Lately, Adobe Caption has been my favorite tool. We caption all of our videos for better accessibility. 

Apart from Sprout Social, Canva helps me daily as a social media manager! I’m not much of a graphic designer, but Canva makes it super easy to design assets I need quickly.

Trello! I use trello every single day, it’s my go to tool for to-do’s and task management. You create “cards” (ex, To do Today, This week, wip) and then individual items within each card, which you can drag and drop onto different cards as you work on the task. I love that you can create labels, I do this to prioritize which tasks I need to complete first. I find this most helpful when reminding me that I need to follow up on emails. As soon as I send the initial email, i create a reminder for a few days later to follow up if needed. Best part is, it’s free! They do have a paid version, but the free version is pretty robust in itself.

10/10

 

Thank you for sharing your process! Our team uses Asana, but the board layout here in Trello looks very similar. I might check it out for myself or keep it in mind if we ever decide to switch.

I second this! Both have been absolute gamechangers.

I am definitely going to have to try Adobe Color! Thanks for sharing :)

Hey ​@jaxn.engstrom - I use my ipad multiple times a day so now I can’t imagine not having it. You can also edit capcut videos and Canva content, use as a second monitor when you travel, etc. When I bought mine, I bought an older generation one to cut costs since I didn’t need anything fancy. I also got my pencil off Amazon for much cheaper than the Apple version and works just fine.

Ok, I think I’m going to have to give CapCut more of a try! I wonder though, would it be affected if the TikTok ban goes through since it is owned by ByteDance?

I have to echo so many others on this thread that I could not live without Canva or Sprout! They are the tools I am in all day, every day.

I would also shout out Lightroom Mobile for photo editing and Adobe Premiere Rush for video editing!

I have a few, but my ride or die is Sprout Social. Even when I take on freelance clients, the first thing I do is sign them up for Sprout and train them on it. I would not be doing what I do today without it and that’s from someone who remembers when it was $9 per user per month for 10 profiles! 

I love capcut! It’s so good for finding inspiration for entertaining reels and templates if you’re lucky! I have the pro version so that we could use the font for our branding. 

I have a feeling these are in every social persons top 5 (: As they are mine. I feel a lot of scheduling freedom with Sprout and creative freedom with Canva. 

Social Media Manager Tools Wrapped:

1. Sprout
2. Canva
3. CapCut
4. Messaging platform (Microsoft Teams for me)
5. Calendar of choice (Microsoft)

Where would we be without our tools! While I’m a founding member of the Canva fan club (I’ve been creating designs in there for 10 years), I’m in ChatGPT all the time to refine content, draft video scripts, summarize transcripts. I also love YouTube’s closed captioning; I prefer to clean up captions in there, download the SRT file and then upload that into Sprout. 

Thanks you three for the CapCut insight! I’ve used it once (worked out great) and now noodling if I should dive in again :)

great call; I’ve always admired Rand and insight. In fact, just tweeted about a blog post I was wow’ed by last week. Did you happen to catch his “how people use google” results? https://sparktoro.com/blog/new-research-we-analyzed-332-million-queries-over-21-months-to-uncover-never-before-published-data-on-how-people-use-google/

Canva and Grammarly are my go-to’s! I spend so much time on both—probably as much as I’m on Sprout. Working with a really small team means I wear a lot of hats, and these two tools are absolute essentials. Whether I’m creating social media posts or putting together a presentation, I can’t get through my workday without them!

I just upgraded to the Pro Plan too and am having a lot of fun with it!

​@carolynrcohen shout out to the percentage calculator  Also, don’t sleep on the percentage difference calculator from Calculator Soup!! I have that pinned on top of my Chrome 

That’s awesome! I haven’t heard of licecap — will be adding it to my list.

I’m sooo glad to read this thread because I just snagged my first iPad with a Black Friday deal and am excited to use it for video and Canva as well. I travel frequently too and setting it up as a second monitor is a great idea! If anyone is still looking into getting one Best Buy had some pretty good deals on refurbished models. I think Apple was running a special sale too where you got a gift card with purchase, but that may have just been for black Friday.

Trello! I use trello every single day, it’s my go to tool for to-do’s and task management. You create “cards” (ex, To do Today, This week, wip) and then individual items within each card, which you can drag and drop onto different cards as you work on the task. I love that you can create labels, I do this to prioritize which tasks I need to complete first. I find this most helpful when reminding me that I need to follow up on emails. As soon as I send the initial email, i create a reminder for a few days later to follow up if needed. Best part is, it’s free! They do have a paid version, but the free version is pretty robust in itself.

10/10

 

Thank you for sharing your process! Our team uses Asana, but the board layout here in Trello looks very similar. I might check it out for myself or keep it in mind if we ever decide to switch.

Ditto on Trello! My team has been using Trello for years and it has been so helpful as we are in different time zones. It allows us to keep all the important info and tasks in one place so we can keep working on projects even if we aren’t online at the same time.

Combination of Looker Studio, Supermetrics and Google Sheets gives me an ultimate tool work with social media data and data from various other sources to provide different kind of views for internal use and for our customers. And what is best, Looker Studio and Google Sheets are free.

I’m going with the flow and ging all in agreeing about Canva (aside from Sprout Social)! This tool is a lifesaver. It’s got an amazing accessible and easy-to-use interface with a ton of templates, which has made it a lot easier to help whip up quality content in no time. Plus, it supports real-time collaboration, making teamwork smooth and efficient when needed. It boils down to this: Canva can really help keep a social media game stronger and more consistent!

It’s hard to argue with the power of free and capable. Especially if you are working solo!

YouTube does some great CC work, agreed. AI (chatbots and LLMs), such as Microsoft Accessibility insights, are starting to be more refined and capable in accessibility as well. Looking forward to these advances for myself and to broaden social media’s reach!