There are many social media tools out there. The question now is, which one to choose? Where to start? Unlike digital journalism, online marketing is similar to a big umbrella where almost everyone has different needs. Of course, a solid marketing strategy and hard work is the key to a successful social media marketing, yet clever use of some of these tools can quickly boost your plan.
Here is a list of eight social media tools that we think are worth trying out:
1. Mention
Imagine Mention as a social media alternative to Google Alerts. Mention will tell you to ‘social mentions’ all on Facebook, Twitter and more with its user-friendly interface. It also offers real-time alerts, and allows you assign various social media tasks to the rest of your team. It’s a great way of staying on top of your social media monitoring. On top of all, Mention also allows you to export all your data to spreadsheets or PDFs for further analysis.
2. Scoop.it
The notion behind Scoop.it is pretty simple and straightforward – just type the keywords you’re interested in to create a dedicated list per topic, and let the search engine and curator combination that powers Scoop.it find the content that works for you. Once that’s done, Scoop.it makes it incredibly easy to publish into numerous platforms at the same time with just a few clicks. It’s simple and easy.
3. Infogram
Infographics are one of the most appealing ways of visualising your content for sharing on social media. The problem is they’re often expensive and time-consuming projects. With Infogram, that no longer has to be the case. There are 30 designs to choose from, from pie charts to tree-maps. It’s easy to add your stats and copy too – just follow the instructions. Infogram also promises to roll-out the ‘world’s first video infographic creator‘ sometime this year.
4. Tweepi
Tweepi is a Twitter management tool. It maximises your Twitter account’s potential by eliminates unfollowers, allows you to identify key people to follow in different areas, and makes it easy to analyse your followers. It brings social media marketing back to its groundwork: helping you to engage with other people in your sphere.
5. Buffer
Buffer is the perfect tool for managing your Twitter flow. If you have many blog posts to push out, it’s a brilliant way of managing exactly when your audience gets to see it on screen. Buffer features a brilliant publishing schedule that makes it easy to keep on top of your content flow on Twitter. Make sure you use its Chrome plugin to share interesting stories without having to leave the page.
6. Bit.ly
Most people might familiar with this tool. Its main use lies in shortening unwieldy strings of URL into a tidy link, particularly useful for sharing on Twitter. However, a free sign-up also brings many advantages. Track the number of clicks in real time, see what when the link was most popular (and what countries), and compare it to other links that you’ve posted. It’s also a quite handy bookmarking tool.
7. Socialbakers
Expert marketers know that when all the hard work in attracting attention is done, you will need to look back to see what worked and what flopped. Socialbakers shows you all sorts of social media metrics, analytics and statistics on your campaigns. It quickly compare brands’ strength across different platforms and nail your engagement rates on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more. Even if you think your last campaign was a roaring success, you will need to compare it to industry standards to get the objective idea.
8. Spike
Spike tracks over 200,000 pieces of content everyday in real time. Ranking the stories that are performing strongest on Facebook and Twitter, Spike offers social media marketers a 360° look at the themes and topics that are driving conversation in their niche, right now.