Are you using the right social media tools to manage your social media presence?
As the demands on social media marketers increase, it can be difficult to find time to do everything. But there are some great tools that can help you save time and increase the effectiveness of your efforts. In conjunction with our infographic on "The Day in the Life of a Busy Social Media Marketer" (see the post), here is our full list of over 29 time-saving social media & content tools you can use on a daily basis. Start by picking a few to test—it will make your life so much easier.
RELATED CLASS: Best Practices for Integrated Content & Social Media Marketing
Going to work
Depending on how you get to work there are some applications that can help you get ahead before the day even starts.
1. Downcast is an iPhone and Mac app for listening to podcasts. You subscribe to your podcasts and then download them when you have a wireless connection.
2. Evernote is a great note taking application that is available on your phone or desktop. Quite often we come up with the bones of an idea but we’re not sure where to store it. Evernote is great for capturing that idea.
3. Zite is an application you can use to catch up on the latest industry news or blog posts.
Early morning creative time
Early in the morning is a great time to get some creative and planning work done for the day. Create content, share content, or maybe kick off a marketing campaign.
Writing blog posts
4. Hubspot is a good platform for creating and sharing your content. Or use WordPress (#5) where you can publish great content at the touch of a button.
Email Marketing/Automation
6. Aweber: At this part of the day you might open up AWeber to create your newsletter for the day or schedule some updates for later on.
7. Infusionsoft: You might use Infusionsoft to create some automated emails for your new subscribers.
Kick off a competition
Facebook competitions are a great tool for building awareness of a new product or promotion or just building engagement and new fans.
8. Agorapulse and ShortStack (#9) provide competitively priced solutions that you’ll have up and running in minutes.
Schedule out the content
It makes perfect sense to schedule out some content on social media. After all, we can’t be available 24 hours a day!
10. Dlvr.it automates the delivery of blog content to a variety of social networks. When you write your new blog post you want to make sure that your audience gets it. You have a very busy day ahead of you so automate what you can.
11. Bundle Post helps you find and schedule out the most relevant content to your audience.
12. PostPlanner will help you find and schedule out Facebook content. The content discovery engine will search the Internet and find the most popular content based on your niche.
Mid-Morning Catch up
It is mid-morning already, time to check how things are going.
13. Mention: A monitoring tool that will keep an eye out for mentions of your brand, product, service or competitor.
13. Viralheat: A full social media management tool that has a very useful monitoring solution. If you want social media management and monitoring in the one solution Viralheat is definitely one to consider.
14. Feedly: Catch up on all the blogs you have subscribed to using this really nicely designed and user friendly web and mobile application.
15. Scoop.it: A content curation platform where the members of the community find great content and organize it into boards. By following relevant people on Scoop.it you can save a ton of time finding content yourself.
16. Buffer: A content scheduling application. You find content on the web and click a button to ‘buffer’ it, which places it in a queue where it waits to be delivered at the next available time slot.
17. Triberr: Make your content available to the tribes in Triberr and they will help share it out. A community of bloggers hungry for your content.
18. Hootsuite: For organizing, monitoring and managing your day to day interaction on Twitter, Hootsuite is a very useful tool.
19. Sprout Social: If you want a more visually appealing platform with better reporting options, Sprout Social is also a popular choice.
20. Nimble: If you understand the value of building relationships through social media then Nimble is a perfect tool to help you track the people and interactions and ultimately build relationships.
Lunch-time check-up
21. Flipboard: Why not catch up on a bit of reading using Flipboard which is an alternative to Zite. We’ve listed a collection of great blogs so you can catch up on the latest in your industry.
Mid afternoon coffee
You might be experiencing a lull but the coffee will perk you up!
22. Disqus: Check the comments on your blog and respond. Disqus powers so many blogs and it’s really powerful.
Time to give Hootsuite a quick check to see if your name or company has been mentioned. Have a look through your stream to find any conversations worth engaging in.
23. GroupHigh: After writing your great content it’s time to go out and promote it. GroupHigh has a database of 15 million blogs that you can search to find relevant people to reach out to in order to promote your content.
24. Littlebird: This tool is in beta but has a lot of promise. It’s a platform for identifying key influencers validated by peers on any topics.
25. Buzzstream: When you do a lot of blogger outreach it’s difficult to keep track of all the conversations and the results. Buzzstream helps you manage this.
Time for the gym: podcasts!
A nice relaxing run on the treadmill. But while you’re on the treadmill you might as well catch up on some great podcasts.
26. Entrepreneur on Fire: Listen to John Lee Dumas grill the entrepreneurs to get those nuggets of information we all can learn from.
27. MarketingProfs' Marketing Smarts: Listen to Kerry Gorgone as she interviews a wide variety of really interesting marketing and entrepreneurial people.
28. Amy Porterfield: Amy runs a very successful online business and shares lots of great information from her own personal experience and from her guests.
29. Social Media Examiner: Founder Mike Stelzner interviews the top marketers in the industry and delivers results every time.
Down time
The only tool we need for downtime is a TV. Time to relax!
Bonus! Time for bed (you really should be sleeping...)
It’s coming up to bed time but we are keen to see how the day went. Check in on your results with these tools.
30. Google Analytics: Check to see what goals you achieved and traffic obtained.
31. Kissmetrics: Find out who was interacting with our site and what they were doing.
32. Tailwind: Find out who is pinning our content and what content is trending.
Night night!
31.Notepad & pen: Time to go to sleep, but in the middle of the night you wake up with an amazing idea. No gadgets or tools—just a notepad and pen!
Final Comments
As you can see you can be kept very busy with social media. Consider the tools you are currently using and see if you can use other tools that will make you more efficient and effective.
We all like some ‘down’ time so we hope the ideas and tools we have provided here will help.
Have you used the tools listed above? Would you add any to the list?
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