Any small business owner knows how vital it is to have access to free or cheap tools that help to keep the business running smoothly. Social media is a big key to the success of all activity in this hyper-connected time. With everything in social media use what works for your business and your intentions.

Utilize Social Mentions. While we are busy getting out messages across on all your social platforms, have you spent some time tracking the impact? Or what other people are saying about you? Set up a listening station with social mentions as see what people are saying about you.

Set yourself up on Buffer’s tasty free plan. This will allow you free up loads of time, by scheduling ten posts at a time. If you want to save even more time and don’t mind a little spend, Buffer’s pro plan allows for eight social profiles and 100 posts. If you don’t get on with Buffer, then have a go with Hootsuite– equally packed with time-saving resources and different pricing options.

Canva, an incredibly easy to use design platform, and while it does have a paid for options too, you can pretty much get what you need as a small business on the free version. It has multiple templates, plenty of font options, and is very easy to use.

If you are planning any regional sales, product launches or want to take a look at what is trending, then TrendsMap is for you. It tracks what the most used hashtags in a set location.

You probably have plenty of links floating around the internet, and apart from Google Analytics what you are you using to track them. Bit.ly can help you track individual links and see how they progress during a campaign.

To keep tabs on your social media growth, Cyfe is a handy tool. The free dashboard has plenty of options. The information populates pretty quickly, and the overview is helpful. The quicker you implement social media analytic tools, the better.

To help boost your social media engagement, check out Spruce, and Click to Tweet. Spruce creates share-worthy photos, while Click to Tweet provides links within your blog that readers can easily share.

A couple of content marketing tools that should be in your arsenal are Feedly, Contently and CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer. Feedly is a quick tool which enables you curate news from various feeds and share across your social channels. Contently helps brands to connect with photographers, writers, designers and other freelancers – to create quality content. And finally, CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer – does what it says on the tin – pop your proposed headline in the box, hit analyze and it will check the length, structure, emotion and a few other things to help you get the most attention-grabbing title.

Bonus Tip: Keep a paper file or folder, with clearly written round labels on the front so you won’t misplace the file (or forget) and each month either make a note or print off your stats. Take a look at what worked and what didn’t and plan for the month ahead.