Cider Corner: Important Tools to Help Organize Your Social Media

Likes and clicks help drive social media algorithms and keeping the back end of your social media channel organized can help keep those engagements flowing.

For Portland Cider, Helen Lewis saw they see a lot more engagement on Instagram than any other social channel.

“We notice that our target audience tends to be more active here,” she said, noting that Reels are great tools to get high engagement with video views while using a call to action in your caption like “comment below” is useful too, but you must use value rich content.

“Social media is our primary outward marketing platform, outside of our pubs, so we feel like every post is a marketing tool to tell our story,” Lewis said. “We try to create a content calendar which differentiates our social posts to cover all our marketing goals.”

Swilled Dog notices that its loyal followers like and comment on posts, but the Virginia cidery sees the most engagement with stories, not only in terms of views but people sharing the content in their personal stories. 

Keeping up can be a challenge, but using Hootsuite has been a valuable tool for planning and scheduling content in advance, said Swilled Dog’s Kim Kirk.

“It enables us to track our activity and engagement across a number of platforms from one dashboard,” she said.

Instasize is the one Original 13‘s Petra Manchina uses the most.

“Instasize lets you edit and resize photos,” she said. “I also like the app Bettr. It lets you schedule posts I can spend a few hours scheduling what I’m going to post over the next few weeks.”

Lewis said that Portland Cider uses Planoly for Instagram scheduling and analytics.

“It’s most valuable for analytics, because there are some limitations in scheduling — you can’t post carousels or reels directly with the platform. But being able to see a preview of your grid is great for ensuring you’re keeping the look and vibe you want.”

Lewis noted that Lightroom is great for editing.

“To have a consistent look, invest in a good pre-set family,” she said. “The Hashtag Expert app is useful for finding relevant hashtags for your posts.”