Social media can provide a great opportunity for small business owners to connect with their target audience and reach potential customers. In fact, social media campaigns are among the fastest growing trends and most vital marketing tools for small businesses today! Some benefits of social media marketing for small business include:
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Amplifying brand awareness
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Humanizing/legitimizing your brand
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Increasing web traffic, lead generation, conversions and sales
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Boosting content marketing initiatives
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Providing audience insights
However, even with such enticing benefits, creating content and executing social media campaigns can seem intimidating if you’re on a tight budget. Luckily, there are several free online tools available that can help small business owners create, manage, and enhance social campaigns on a small budget. Keep reading for a breakdown of free marketing and social media tools you can use for each step along the way.
Designing & Building Social Media Content
The first step in any social media marketing campaign is to create the content you’ll be promoting on your social channels. Here are a couple of free tools you can use to design and build out your ads:
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Canva: Canva is one of the most popular online tools for graphic design. Offering thousands of stock photos and free design templates optimized for a variety of sizes, Canva employs an intuitive drag and drop interface that makes it easy to create engaging visual ads and social media graphics, without a graphic design degree.
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Typeform: If you want to include a form or survey as part of your campaign content, Typeform is a great option. With a free and easy-to-use interface, Typeform enables you to create beautiful forms and surveys to receive feedback and valuable insights from customers.
Campaign Set-up, Implementation & Management
Once your ads are created, the next step is to set-up and implement your campaigns. Here are some of the best free social media management and campaign platform tools available to small business owners:
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Buffer: Buffer is a free social media scheduler that not only enables you to plan out your content timeline and campaign posts, but will actually take the ads live for you. This saves you time and energy and can help keep you on a consistent schedule.
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Hootsuite: Hootsuite is another tool that enables you to plan, schedule, engage with and monitor your social media all in one dashboard. The free plan allows you to keep track of your campaign posts and engagement for up to two social media accounts.
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MailChimp: MailChimp is primarily known as a popular and free email management tool for small businesses, but it also offers a robust social media management platform. MailChimp enables you to create and implement organic social posts and targeted ads as well as manage all your social channels in one place.
Campaign Analysis
After your campaign has been implemented, you can analyze its performance to enhance your ads in real-time or to make data-driven decisions for future social campaigns. Check out the free tools below for help with campaign analysis:
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CoSchedule Headline Analyzer: This tool allows you to analyze the effectiveness, word balance, and overall clarity of your headlines. You can use these insights to edit and optimize headlines while a social campaign is running, or to plan the headlines for future campaigns.
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Talkwalker: Talkwalker is a social listening service that searches for and alerts you of mentions of your brand, hashtags and competitors on social media. This can provide you with valuable insights and data on the performance of your ads by analyzing the social mentions and consumer buzz around your brand following a post or campaign.
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Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a great free tool that can help you analyze campaigns to garner important insights and analytics about performance and engagement. Google Analytics can help you analyze UTM campaign results and identify which social platforms and campaigns are driving the most traffic and conversions.
There’s never been a better time for small business owners to enhance their social media marketing and campaigns. The free marketing tools for small businesses mentioned above can help you take your social media campaigns to the next level– without any burden on your budget.
