for managing and analyzing data from your social media efforts. Several of these services offer free planning, with limitations for new, small businesses. With more advanced packages, you can access larger-scale comparative insights, such as data on a competitor’s content. 

At Segal Communications, we know that a successful presence on social media requires a few things: consistency, dedication, and creativity. Although it will not be accomplished overnight, following these guidelines will help you make progress as quickly as possible while reaching your target audience. Remember, social media is not a mathematical equation with one correct answer – it is a recipe that needs to be constantly remastered. 

Remember, social media is not a mathematical equation with one correct answer – it is a recipe that needs to be constantly remastered.

Download our free Social Media Strategy Checklist!