Yeah… The agency life isn’t easy.

The constant rush. The pressure. Deadlines that keep you awake at night. And clients making demands even the gods themselves wouldn’t attempt to meet…

Yup, it’s not for the faint of heart. Believe me, I know. I’ve been in this game for a quite some time too.

This pressure is one reason many of us regularly scour the web looking for anything that could help. Tools, templates, ready-made processes, cheat sheets.

OK, at least I do. Darn, give me anything that could help speed things up and help get shit done!

And in this week’s post, I thought I’ll show you a couple of social media tools that, although are small and might seem insignificant at first, can, in fact, make a big dent in your time management and output.

Intrigued? Then sit back, relax, and let me show you the 5 tools that will help save your agency time while multiplying your results.

#1. Keep Your Clients’ Social Queue Full with Quuu.co

I’m sure you’ll agree: The last thing you want to happen is having a client’s social media queue run dry…

After all, they pay you to keep it running. It’s just with the constant demands and pressure; it’s easy to let updating it skip for a day or two…

Luckily, some tools can help take that burden off your shoulders (or at least ease it a bit). And Quuu.co is one of them.

Quuu.co is an online service that hand-picks updates based on categories you’ve selected and adds them to a Buffer account. From there on, you can either remove an update, if you aren’t happy with it or let the service publish it to your social accounts.

I’ve been using the service for a couple of weeks on my personal Twitter account (@pawelgra77) and so far, there has been no more than two or three tweets I wasn’t happy about. Pretty good for something like 100 tweets it had scheduled for me already.

(screenshot of Quuu’s categories)

Quuu is free to use for two updates a day and there’s only a limited number of categories you can select. For $10/mo you get ten posts a day, and unlimited categories.

Quuu also offers the option to promote your content. You can add your posts to the service, with fees ranging from $5 to $25 per tweet (depending on the popularity of a category you aim for). I haven’t tested this option yet, but it surely looks promising.

#2. Use Edgar to Reuse Old Social Media Updates on Autopilot

Although Edgar works on a slightly different premise to Quuu, it delivers a similar benefit – a social media queue that never runs dry.

However, instead of constantly adding new content, Edgar reuses the updates you have already posted.

Edgar adds every message you post to its online library to publish later. Every time it posts an update, it adds it back to the library, to the bottom of the list to post again, when all the messages ahead of it go live.

Edgar offers an option to create a never-ending stream of updates. And of course, the more messages you add to the queue, the bigger your library becomes, and the more diverse your social activity becomes.

Edgar accepts users by invitation only (you can request it here) and once accepted, you have to pay $49/mo to use the service.

#3. Find Out the Optimum Time to Schedule Social Updates with WorldTimeBuddy

Here’s a challenge I’m sure you’re darn familiar with:

Your client’s latest content piece goes live. They send you a link and some basic information about it so you could fire off the sequence of tweets, Facebook updates, and any other social media updates you schedule to promote it. And you need to target audiences scattered pretty much everywhere… at the same time! These people live in different time zones than you and the only way to get to them is by posting when they’re up.

That’s where WorldTimeBuddy comes handy.

This world clock allows you to simultaneously see the time in different places around the globe. And what attracts me to it is that it shows it in a very visual way. Instead of showing a row of analog clocks like iOS does, it uses a table like layout and highlights the current time across locations you’ve specified.

WorldTimeBuddy is free to use for up to 4 locations. You need to pay 6 bucks per month to get unlimited locations.

At my agency, usermagnet.io, we use a specific schedule to set social media updates for every clients’ content we publish. The schedule includes guidelines on when to post and what time. However, the actual hour depends on a number of factors – what time the post originally went live, and what market the client targets.

WorldClockBuddy helps us to precisely schedule the sequence of updates to achieve the highest exposure.

#4. Quickly Create Multiple Branded Graphics with Relay

Branded graphics. Ugh… No, not that I have anything against them. But sometimes there are just too many to do for a single campaign.

Quote graphics, social media updates, social ads (with each network having its set of rules and guidelines), cover images for Slideshare, Youtube, calls to action… gosh, the list goes on and on, doesn’t it?

Relay allows to create the majority of those visual assets, output them in different variations, use themes, automatically resize to different formats, and even have the system to test them for social media sites’ guidelines. And the best part? Everything is set to be dead easy to use.

Here’s a screenshot of the basic styles within the app. Note that everything’s already preset. All you have to do is add content and images, without having to worry about the nitty gritty design bits you probably have no clue about anyway (I know I don’t).

And here’s how the actual editor looks like.

Finally, a quick graphic I created to our latest post:

Nothing spectacular, I know. But keep in mind that my goal wasn’t to create an astonishing graphic but show you how quick and easy to use all the tools in Relay are.

As for costs: after the free trial you can choose the free basic version or the pro subscription for $8 a month.

#5. Insert Emoji Without Any Effort with CopyPasteCharacter

Emoji have taken the world by storm. I wrote about using emoji in marketing already here on AdEspresso (if you’ve missed the post, check it out here).

But the challenge is, how to incorporate them into your tweets or other social media updates?

The answer, CopyPasteCharacter.com.

This simple tool contains hundreds of emoji categorized in different sets that you can copy and paste (as images or HTML) at a click of a mouse.

It takes nothing more than clicking on an emoji, and you’re done.

What do you think?

Can you see these tools helping you out with your work?

Do you know any other smart tools that could help the agency folk save time and get more done? Share them with us in the comments.