One of the biggest complaints I hear from craft alcohol makers when it comes to marketing their brand is how much time it takes in this crazy social media marketing world we all live in today. The days of spending weeks on one single campaign and letting it ride are gone. Content is king and real-time is queen. So we’ve compiled our favorite social media marketing tools to save you time, frustration, and improve both your content and results.

Scheduling Social Media Marketing Tool

Later is our current favorite scheduling tool. And while I say current because there are constantly new players on the scene, we’ve been loyal to this one for almost 3 years now. Which in the social media marketing world is a lifetime!

If you put only one thing into action from this list, getting on a scheduling tool should be that one thing. Seriously. The free version is great and includes our favorite features like: visual, drag and drop, a built-in asset library, customizable content by platform, and saves your whole hashtag list so you can easily apply them and rotate them to your posts for Instagram. 

If you’re enrolled, or thinking about enrolling, in our Craft Makers Social Media Marketing Course in our Craft Alcohol Marketing Bootcamp you’ll also get a full step-by-step Later Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to get you up and running on this incredible social marketing tool fast.

Content Creation & Editing Tools

I don’t know what I would do without Canva. Not a day goes by that I don’t use this. While the free plan is great, the super affordable Canva Pro Plan is the way to go. It gives you access to a ton of great stock photography, a brand kit to save you a ton of time, animations, resizing with the touch of a button and other great features. Canva makes graphic design a breeze for even those of us who feel creatively challenged. Not only great for social media (quotes, text overlays, story templates, etc…) but also for flyers, hand-outs and other design needs. 

This will massively up-level your content game and save you time. Win-win! The only downside is that it can almost be too much fun, so be careful you don’t use it as an excuse to avoid those other pesky to-dos on your list! But in all seriousness, Canva is one of our favorite social media marketing tools…it’s life for anyone small business owner in today’s hyper-visual day and age.

More commonly referred to as Lightroom CC, this is technically a bit more advanced for photo editing but really the best, in my opinion and worth taking 30 minutes or so to play around and get the hang of it. More than a social media tool alone, It lets you tweak and play with virtually every component of a photograph and also allows you to create preset filters, which is great for creating that consistent yet differentiated cohesive look on Instagram.

If that’s feeling a little too advanced for you a free app that I love for photo editing as well is Snapseed. One of my favorite features is the “eraser” tool which let’s you magically remove the trash can or other unattractive elements you mistakenly caught in an otherwise perfect photo. Magic for today’s social media marketing world? I’ll take it! 

Reposting other people’s content that fits your brand and helps build community is an important part of any social media strategy. Not only does it help you fill your own content pipeline but it helps you make social media friends so you can support eachother in growing your brands. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, after all.

While you certainly shouldn’t overdo this, when it is time to repost other people’s content on Instagram our favorite app for easily & appropriately sharing other people’s Instagram content is aptly named Repost! It’s easy to use and allows you to save links to posts you’d like to remember to repost in the future with only two quick steps There’s a whole bonus guide with step by step instructions for how we use the Repost App in our Social Media Course for craft makers as well.

When it comes to reposting there’s a lot of content outside of Instagram that you may want to consider for Instagram and other social media channels. While not technically a social media marketing tool and more of a content curation reader, Flipboard is great for saving content in an organized manner that you might want to later share. Huge time saver when you’re scrambling for content on a specific topic. It’s my go-to for scrolling content and topics  I care about before bed, while waiting in line, etc… and then saving interesting articles to my pre-determined “magazines” to easily find later.

Social Marketing Tools For Video Editing 

The next social media marketing tool is InShot App. It’s a great for quick and easy video editing. And if you’re not using much video on social media it’s time to rethink that strategy. Trim, speed up, slow down, overlay text, add music and more. Invaluable for your Instagram stories.  This tool does also have a photo editor built in, but I find the others mentioned above to be more powerful.

While we’re talking video, and Instagram Stories specifically, StorySplitter is a great app to quickly and easily chop a longer video up into 15 second sections. Nothing drives me crazier than trying to slide a cut bar just one second more and having to do it 6 or even 8 times to use in my story. This does it for you with a simple push of the button.

Content Sharing Tools

If you’re constantly frustrated about how much time it takes to publish your newest website article to all of the different social media platforms, LinkedIn, Google My Business, and more Storychief is the tool for you. It integrates with most content management systems and essentially publishes your content to your website AND to a plethora of social and digital platforms all with the push of a button. And if you have multiple people writing for you it majorly streamlines assigning, drafting, editing, and finalizing content as well. For original written content this is a great, and super affordable social marketing tool.

This one you’ve likely heard of but if you’re not diligently using some kind of link shortener and tracker for every link you share you should be. Bit.ly is a social media marketing tool that allows you to turn your long or not so pretty links into short, easy to remember, and even branded links. It also provides analytics for each link so you can identify which content and sources are working best for your brand.

Email Marketing & Automation Tools

While not exactly a social marketing tool, having a powerful mailing list and contact management platform is critical. Especially since one of your goals with any social media marketing should be to grow your all-important mailing list. Active Campaign has all of the standard features of most tools like this PLUS an incredibly robust automation system so you can be sure the right people are getting the right emails while you’re taking some much deserved time off and enjoying that last batch of booze you made. Anything I can create once and continues to work hard for my brand far into the future is a must.

Once you have your mailing list system in place it’s important to be able to connect it to all of your other technology and social marketing tools. Zapier is THE tool to do that across almost any tool you can think of. Essentially it builds connections for you so the different tools talk to each other and transfer data between each other exactly the way you want.You can even integrate things as basic as Google sheets to create automated work flows! With a super easy interface it’s easy to use for even the most tech-nervous people and will help you save money on tech developer projects.

There you have it! Our round-up of the social media marketing tools we couldn’t live without. While many of us often shy away from technology and new tools, more often than not it’s costing you time and money to do so. It does often take an hour or two to really learn a tool and get comfortable enough with it to use it readily, but that time will be paid back in spades down the line. It’s the “go slow to go fast” philosophy and I encourage you to check out some of these tools to help make your social media and overall marketing more efficient and effective. And if you’re looking for more ways to save you time and get better results from your marketing don’t forget to check out our Craft Alcohol Marketing Bootcamp and other services to support craft alcohol makers just like you. 

Do you have favorite tools that you can’t live without? We’d love to hear about them so we can check them out as well! 

Note: At times, purchasing products through our links may earn us a small portion of the sale. This supports our editorial team and allows them to continue to create great content in the future, thank you!