Social media managers have many tools available to make their lives easier, but with so much choice comes a lot of confusion. 

How do you know whether you need it, will it make life easier? Is it worth the money?

We think there are four key areas you need to invest in for your social media management business.  These areas ensure your work is as easy and productive as possible, you are offering great solutions to your clients, and you can continue increasing your income as time passes.

As your business grows, your needs will change. And as your budget increases, so will your options.

When you're first starting as a freelance social media manager, it can be tempting to choose free tools to save on money. But the fastest way to build a business you love to work in is to ensure you have the best tools for the job.

Any tools you use to manage your client's social media marketing should be factored into their management fees.

Four areas every social media manager should invest in.

#1: The best social media scheduling tool

Scheduling content for your clients will undoubtedly make your life easier.  But which one should you choose? Of course, there are tons of free options, but your options will be limited, and you may struggle with a lack of features unless you upgrade.

Scheduling tools should be factored into your client fees so that you aren't taking the hit. If your budget doesn't cover the best tool for the job, you are likely undercharging and might need to increase your fees.

We use Metricool, which is popular within our communities. Metricool has great features for managing multiple clients.

We also love Agorapulse and Sprout Social for reporting – we simply download the report and send it straight to our clients without needing to reformat, rewrite or update.

#2:  Tools that make you look good!

We aren't talking about make-up artists and filters here! 

Certain tools out there will make you look good to your clients because they will bring them quick results. 

Your clients should be spending time and money on growing their email list; if they're not, then you should be educating them as to why this is so important.

But growing an email list can be time-consuming, and using paid ads can be expensive too. 

We grow our list quickly and automatically via our free Facebook community. If your client is using Facebook groups to grow their social media audience, imagine how impressed they'll be when you automatically help them grow their list too!

How to automatically save email addresses from a Facebook group.

GroupFunnels has saved us so much time and made us look proficient to our clients, so it's been money well spent. We've added over 7000 people to our email list using this tool.

If you are managing multiple clients, this tool is great as you can link it with multiple Facebook groups, which means even more time savings to be made!

There are lots of other tools that will make you look good to a client. Here are some of our favourites.

#3:  Tools for your own business

We weren't going to write a list of tools social media managers need and not include The Social Media Managers Toolkit, were we? 

We are all about making your life as a social media manager a little easier by providing you with the things you need to attract bigger and better-paying clients to provide you with a reliable and consistent income.

The Social Media Managers Toolkit means you can stop spending valuable time searching for the best way to present a proposal or onboard a new client. Ditch the worry that others are more professional, giving more value, or doing better than you.

It includes all the tools you need to find, onboard and professionally work with clients and turn them into long-term, loyal customers.  Find out more about The Social Media Managers Toolkit here

#4: Ongoing training & support

Social media platforms are constantly changing, but so is how people use them. So it is important to keep up with the times and invest in ongoing learning. Not just so you can stay at the top of your game as a social media marketer but also offer the services clients need and ensure your income increases too.

For ongoing learning and development, we'd recommend a mixture of in-depth courses and one-off training to keep you on top of your game.  This is something we invest in regularly ourselves and have seen the benefits pay off time and again.

Working as a freelancer with no team around you can often feel lonely. Who can you turn to for quick answers to an urgent problem? Who can you share your business achievements with or moan to when things don't go your way? The Inner Hub membership is the perfect place for you to get support, that community vibe you miss as a freelancer and access ongoing training, tools and information about social media marketing.

Join the waiting list for The Inner Hub here.

We have used affiliate links in this blog, which may provide a small commission but will not affect your purchase.  We only recommend products and services we truly believe in and have tried ourselves.