Sitting down and planning a strategy and your ethos and message is really important, but you cannot get your message out there without help.
You need to embrace technology and software especially in this day and age with AI.
You need to pay for these tools but as with any investment, you should be measuring it and aiming to get a return which is much more than the outlay.
Without software, you are making life very hard for yourself and trying to run up the hill when you could buy a bike (or a car).