Consultant Amanda Johns Vaden delivered a wealth of practical tips for using social media to drive business during an education session at ASI Show Dallas on Wednesday. In her class, “The Social Media Success Workshop,” Vaden focused particularly on using smart strategies and helpful tools to streamline social media management to generate sales-stoking results.

Here are some of her top tips:

Utilize Hootsuite:
This social media unification tool allows you to simultaneously update various social platforms (like Twitter and Facebook), schedule future posts and measure the ROI of your posts – something that helps you fine-tune your approach to get more likes, shares and views. Advance scheduling and simultaneous posting saves a huge amount of time, said Vaden who recommends using quieter moments to line up posts for about a week or so out. “About 90% of what you see on social media from our company (over a week) is scheduled in about an hour,” said Vaden, a senior partner at Southwestern Consulting. Hootsuite offers functions that let users review feeds from different social platforms in one place, all while allowing you to refine what you pay attention to in those streams. That cuts through much of the clutter, and helps clue you in quickly to what’s most important for your business.

Get on Instagram:
This online platform enables you to share photos and videos through its mobile app, as well as on other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Because of Instagram’s highly visual nature and photo-refining capabilities, it’s especially well-suited to promo distributors, who can show off products, great branded merchandise they’ve done for clients and more. Vaden advises tying about 80% of your Instagram posts into your business, while making the remaining 20% personal – something that helps build your brand and humanizes you to prospects and clients. Also, tagging posts with keywords that are relevant to promotional products, your geographic location and particular markets you serve is also wise, she said. Additionally, follow competitors, colleagues, your company, yourself and Instagram influencers whose posts get a lot of views. This will help you do everything from identify opportunities and build relationships, to generate more views and even respond swiftly to customer praise and complaints.

Be Smart About What You Post:
Vaden said the line between what’s personal and what’s business has become blurred into near non-existence on social media. So, be prudent about what you post. “If I wouldn’t share it with my client in person, I wouldn’t share it online,” she said.