Top 5 Social Media Planning Tools for 2021
Crowdfunding success relies on a few major factors including how well the campaign is presented and how many people it reaches. And assuming you’ve nailed it in the presentation department, one of the best ways to reach more people is through social media.
As a Kickstarter video production company specialising in visual promotion, we understand more than most that having great quality content is only half the battle. Success is driven by the performance on various social channels used to draw attention from your audience.
However, beyond managing our own personal accounts, managing a business or crowdfunding project account can be taxing. You’ll need to regularly post quality content containing the right message, media and targeting parameters, as well as monitor performance and constantly optimise as you go.
As such, having a social media planning tool is a no brainer, whether you need help making posts, scheduling them or simply organising everything so you always have a bird's eye view of your social activities. We explore 5 of the best tools that can help you do this.
1. Canva
Most people know about Canva, but not everyone knows how useful it is for social media management. When you see all those great social posts from brands that have perfectly unified and consistent visual designs on platforms like Instagram, there’s a good chance these are made from Canva templates.
Canva is an excellent tool for anyone managing social media accounts to use. Even with the free account, which doesn’t give you access to all the templates, you can create designer-level marketing assets using any of the thousands of ready-made motifs, features, designs and other graphic elements available to you.
Most recently, you can now connect your social channels and publish or schedule directly from Canva!
2. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most established and popular apps for social media management and scheduling. You can use it to schedule posts, collaborate with your team and gather insights about your post's performance.
The fact that Hootsuite offers a free plan that can be flexibly upgraded, with the option of even trying out new features for free and then slowly upgrading to higher plans, as per your requirements, makes it a favourite among many.
However, if you’re on a shoestring budget and need some costly features, you might find this platform to be out of your price range initially, especially when many apps are now offering a diverse range of free features.
3. Buffer
Buffer comes with various social media features that allow business and individuals to manage their social activities and track performance, including a nice Chrome extension, which integrates itself seamlessly with your browser.
With Buffer, you have several options for publishing and scheduling content. You can schedule content directly from the desktop app or mobile app dashboard, or you can access it directly through an internet browser. All you need to do is choose the content you want to queue and add it to your publishing flow.
Buffer also shortens links automatically and makes recommendations for posts, based on what you’ve drafted inside the post creation box already. While sometimes off the mark, this can offer some great contributions to your social media content.
4. Loomly
Loomly packages itself as the complete scheduling tool for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Linked In, Google My Business, and more.
Users can easily maintain ideas and plan their social posts in advance, while also receiving live post optimisation tips and examine social media posts. Whether you’re managing a business or personal account, it allows you to oversee approval workflows and automate post scheduling.
Ultimately, Loomly is clean and easy-to-use with a simple dashboard that pretty much anyone can navigate and manage. Also, the calendar can be exported easily to send to clients or for company internal review and tracking.
5. Later
Later has always put a strong emphasis on Instagram. It started as an app dedicated to Instagram as a scheduling tool but has since added new components and features for other social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
It is designed to help individual users and businesses of all sizes use the drag-and-drop interface to plan and schedule content such as posts, videos, and stories for Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest every month.
As mentioned, the app has a strong focus on visual content and unless you use Instagram as a primary marketing channel, it might not be the best tool for you. Some people also find it hard to manage the workflow in the app, which requires you to first upload an image as part of your ongoing grid of images, rather than starting with text first, as other platforms allow you to do.
Later has a free plan available that you can use forever, but as you would imagine, you can also get features such as analytics, saved captions, scheduled stories, and more for paid plans.
Why You Need Social Media For A Crowdfunding Campaign
A good crowdfunding social media strategy and smart planning tool will increase your chance of a successful campaign. If you need some more advice or tips on choosing the right tools and techniques to assist your campaign, let us know.
We’re a passionate Kickstarter video production company that loves to produce amazing visual content, but we’re also clued up on all things marketing, especially anything that can help you build awareness and engagement for your crowdfunding campaign!
How LinkedIn Can Boost Your Crowdfunding Efforts
Whether you’re in the very early stages of gathering support and backing for your project or are focused on putting the word out there with the help of influencers in your industry, LinkedIn is a great resource.
While most business leaders and company owners will have a LinkedIn account, many don’t use it as an actual tool in promoting their products and achieving core marketing objectives.
So, if for some reason you’re not leveraging the power of LinkedIn to support your crowdfunding efforts, here’s a reminder of why you should be.
What’s So Good About LinkedIn?
The beauty of LinkedIn for businesses is the predominating user demographics that frequent the platform.
While Facebook and other platforms should definitely be part of your crowdfunding marketing strategy too, LinkedIn facilitates connections with many types of people who can assist you in the early stages of your launch, such as influential people in your field, potential investors with capital, professionals in your sector, and partners who may want to be involved in a great project like yours.
With business conventions and industry events being severely disrupted due to Covid-19, LinkedIn is also one of the only spaces where individuals in your community can gather, albeit virtually. It can give you a vital chance to share news about your project and learn from people in your sector.
1. Find Influencers and Potential Backers
You can make advanced searches through LinkedIn to search out potential investors, partners, influencers and other individuals who may be able to facilitate your crowdfunding scheme.
The platform lets you make searchers with keywords relating to location, industry, interests, and seniority level so that you can narrow down who you’re looking for.
The list of individuals you discover can serve as potential leads for a number of goals, whether you want to find an industry blogger to cover the launch of your project or investors who are actively looking for new projects in your sector.
2. Build a Vetted Audience
LinkedIn is the perfect place to build an audience based on specific criteria that can be useful for your brand and project. For instance, you can focus on building your awareness among managers, CEOs and those in leadership roles so that when you publish engaging content, you have a greater chance of being noticed by the right people.
Also, a member interested in the same industry as your Kickstarter campaign or who is in the same LinkedIn group as you may be more willing to pay attention or even support you in some way.
As a Kickstarter video production company, we understand that the work we do isn’t worth anything unless the right people see it. So, to prepare for when you have something meaningful to actually share, we always recommend building online communities as early as possible so that your content will achieve a significant amount of amplification.
3. Introductions and Reach-outs
With some decent connections in your industry, achieving introductions and reaching out to people who can potentially help you can be incredibly effective on LinkedIn. You can do this by posting something in a group, or just in your feed, with a request for introductions to relevant people.
Even if just one person puts you in touch with someone who can help you, it’s worth it. And even if not, your posts can double as a kind of announcement to people in your industry that you’re engaged in interesting activities.
4. Direct Messages
We’ve all been in situations where we’ve identified a potential lead who could help our project in some way but haven’t been able to find a contact for them.
Even if you’re able to uncover their email, it might seem too forward to send them something directly without an introduction of some kind.
Through LinkedIn, you can search out the people you want to contact and send them a direct message, following a connection with them on the platform. This will greatly improve the chance of someone actually reading and responding to your message, as you’ll be within their “network” even if you only have a tenuous link with people they already know.
5. Expand Your Network
Constantly working to expand your network can help you in many different ways. With more professional contacts in your industry knowing who you are and potentially viewing your posts, knowledge of your brand and your product launch can gradually diffuse among the right communities of people.
Boost Your Crowdfunding Efforts
At Wow Your Crowd, we’re a Kickstarter video production company committed to showcasing the value of your clients in the best possible light through video content, but we’re also passionate about helping you build communities and establish connections with the right people.
If you’re looking for help to get your Kickstarter going or want to learn more about how platforms like LinkedIn can be used in your strategy, get in touch with us!