Social media is a great tool if you use it properly. But how can you make an impact without it taking over your life? Here are three tools I use to manage my social media, save time, and look professional.
I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I use it for ministry and business grudgingly.
I love its potential for good and God. I love connecting with friends and making new connections.
I hate the way Satan uses it to spread filth and foolishness. I hate the open sin, bickering, fighting, debating, bloviating, and pontificating.
I've found a few tools that save me countless hours, but still allow me to have an impact online. Click To TweetI use social media because the Lord told me too. That’s a story for another time.
If you were to look at my social media accounts, you will see a lot of posts that make it seem like I must be on it all the time. I assure you that I am not. In fact, I’ll go through phases where I am semi-active and then I stay off for weeks at a time. But my accounts keep going.
How? I’ve found a few tools that save me countless hours, but still allow me to have an impact online.
For example, we were sick with the coronavirus in March/April of 2020. I could barely talk for two weeks and was sidelined for another week on top of that. I got a chuckle when I checked my social media after weeks of not being on and saw that I had tons of posts during that time.
Social media has changed the world. It has given everyone with a cell phone immediate access to immense networks of people.
Consider these stats for the average internet users ages 18-64 from globalwebindex.com:
- 2 hours 24 minutes each day on social media.
- 8.6 social media accounts per user.
If you want to exponentially increase your influence for God, you can leverage social media to do it.
Becoming a true “social media influencer” takes much more time than the average person has to dedicate to it. That’s not our goal.
What if there were a few tools that could multiply the little time that you do spend? Thankfully, there are tools to help.
There are many social media tools available. Some are great with others a waste of time and money. I have used both.
Here are a few tools that I recommend that will pay huge dividends if you use them correctly. They each have a free service. If you find them useful and want to use all of their benefits for greater impact, sign up for the paid versions.
1. BUFFER
Buffer is a social media scheduling app. It enables you to send a message or post to multiple accounts at once. You can post immediately or schedule your posts for the future.
I love the Queue feature. Here’s how it works. I can decide how many posts I want to send per account. (Each social media platform has best practices you should follow.). As I go through my week, I add any quote, or post idea to my queue. Buffer will use my queue to populate posts and send them automatically.
For example, I can read a book on Monday putting any quotes I like in buffer. The app will post them throughout the week.
It is important to spread your posts over time rather than have flourishes of posts then nothing for awhile.
This app will save you time giving you an online presence all week with your limited input.
It even has discounted pricing for non-profits. Check it out here.
You can try it with a 14-day free trial. I have a Pro account that allows 8 social accounts and 100 scheduled posts for only $15 per month.
2. COSCHEDULE
Coschedule is a work management software for bloggers and marketers. But it is also one of the most powerful social media tools at its price.
It includes useful features like a posting calendar (Using a schedule for your main posts is the simplest step you can take to upgrade your online influence.), social media connections, and automation.
I use it on my blog to save hundreds of hours a year. Every time I write a blog post or article, I can schedule social media posts days, weeks, and months ahead with templates. I post once and the posts keep coming over time. Sweet!
This tool is worth the money even if you don’t have a blog. You can schedule posts to all your social media accounts. Even better, you can schedule entire social media campaigns at one time. Huge time saver!
Also, the ReQueue function is amazing. It will auto-populate your social media posts with evergreen content.
If you want more info about CoSchedule, you can read my full review here.
It is well worth $9 per month for the beginning user.
3. SNAPPA
Beautiful thumbnails are the best way to get noticed on social media and YouTube. Thumbnails get you noticed. Content keeps people coming back for more.
How do you make beautiful thumbnails?
You could take some months to learn:
- proper image dimensions for each platform.
- color philosophy.
- picture choice and editing.
- font art.
- proper spacing.
- how to make words stand out from the background.
- etc.
Or you could use a cheap service that does all that for you!
I recommend SNAPPA. I made the thumbnail for this article with it.
They have a huge collection of pre-made templates for every social media platform. Also, it includes over 3,000,000 free high-resolution (and not cheesy) stock photos, over 200 fonts, and 100,00 vectors.
You can make a graphic for one platform and automatically resize the same image for another.
Also, it integrates with Buffer.
You will thank me for this tool. It’s a game-changer.
There is a free account with 3 downloads per month. A pro account is well worth the money at $10 per month and includes unlimited downloads.
CONCLUSION
You can make a difference for God on social media. These tools will save you time, money, and make you look like a pro.
Use them for your personal life, business or ministry to multiply your effort and increase your influence.