Manage that (social) media – New Media Review 8

In the New Media Review, we break down 3 tools that could help you personally and/or professionally.

More and more of us are using Social Media as part of our everyday lives, whether it’s for work or personal (or both!) This week’s New Media Review will look at 3 tools which will make juggling your social media presence that little bit smoother.

Grammarly

Does the idea of making typos on social media make you cringe? Grammarly has got your back. Grammarly is a website and browser extension combination designed to ensure your content makes sense.

The Grammarly browser extension reads your work as you type online, flagging up typos as you go. Great for posting tweets or sending those important emails that you can’t risk any mistakes on. Grammarly can pick up 250 types of grammatical mistake and highlights any spelling errors. Grammarly can even tell which version of there/their/they’re you should be using.

If Grammarly is working for you as a Chrome plug-in, there’s also a website version. Upload your documents and Grammarly will scan through them and make suggestions.

Grammarly is available as a free Chrome plug in and online. Grammarly premium includes extra features such as a plagiarism detector, vocabulary enhancements, and advanced grammar checking.

Grammarly is available for Chrome.

Canva

In awe of the beautiful visuals people and businesses post on their social media accounts? Think you need expensive design software to make great graphics? Whether you need funky Instagram post or professional posters, Canva is the tool for you.

Canva is an online graphics creation platform with all the tools you need to make graphics for anything – posters, social media, infographics, the options are extensive.
If you are struggling for ideas there are plenty of templates to adapt and build upon. Delete, rephrase and change these to build a customised graphic to suit your needs.

Canva has a user-friendly, drag and drop style interface, and no additional software is needed, Canva has an extensive tutorial section, offering hints and tips on the basics through to design and layout advice. Once you’ve made your design it can be exported as a JPEG, PNG, PDF or shared with others.

Canva is available at canva.com.

IFTTT (If This Than That)

Have you ever wished that all your apps and accounts were just a little more connected? Do you follow the same workflows on your mobile device and wish it could be automated? If This Than That (also known as IFTTT) can help you streamline your time by connecting applications and triggering actions between them.

IFTTT uses recipes known as ‘Applets’ which triggers an action on a service when a task is executed on another. For example:

“When I post a picture on Instagram, save the photo in my Dropbox”

“Automatically post Tweets on Facebook when a particular hashtag is included”

“Back up photos you’re tagged in on Facebook to an iOS photo album”

IFTTT works with numerous apps, services and platforms. Popular ones include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Reddit, Tumblr and YouTube. However, it’s not just for social media, as IFTTT applets can also be created for tools such as Fitbit, Spotify, Evernote, Google Calendar and Docs as well as many internet connected appliances. The list is extensive.

There are numerous pre-programmed applets on the IFTTT site, but you can also create your own custom ones. Any recipe can be stopped at any time – so if a process isn’t working for you aren’t tied to it.

P.S. whilst all the applet example we’ve listed are practical, there’s plenty of fun ones too. We particularly like the option to get a phone notification whenever the International Space Station passes over your home and the option to change your Twitter profile picture to a random cat at midnight on every Caturday.