10 Social Media Tools That Make Everything Easier!

10 Social Media Tools That Make Everything Easier!

Social media marketing can be a pretty time consuming focus for any business, especially when you have to stay on top of multiple platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, the list goes on.

While social media is definitely a huge part of many small business marketing plans, it is still one facet of a much bigger picture and many entrepreneurs find themselves wishing there were more hours in the day to focus on the other aspects of their business.

To help give you a little more time in your day, yet continue to promote your social media presence, here’s a list of ten social media tools that I use (some more regularly than others) with my team, that can help your business top on top of things a little more.

If you’re wanting to get your social media to even higher heights without being involved every step of the way, you should also check out my guide on How to Work with a Virtual Assistant to Manage Your Social Media

Day-to-Day Management

Buffer –  A very popular tool for sharing content and supports Facebook, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn and Google+ profiles. The tool allows you to queue your posts in advance and provides you with analytics of your posts. Its clean and user-friendly interface also makes it a particular favorite among small business owners that are strapped for time.

Social Oomph – Since engagement is key in social media, this tool will help make things a lot easier for you. Social Oomph’s edge over other social media management tools is that it offers the auto-responder, auto-direct message and auto follow features as premium upgrade features.   

Buffer’s homepage message – I couldn’t agree more!

Content Collating and Curation

Feedly – The tool presents new content from several news feed categories that you can choose from, it also highlights popular content that you might find interesting. The tool can be used from your desktop or mobile devices to make sure you can check your feeds regularly. You can also alter the way it can be viewed to suit how you prefer to take in information.

Pocket – For busy entrepreneurs who may not have time during the day to read all the interesting articles they come across, read-it-later tools are a godsend. Pocket is a particular favorite with its clean and flat design, it makes it very easy to it to sort through content which you can save to read later either through your desktop or mobile devices.

Visual Content Creation Tools

Canva – Visual marketing is definitely here to stay with more and more people preferring to see content than read it. This tool can help you create effective graphic design with a user-friendly interface and beautiful design templates that suit beginner designers. The app is free though if you would like to avail of Canva’s stock photos, you will need to pay for them.

Visual.ly – If you feel like you don’t have enough time to come up with visual content, you can head on over to Visual.ly’s marketplace and let the professionals handle it. They specialize in infographics, videos, interactive and presentations, presenting quality content for much less than your average agency’s price.

 Now everyone can be a graphic designer, thanks to Canva!

Analytics and Reporting

Klout – Klout is one of the more popular social media monitoring tools that measures a user’s social influence based on their activity on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, etc. Recently, they have introduced a new version of Klout with a feature that allows you to curate content and share it with your audience as well.

Quintly – This tool provides you with analytics for several social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn. You can keep track and benchmark your social media performance along with your competitor’s. One popular feature is that it is highly customizable and has an easy-to-use dashboard for you to navigate from.

Miscellaneous ‘Cool’ Tools

Bitly –  Sometimes you find yourself having to get extra “creative” with spelling when composing a tweet, which is where Bitly can help. Bitly can shorten your links as well as track the link’s overall performance afterwards to see which ones work with your audience.

Mention – It’s always important to track what people are saying about you and your business, though the task can be daunting when there are so many social media platforms out there. Mention is a social media monitoring tool that informs you when someone mentions your name, business or any other keywords you would like to keep track of.

I’ve been a Bitly fan for a long time – it’s so easy to use, too!

As you can tell, there are a lot of ways you can skin the social media cat!

However, for me, as a busy entrepreneur and multiple business owner, its all about maximizing my time in the creation of the content and it’s results, along with minimizing the time I actually spend doing it all!

6 ways that businesses fail on social media

Make sure to avoid these common missteps

Target audience: Businesses, digital marketers, social media programmers, advertising agencies, SEO specialists, entrepreneurs, educators, journalists, Web publishers.

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any small business owners use social media as a marketing and customer-service tool. A recent industry survey tells us that 92 percent of marketers surveyed call social media important to their business. Despite the widespread use of social media, many business owners are inadvertently hurting their brand through their efforts, instead of growing and building their business. There are countless benefits of using social media, but remember that there are risks associated with using social media in your business. Here are six mistakes you may not realize you are making on social media.

Not responding to questions and comments

1It isn’t enough to simply post on social media. Posting, tweeting, pinning and so on are just one piece of the puzzle. You need to take as much time to read and engage your followers’ questions and comments as you do posting your own stuff. Respond quickly to comments and answer questions – it’s important!

Not being your true, authentic self

2It may seem like you can pull off a different personality on social media. You may have an idea in your head or who you should or want to be on social media – but this isn’t a smart strategy over the long term. Instead, be yourself. Share your true opinions and thoughts and let your personality shine through. Your audience would rather see and connect with the real you instead of one you pretend to be.

Thinking ‘It’s all about me! me! me!’

3Constantly promoting your products or business is one of the biggest and most harmful mistakes you can make. You don’t always need to make your business at the forefront of your posts. Quit the constant selling and stop subtly relating all posts back to your product or business. You may wonder how to write for social media. Strive to provide valuable content to your audience to keep your business in their minds because they like you instead of driving them away.

Not building relationships

4Social media isn’t about throwing your message in the face of your fans and followers. It isn’t even about sharing everything you know. If you aren’t working to build a community and foster relationships, you’re missing the most important aspect of social media marketing.

Over-posting

5A common reason people unfollow brands on social media is because they post too frequently. While there is no optimal number of times to post on each social networking site, take a look at this infographic, which can provide a great guideline of how often to post on various social media sites. This might be a good guideline: Facebook: 3 to 10 times a week; Twitter: at least 5 times a day; Pinterest: 5-10 times a day.

Posting the same type of content repeatedly

6Think about what you post on social media. Do you post just a few types of content? Do you share your blog posts and ask questions? Posting the same things time and again will cause your audience to block you – and your business – out.

If you’ve ever made any of these mistakes, you’re in good company. Learn from those missteps and remember that this form of marketing is an extremely powerful tool that can help your business grow and thrive when used consistently.