Need to learn what tools for a VA can really do all the work in 2021? Find out what are the gold-standard VA social media tools that will help you up your social media game and improve business efficiency.
What tools for virtual assistants?
To answer that question, one first has to think about what is expected of a virtual assistant. Those tasks usually include:
- general assistance (like responding to phone calls, e-mails, making itineraries);
- content writing and management;
- digital marketing, SEO, SEM;
- managing social media;
- social listening;
- web development;
- audio, image, and video editing.
Now, as one can see, there are a lot of tasks ascribed to being a virtual assistant. In this article, we focus only on these tasks which include posting on or monitoring social media and making content for it. Without further ado, let’s dive right in and see the best social media tools for virtual assistants.
Tools for virtual assistant: social media scheduling with Postfity
Have you been looking for a tool that allows you to schedule up to 10,000 posts in advance? Whether you plan your social media content strategy at the weekends, the same week it’s scheduled, or weeks before — Postfity is the go-to tool for you. What social media platforms can you schedule to? Postfity is supported on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and VKontakte. What is more, you can schedule Facebook covers and also posts for Facebook groups. It’s up to the user to choose if they prefer to send out just the text, or add emoticons, a shortened link, a picture or a video.
Postfity: features and functionalities
Let’s analyze all the features and functionalities of Postfity. What can you do with the tool and why do you need it? With Postfity you can:
- schedule and publish to multiple profiles directly on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and VKontakte,
- make drafts and a pending list of up to 10,000 social media posts,
- use the Calendar view to manage your posts, publish and plan posts for each day of the month,
- work with a team, grant different access levels, and send draft packages for approval,
- post photos and videos to your profile,
- edit your photos with a built-in image editor,
- watermark your photos with a built-in tool,
- create Snapshots to share on Instagram and other social networks,
- link to multiple pages at once in Instagram and TikTok bios with MyList.bio,
- save and add group of relevant hashtags with Snippets,
- get inspired with Holidays calendar,
- use Ideas and Social Tips Calendar with ready-to-use texts, hashtags, and images to engage your audience daily.
You can try out most of the functionalities for free. After the trial period, choose the right plan for your needs. Get a discount with an annual payment!
Tools for virtual assistant: online graphic design with Canva and Crello
It has been proven that images and videos attract more engagement than just plain text or a link in social media posting. Therefore, if you’re working to become a professional VA, you’ll need to be able to design an image for a post or an announcement. The following tools can make that creation process much easier.
Canva
What Canva is usually defined as is a graphic design platform where you can make different types of visual content. Whatever you need to create for your social media dealings — banners, covers, posters, promotional materials, simple post images and graphics, and even GIFs and videos — can be made easier with Canva. The designer team knows exactly what you need in terms of templates, and they have the formats ready, you just need to “fill in the picture”.
As regards how you “fill in” that picture, there are hundreds or thousands of photos, stickers, animated elements, fonts etc. in their database. You either select the item from the menu or simply drag and drop it. Everything is saved in real-time, so you can check every move you’ve made regarding your new project. Moreover, you can easily duplicate your previous designs with one click.
Canva can be used as a freemium tool, and it still enables downloading your designs. What is more, you can send and share your designs to whomever you wish and use them online, of course.
However, if you want to create a whole Brand Identity Kit, or upload new fonts, then you’ll need to purchase the Pro plan for $12.99 a month.
Canva is also available for smartphones with a very user-friendly mobile interface.
Crello
This is yet another freemium graphic design editor. Their brand motto is “Customize Your Design”, and that is truly what you can do with that software.
In fact, Crello is pretty similar to Canva when it comes to what it offers. First and foremost, Crello offers a plethora of useful templates for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and more. For example, you can easily use their templates for IG TV, Stories, and YouTube thumbnails. Secondly, they support different graphic formats.
Some main categories of templates one can expect to see in Crello are:
- socia media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Pinterest, YouTube, and more),
- website graphics,
- video and animation,
- covers and headers,
- marketing materials,
- designs for prints and PDFs,
- advertising materials.
When should you get Crello Unlimited? When you plan to use background removal or want to prepare content branding kits. Moreover, it will be necessary to go pro if you’ll need music and sounds for your animations. Provided you make annual payments, this software is available for $7.99 a month.
Additionally, Crello is also available for iOS and Android phones.
Tools for virtual assistant: apps for Stories creation — mojo, Storyluxe, and Ninetales
Allow me to introduce some of the most popular apps that can aid you in creating Stories for Instagram and similar graphic formats. These particular apps are trending and being promoted by independent users all over TikTok.
mojo
Using mojo you can create Reels, TikToks, and Facebook or Instagram Stories. Their biggest hit is captivating animated stories, not just motionless templates. You can create eye-catching stories with their dedicated beauty, fitness, business, and other templates. The app lets you use many different text styles, stickers, effects, and more.
With mojo you can create multiple pages of Stories that form an entire campaign or block.
The app is free to install, but also offers a premium plan with some extra functionalities.
Storyluxe
This is an app with similar functionalities to mojo, although they don’t focus as much on animated Stories templates. What can you find in the app? First of all, there are 700 photo and video templates available to all users, with filters and backdrops to top it off. Their formats work on Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram Stories. You can share your creations on social media directly from the app.
Download Storyluxe for free from your store.
Ninetales
Ninetales is yet another app that can help you design your Stories. It’s free to download (e.g. from App Store).
What you can get with Ninetales:
- hundreds of different templates, including Story templates,
- Infinity Gallery templates,
- 11 unique creative collections,
- sticker packs and icons collections,
- graphics from collabs with influencers and artists,
- motivational quotes for inspo,
- creative support.
Tools for virtual assistant: competitor analysis and inspiration with Buzzsumo
First of all, you should already know you ought to plan your content topics based on actual research. This entails that you find out what your target audience wants to read. The main question is: how should one approach this? Well, you simply spy on your competition. However, you don’t do it on your own, but manage it with the right software. Buzzsumo will let you check what posts your competitors have just publishedon their blog, which perform well, and also which topics have recently been the most popular in terms of shares on social media platforms.
Buzzsumo helps gauge what is set to resonate with your target audience. What you have to do on your own, however, is then provide more value to that audience via your content marketing strategy, i.e. in blog posts, webinars, and so on.
What Buzzsumo lists as its key features:
- content discovery,
- content research (indexing articles and blog posts),
- monitoring (tracking what’s happening onine at the moment),
- finding the right influencer for our niche, product etc.
Buzzsumo is also available as a Chrome extension. You can get the trial version of Buzzsumo and use it for 30 days free of charge. With an annual payment, Buzzsumo will cost you $79 a month.
Tools for virtual assistant: media monitoring and online reputation management with Brand24
What is Brand24? Its social listening turned into a massive media monitoring software that allows you access “brand mentions across social, news, blogs, videos, forums, podcasts, reviews and more” in real-time.
What is so unique about what they offer? Well, for example, the company employs automated sentiment analysis that detects whether this or that particular mention is positive, negative, or neutral. That lets you respond only to those reviews and mentions that you want (e.g. to negative ones to manage your online reputation). Brand24 offers instant notifications for negative mentions so you can react before it’s too late.
Brand24 allows you to detect any “buzz” surrounding your software, product, or brand as a whole. You can check your discussion volume chart every day or every week. This software enables data exporting and filtering as well.
Pricing plans start at just $49, or $41 with yearly payments.
Tools for virtual assistant: linking to multiple URLs in bio with MyList.bio
MyList.bio is a tool integrated with Postfity that lets you create sophisticated and user-friendly linking minisites for your bios. The tool allows you to create multiple separate accounts for any Instagram or TikTok account that you manage. It provides analytics for each link, social link, and account.
Main assets of Postfity’s MyList.bio:
- It’s very user friendly (plus you can see how it works in the tutorials before the purchase).
- You can create separate, customized minisites for each social, such as Instagram, TikTok or YouTube.
- The user has the full control over the visual aspect of each linking tile, and therefore, the whole page.
- Similarly, you can insert any images you’d like for your social links (Facebook, LinkedIn etc.), or use the default icons.
- It’s very easy to add new links and make any update.
- The intuitive interface will let you switch the tiles in no time, rearrange them, and change their captions.
- You choose the URL for your MyList.bio, therefore no random names will be generated.
- There is dark mode available for any user on your page.
- One can create as many accounts as are necessary.
- You can easily access the analytics for each account and link. See page views, links clicks, and social links clicks. Moreover, the analytics for each account let you measure where the traffic comes from (e.g. from TikTok or from Instagram).
You can compare MyList.bio with their biggest competitors: Linktree and Linkit.
Conclusions
Among those listed apps and software, you should be able to find one that suits your needs. Most of them can be used in everyday virtual assistance geared towards social media.
If you’re not sure, remember most of them are free, freemium, or offer trials. Now go, set up those accounts!
