Prim Pointers: Social Media Must-Haves

Every great public relations firm includes practitioners who specialize in social media. As publicists we’ve learned to tweak our strategies to engage audiences via social media in addition to traditional media. We’re changing the way we share information with key audiences and using social media to listen, interact and connect with consumers.

With this in mind, we’ve outlined our five essential tools for social media success.

Unsplash – Gone are the days of paying an arm and a leg for stock imagery. Thanks to Unsplash, social media managers have an arsenal of over 400,000 professionally shot, high-resolution photos to use for visual content. Every photo in their library is available for free for both commercial and noncommercial use and is available in high-resolution. With submissions from over 65,000 professional photographers around the world, the service and photo library continue to grow every day.

Management Tool – If you’re managing multiple social media pages for multiple businesses, you absolutely need a social media management system. A good system will help you navigate from page to page, view analytics, create a content calendar and (most importantly) save time! We’re fans of Sprout Social, Buffer, and HootSuite. Whether you’re managing multiple accounts or hundreds, both systems make it easy to add new accounts, schedule posts and add account managers. Both also have robust training platforms to help users understand basic system knowledge and updates.

Mobile Phone Stabilizer – There are two proven ways to improve your social media photography. The first is “talent.” The second is “a mobile phone stabilizer.” If you’re creating Facebook Live or Periscope videos, a mobile phone stabilizer is a must. Nobody wants to get seasick watching your shaky videos. A stabilizer lets you remove all the jerks and bumps in your shot to bring viewers a more professional and smooth viewing experience.

Photoshop and Lightroom are two photo editing applications that make your best shots even better. With tutorials for every skill level, a social media manager can easily learn to edit photos using either Adobe program. Photoshop has been an industry staple for professional photographers but often comes with a hefty price tag. For those looking to make minor edits to their photos, Lightroom is a great choice. It provides more editing capabilities than an iPhone or Droid editor at a reasonable price.

Content Calendar – Most importantly, make sure you organize your content to align with holidays and current trends. This ensures that your followers are receiving the most up-to-date news and requires coming up with a social media calendar to note important dates for promotions and advertisements. Google Calendar is a simple tool to use for organizing social media content. It allows you to organize content by color and share with other team members. Advance planning for social media posts guarantees quality content to share with your audience on a consistent basis.