Government social media professionals have a lot to keep up with — creative tools, accessibility, popular trends, and so much more. Here are 3 useful tools and resources to help you stay up to speed in your government social media professional role.

Use Canva like a pro

If you don’t already use Canva, you may want to consider creating an account (depending on your needs, even a free account may be the answer!). Its user-friendly interface makes creating graphics, presentations and any other visual content pieces easy. Here are some other reasons why Canva may be a useful tool for your government agency:

• Canva offers team accounts so multiple people can work together.
• You can publish designs as templates that everyone in your team can access.
• It has an easy resize tool where you can create a design and resize for multiple sizes.
• Stay on-brand by transferring your brand kit to Canva, then with a click of a button you can easily apply your brand colors/style to your designs.

While Canva can be a useful tool, we also want to recognize that it isn’t a replacement for all the incredible work a graphic designer can do on your team. Check out this Government Social Media Chat (#GSMChat) recap for some criticisms and wins on this platform from your peers.

Check your accessibility

It’s also important to create accessible content across the board. Keep in mind, if you’re linking outside of social media, opting for video or sharing a static graphic, all will need a different process. Here are some tools:

• If you’re creating a social media campaign that links back to a webpage, WAVE accessibility checker can help you ensure that your landing page meets accessibility (a11y) requirements.
• Rev.com is an affordable, easy-to-use service that offers captioning services. This is especially helpful when you’re looking for a quick turnaround to video captioning.
• Use in-platform alt text features on all your posts with static graphics. If you’re not familiar with these specific features, here are some quick links:
• Facebook Accessibility Support Features
• Twitter Accessibility Support Features: Images
• Instagram Accessibility Support Features: Images
• LinkedIn Accessibility Support Features

You can also follow these accessibility tips to strengthen your efforts.

Network with other socialgovs

Team GSM offers a free network that’ll help you connect with your fellow socialgov community! In this free network you can chat and ask questions to the rest of the community, find contact information to all the popular social platforms, stay up-to-date with social media news and more. You can upgrade to be a member of our professional association at any time where you’ll get access to everything in the network plus trainings, webinars and more.

You can also join our Government Social Media Community Facebook Group if you’re looking for a space to seek advice, provide social media strategy and talk about social media best practices and challenges with your peers.

Have fun creating social media content with these tools!

Best communicate with the public you serve by becoming a part of the free Government Social Media network — only available to full/part-time employees of government or educational institutions. 

We support the largest network of government social media professionals in the U.S. by guiding government agencies through complex social media issues. Government Social Media helps you successfully communicate with the public you serve, protect your agency and keep public trust while finding your support community.