{"id":21416,"date":"2019-04-23T01:00:14","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T08:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/?p=21416"},"modified":"2019-04-22T08:23:02","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T15:23:02","slug":"social-media-tools-for-the-busy-writer-by-vanessa-kier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/23\/social-media-tools-for-the-busy-writer-by-vanessa-kier\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media Tools for the Busy Writer by Vanessa Kier"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Let\u2019s\u00a0welcome\u00a0back monthly columnist,\u00a0Vanessa Kier<\/a> as she shares with us \u201c Social Media Tools for the Busy Writer.\u201d Enjoy!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Building and maintaining a strong social media presence can help you as an author to establish a strong brand and to engage with readers.<\/strong> But maintaining a consistent social media presence requires time and commitment.<\/p>\n

Here are some tools that can help you prepare and manage your social media content so that you have more time to write.<\/p>\n

GETTING THE PROPER IMAGE SIZE<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Each of the major social media platforms — Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram — have specifications for the optimal size of an image. If you\u2019re not sure what these are, don\u2019t worry. Sprout Social keeps an updated Google Doc spreadsheet with the current specs<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

If you need to resize an image:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

On a Mac:<\/strong> Open the image in the Preview app. The resize option is under Tools.<\/p>\n

On a PC (Windows 10): <\/strong>Right click on the image. You can use Edit with Paint 3D or just Edit to get an editor window with a resize option.<\/p>\n

TIP 1:<\/strong> Start with as large an image as possible<\/strong>, as it\u2019s best to resize down to maintain image clarity.<\/p>\n

TIP 2:<\/strong> Resizing works best if it\u2019s like shape to like shape.<\/strong> So, resize a large square down to a small square. If you try to resize a square down to a rectangle, you\u2019ll have to crop or distort the image.<\/p>\n

Want to make an animated gif?<\/strong> You can use a site such as Giphy.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

USE A TEMPLATE<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The most eye-catching social media graphics are often sophisticated combinations of text, image, and decorations. Save yourself time by using a program that has built-in templates.<\/p>\n

Canva<\/a> – This is my go-to software for creating social media images. Canva has preset templates for each social media platform, so you don\u2019t need to know the current specs. Add your image to one of their templates, maybe change a few colors, and you\u2019re done. You can even send to Twitter from inside Canva.<\/p>\n

Pablo by Buffer<\/a> – Pablo doesn\u2019t have the fancy templates that Canva does. However, if you just want to add some text to an appropriately sized image, you can do that here.<\/p>\n

Book Brush<\/a> – This site is geared toward authors who want to create graphics that include their book cover(s). In addition to the normal social media templates, they also have templates for BookBub ads.<\/p>\n

SCHEDULING POSTS<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Suppose that you already have your graphics. You’ve come up with some great text. Facebook allows you to schedule your posts only if you have a business page. Twitter forces you to post live.<\/p>\n

How do you schedule a post to go live next week instead of right now?<\/strong> Use a third-party scheduling app.<\/p>\n

There are two ways you can schedule your social media posts with a third party:<\/p>\n

One-time Posts<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you want to create a batch of posts and schedule them to be posted at a specific time in the future, you can use an app such as Hootsuite<\/a> or Buffer<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Both Hootsuite and Buffer let you create one post to be posted to multiple platforms.<\/p>\n

You create each post in the app, add the appropriate image, choose the social media platforms to post to, then set the date and time.<\/p>\n

Recurring Posts<\/strong><\/p>\n

The second way to schedule your content works best if you have a very large repertoire of evergreen posts, to avoid repeating posts too close together.<\/p>\n

With apps such as Meet Edgar<\/a> and Social Bee<\/a><\/strong>, you upload posts and assign them to categories. Then you set up a category posting schedule.<\/p>\n

For example, on Mondays-Wednesdays-Fridays at 6 a.m. you want a post from the Humor category to go out and at 1 p.m. a post from the Cooking category.<\/p>\n

At the appropriate time, the app chooses a post from that category and publishes it to the designated platform(s).<\/p>\n

After the post has gone live, it goes back into that category’s queue to be used again in the future.<\/p>\n

KEEPING TRACK OF SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT<\/strong><\/h2>\n

If you plan on building a deep repertoire of social media posts, you might want to consider creating a central repository to track the topics and images of your posts.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve created a database in Airtable to handle this, but you could set up a table in Word or use Excel.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I put in my database:<\/strong><\/p>\n