USAID Social Media Tools

(Updated March 2022)

Use the below list of tools and online software solutions to create content, share more visually appealing stories,
and collect and share metrics.

ORGANIZATIONAL TOOLS
● HootSuite allows a user to monitor and post to multiple social networks, including Facebook,
Twitter and Linkedin. It is the program used by USAID’s digital team and many missions.
● Facebook Creator Studio: Use Facebook creator studio to schedule and manage all your content
for your Facebook page. For Missions that have Instagram, you can link your Instagram page with
Facebook Creator Studio to schedule Instagram content, view metrics, and more.
● Facebook Business Manager: Business manager is your one-stop-shop for ads. As opposed to
just clicking ‘boost’ post in the traditional Facebook app, Business Manager lets you create
custom audiences, run A/B testing all in one place, and more.
● Twitter Studio: view and manage all your visual assets in one place! See all photos and videos
ever posted to your account here, organized chronologically. Select images and videos to draft
and schedule tweets.

LISTENING/MONITORING TOOLS
● Hashtagify.me allows you to search for the best Twitter hashtags to use, as well as to see other
possible hashtags and content related to your specific hashtags.
● Talkwalker Allows you create a report for the reach of a brand, company or campaign (via
hashtag). Results show audience demographics, most popular social media posts, as well as blogs
and news sites where they might be mentioned.
● Hubspot’s Marketing Grader gives a data score for the usability and marketability of any website.
● SocialMention is a free tool that allows you to monitor sentiment and conversation on blogs,
microblogs and other trackable socialized sites like Google and Flickr. The platform allows you
to enter search terms and sort through what items are floating around in these digital spaces.
● Followerwonk allows you to search out and monitor Twitter users based on specific search
terms or connections to brand tags like “USAID”

METRICS
● Google Analytics lets you measure your advertising ROI as well as track your Flash, video, and
social networking sites and applications. Contact the web team (web@usaid.gov) to gain access
to Google Analytics.
● Hootsuite: Hootsuite’s built in metrics platform can give you custom graphics and metrics for
any chosen timeline. This is the primary platform the social media team in LPA uses to pull basic
metrics.
● Mention Map creates a visual representation of who mentions traceable conversation on twitter.
● Brandwatch: the LPA webteam has a license to brandwatch, where they can pull detailed metrics
(primarily for Twitter, but also Facebook and Instagram). Send your requests to web@usaid.gov
with timeline, keywords, and metrics you wish to see, and they’ll get you metrics within a week.
● Take time to explore the analytics on the platforms themselves. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
all provide valuable data regarding the demographics of your audience, the times they are most
active, and which types of posts are resonating with your key constituents in terms of
engagement.
CONTENT CREATION
● Canva: the best graphic design resource for people who aren’t graphic designers. The free
version has more than enough elements available to design almost anything.
○ **Caveat, this platform is not CIO approved - but contractors are able to use the
platform to create visual files they can share with you directly as png files.
● Adobe Creative Cloud Express This a new free tool from Adobe that attempts to mimic the
ease of use of Canva. Has several creative features such as remove background from image,
convert video files, resize images/videos etc.
● Giphy is a tool that you can use to create animated GIFs from video files and YouTube links.
● Knightlab: free online resource for digital storytelling tools. Their slogan: “We build easy-to-use
tools that can help you tell better stories.”
● The Noun Project: icons, ALL types of icons and photos for free!
● Remove Background: don’t have access to Adobe creative cloud? Remove background will let
you upload an image and remove the background for free.
● EzGIF convert mp4s to GIFs, and vice versa. Make the development of custom GIFs that can be
used on a variety of platforms.
● PhotoCollage is a simple way of organizing and sizing multiple photos to be used for a single post
or purpose.
● Postify: create Tweet Screenshots to share on other social platforms.
● Otter: Create video transcriptions up to 45 minutes long

FILE SHARING and STORAGE

● We Transfer is an FTP client that allows you to access servers for file upload and file transfer.
Best for smaller files or one-time transfer.
● DropBox is an FTP client access servers for file upload and file transfer. Best for larger files or
files that need to be accessible online for an extended period of time
● Sendspace is another file sharing platform geared towards sharing of large files like video,
high-resolution imagery, and multimedia presentations.
● Don’t forget that Google Drive is an excellent resource for aggregating and sharing files of all
kinds.

PAID SOCIAL RESEARCH

● Spyfu is a tool used to measure Google ad spends by almost any company. This is important
because it can tell you how competitive your adwords space is and if it tells you directly how
much money your competition is spending.
● Facebook Ads Library: want to know what other gov’t organizations are using paid advertising
for? Search and find the answer here.

MORE LINKS
● Accessible-Social: a website with how-to guides for creating accessible friendly social media.
● Social Media Image Sizes: quickly reference this site to find the ideal image and video size for
each social media platform.
● Emojipedia: your easy quick go-to online resource for searchable emojis. Copy and paste into
any social media platform.
● Unsplash: find freely usable images here.
● Google Data Studio: Create visual reports
● Hubspot’s International Days Google Calendar: track national (US) and international days. Click
the link to add it to your USAID google calendar.
● 47 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools
● BestHashtags provides suggestions for hashtags building engagement based planned topics or
other hashtags. Best usage case is for Instagram and to select a few hashtags which work best for
any given post.
● Unfold is a free app-based tool that is useful for developing Instagram Stories using
template-based formats.
● USAID Flickr: images free for use on any USAID platform. Please give photographer credit as
listed in the caption of the image.
● DVIDS: find free to use photos captured by the U.S. military.