Social media marketing, promotions, and advertising have grown by leaps and bounds. This platform increases visibility and targets some of the most desirable audience demographics. There’s no question that this is the wave of the future. But as this phenomenon takes center stage, it is becoming a bit unwieldy. There’s a lot to manage when you’re managing your social media marketing. Brands need to be able to communicate internally, curate content, measure analytics and metrics, and monitor channels.
Because social media marketing takes many forms including texts, posts, articles, videos, graphics, and more, it’s not always easy to wrangle everything. Old-school ways don’t always work well when there are so many different types of content to manage and new kinds of analytics to crunch. Individual contributors, teams, agencies, and brands all need to be able to work efficiently and effectively in this special space. And as always, when there’s a space to fill, there are new niche businesses rushing in to fill it. There are plenty of tools out there to help brands maximize efficiency in their social media marketing efforts, and eight of the best are shown below. Take advantage of what they have to offer so that you can do what you do best and grow your business or brand.
Buzzlogix: Buzzlogix is designed for social media monitoring and listening. It provides topic streams of posts pulled from all over the web, the ability to schedule posts, and direct alerts and messaging. The topic streams enable you to know what people are saying about you, your brand, your market, and your competition across a wide range of platforms. You can even search the streams for highly specific terms. The dashboard makes data available in real time. This is a tool in beta development and new features are added every week in response to user feedback. It is free to use.
Later: This tool is designed for the Instagram platform. It enables you to easily plan, schedule, and publish visual communication campaigns. Later handles the administrative side of marketing and allows you to focus on the creative aspects. Comprehensive and easily comprehensible analytics are also available on demand. There are price and service plans available for individuals, small and large businesses, and agencies.
SumAll: Most businesses and brands have more than one channel these days. It can be a challenge to keep track of them all. This clever compilation tool allows you to track and analyze data for all of them on one dashboard or in one report. You can connect as many social media accounts as you need to. SumAll is as modest as it is efficient; it comes with a “white label” so you can easily put your own name or brand on the reports.
Teamwork: This versatile project management and collaboration application is equally well-suited to startups or conglomerates as large as Spotify, PayPal, and Forbes. The dashboard provides visuals on project completion status, allows users to set milestones and assign tasks, and makes it possible to bill clients and even to evaluate risks. You get what you pay for here; there are low-cost yet full-featured options, but you need to upgrade if your numbers warrant it.
Pocket: This Chrome extension is a replacement and upgrade to the standard bookmark bar and it encourages collaboration. You can easily and intuitively tag content of all types, such as articles, images, videos, and more, to save and share across devices and between team members. Use it to curate a campaign or keep up to date on daily news and industry happenings. Pocket is free to use and a paid upgrade allows access to premium features.
Zest: Zest is another Chrome content management extension and it is designed specifically “by marketers, for marketers.” You can personalize your experience by choosing tags based on your areas of interest in the marketing space. Zest is manually moderated and approves less than one percent of all content so you can expect relevant, high-quality information in your feed. They are exceptionally responsive and a wealth of industry knowledge. It is free to use.
Visually: Visually is a network of talented freelance marketing professionals. They specialize in creating high-quality, high-impact content for social media and they also offer video production, micro site design, PR, and strategy services. There are over 1,000 carefully vetted professionals on board representing a wide range of styles and disciplines. They have their own proprietary dashboard where you can manage your project and communicate with your chosen team members. Pricing, which reflects the caliber of the artists available, varies according to the membership package chosen or the single project contracted.
Canva: Canva provides templates for social media marketing visuals. It was established in 2012, which makes it a veteran in this industry. Even non-design professionals can quickly and easily create visually appealing content without programming or the need for specialized software. The basic version is free to use, but certain features such as collaboration tools or the ability to resize graphics are only available with a paid upgrade.
Since all of these applications were created specifically for the social media space, you can rely on them to be visually pleasing and intuitive to use as well as on the cutting edge of technology. Most of them have interactive features and dashboards that encourage collaboration. You can use them on a wide range of devices and platforms, and they are suitable for many different types of content and campaigns. They make it simple to manage your accounts and channels and communicate within your team as well as with customers, followers, and anyone else. You will appreciate being able to leave the heavy lifting to them so that you can concentrate on making your message clear and cohesive.
May 28, 2018
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