5 Free Apps to Help You Be More Consistent with Your CTE Social Media Marketing

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Staying consistent with your social media marketing is one of the biggest challenges when promoting your program.

You already need to spend time planning, teaching and assessing. Marketing your program can seem like one more thing. Am I right?

So that you are working smarter, and not harder, here are five free apps that you can use for your social media marketing. In addition to these apps, you will want to use a calendar to keep track of your ideas.
My Free Social Media Planning Guide will help you plan your content each week so you can be more consistent.

Lightroom Mobile for editing your social media marketing photos

Taking and posting photos of your students is one of the easiest ways to stay consistent on social media.

Unfortunately, your classroom, lab, or shop, may not have the best lighting for photos. This is where Lightroom Mobile comes in handy.

You can take a photo and then adjust all sorts of things to make the photo look better. If you want to get extra fancy (or extra lazy), find some free presets to use on all your photos.

To stay consistent, choose one day to take a bunch of photos in all your classes. Try different angles, groupings of students, and projects to highlight.

Next, spend some time editing your photos using similar settings or presets. You can even crop the images now as well.

Save them to a folder for future use. Your posts don’t need to be what is happening during your classes at that moment. They need to grab the attention and stop the scroll.

Canva for all your web-based design needs with your social media marketing

If you’re wanting to move beyond photos and images, then you need Canva. Canva is a web-based design tool that can be used on your computer or your phone.

Having access to both allows you to do more detailed work on your computer or switch out images on your phone.

There is a free version and a pro version. The pro version allows you access to more photos, templates, and elements. It also allows you to create a “brand” kit where you can save your colors and fonts that you like to use.

Here’s what’s great–Canva has an education program where teachers can get Canva pro free. Apply for the Canva Education account here.

Canva is very user-friendly. Besides the templates provided within the app, many others have created templates to share or buy.

Here are five customizable templates that you can use to promote your program using social media marketing.

Planoly for scheduling posts with a reminder notification

The best way to stay consistent is to plan out your posts in advance. For this, you will want to use a scheduler.

There are a bunch out there, and I admit that I have not tried many of them. I found Planoly and liked the features to use for Instagram. Because of that, I never felt the need to try anything different.

Once again, there is a free version and a paid version. I still use the free version which allows you to schedule and post 30 times in a month. That has been plenty for me.

Planoly has a computer version and a mobile app as well. You upload your image to either location, add a caption, and schedule.

You can choose to auto-post or send you a notification when you have “scheduled” your post. I like receiving a notification on my phone because then I am in control of the actual posting.

If you post that way, the app will guide you through copying and pasting your caption into Instagram. When I post this way, I am more aware of the posting, so I am able to respond to comments quicker.

Planoly also has a place where you can create and save hashtags. If you are using different hashtags for different topics this is useful because you can copy and paste them without having to type them each time you post.

Facebook’s Creator Studio for scheduling posts to Facebook and Instagram

If you’re not using Instagram or if you are using Facebook and Instagram, Facebook Creator Studio is for you.

This scheduler is accessed through Facebook. Scheduling is about the same as with Planoly, but you are not limited to 30 posts per month. But, auto-posting is the only option.

You can link your Facebook business page to your Instagram business account which will allow you to post both places. You will still need to create two different posts as it won’t post to both at the same time, but all it takes is copy and paste.

Google Keep for creating captions for your social media marketing

While scheduling your posts in advance saves the most time, you may still post on the spot.

When you do that, you are not going to want to type everything on your phone. Finding an app that is web-based that is on your computer and your phone is great for that.

If you already have a note-taking app that you like, use that. I’ve found that since I can open Google Keep through my Gmail, it makes it convenient on my computer.

With most notes apps, not only can you type captions to copy and paste later, but you can do the same for hashtags.