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There are lots of digital tools out there to help you to understand how your practice performs on social media and optimise performance. Some cost thousands but some offer limited capability using free versions or one-off trials. Here’s a selection of some you might find useful in your practice.

1. Canva – this great little site allows you to upload images and create some basic designs. If you want to add your practice logo to a photo for use on social media this is the tool to do it. There’s also a small selection of images available to purchase if you need them – often for just one dollar. There are templates for special events like Christmas and you can even branch out into creating leaflets or posters.

2. Followerwonk – this is useful to help you determine when your Twitter audience is online. Just one thing to think about is that general audiences are often online at around the same time so you tend to face more competition from other posts at that time. Get the knowledge about your audience but continue to post at different times and see what works best for your practice. The tool also provides other insights into your audience behaviours – and don’t forget to delve into existing Twitter analytics to check your audience insights reflect the demographic you are aiming for.

3. Klout – this tool both allows you to find topical stories that are of interest to your account and also provides a numerical score that rates your influence within your social community. Although it’s not a complete analytics solution by any means, having a one-off score is easy to understand and track. You can also compare your performance with other accounts that are registered with Klout. The higher your score, the harder it is to progress – the score is logarithmic. Beware – checking out your score and bettering it can get quite compulsive!

4. Hashtagify – want to talk about a topic but not sure what hashtags will help you snag an audience on Twitter or Instagram? This allows you to see what hashtags are most popular. You may want to throw a few ideas into the mix to get the best choices but it’s really useful as it rates popularity and identifies the top influencers using that hashtag.

5. Hootsuite – having a scheduling tool is really handy if you are using both Facebook and Twitter. It allows you to set the time your post goes out and if you are managing more than one account it saves having multiple log ins. You can of course schedule directly into Facebook which lets you choose the best time for your post to optimise reach and also means that you can be ‘on social’ even when you are not ‘on social’. By stacking up all your content in advance you can have all your images and posts created when you have spare time taking the pressure off busy periods (or even allowing you to enjoy some down time).