Social media has completely changed the way people use the internet and businesses connect with customers around the world. Do you remember the internet before the days of MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter? If you do, it was more of a one-way conversation than anything else. You would have a website, create content and then just market it through search engines and online site advertising. Now it’s all about engagement and using social media to connect with your audience to build a following and gain their trust.
However, with so much focus on engagement and building a following, who has time to run an online business? If these are your thoughts, you are not alone. The good news is that there are plenty of tools and solutions out there to help with this process. Not only can they help you better manage your social media and marketing efforts, some of them can also help you track conversions and ROI as well.
If you are currently using social media for any aspect within your business, you are really going to find value in this list of social media management and marketing tools.
1 – GetResponse
For the average person, social media is great for engaging with people around the world. For businesses and brands, it’s all about engaging with audiences and turning them into customers. However, for this to happen, it’s important to have the necessary lead generation tools and processes in place. GetResponse is a marketing automation platform that offers users the ability to not only implement social media into their businesses, but also track their ROI in the process. This include the ability to create social sharing opportunities on site, while also offering the ability to track everything you are currently doing with social media. This includes tracking reactions to emails, measuring likes, retweets and comments, and also comparing results across different platforms.
2 – MeetEdgar
When it comes to social media management, the “management” is what takes the most time. Thankfully there are plenty of tools out there to help with his exact component. MeetEdgar is a great scheduling tool for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social platforms. One of my favorite features within MeetEdgar is having the ability to set up multiple social media profiles and scheduling context to each profile based on categories and set delivery schedules.
3 – Canva
Social media is all about creating great content and making it easier for others to engage with your updates. One of the best ways to improve this engagement is to create custom images and attention-grabbing thumbnails for your updates. Canva is a free tool that makes such image and graphic design easy. All you need to do is log into your account, click the social update image of your liking, then customize it to fit your message or audience. Canva is free to use, but they will offer occasional designs or images for $1 each. Once you start using this tool, you will likely start using it for everything!
4 – JustRetweet
Few things can be as disappointing as sending out a social update on Twitter, only to find it’s received no ‘favorites’ or ‘retweets’. JustRetweet is a service that allows users to post content of their own that they would like others to share, as well as share other content on the platform with their Twitter audience. In addition to gaining retweets for social shares, you can also get listed in their direction to gain more followers as well. It’s free to join the site, but the option is also there to purchase credits and speed up the process.
5 – RendrFX
As with all content on social media, the more engaging and interactive it is, the better. Canva was listed as a great tool for creating custom images for your social updates, but what if you wanted to include online video? RendrFX is the perfect tool for creating videos for use on social media, without the need to have any professional video skills or expensive video editing software. As a member of the site, you can select from any of their custom templates, add your own images or choose from their own massive selection, and even choose custom music for your video as well. Premium membership plans are also available for advanced features such as premium templates, extra user accounts and the ability to remove watermark from videos.
6 – CrowdFire
Of the many things that social media has to offer, one of the most sought after is ‘the following’. Everyone wants to have thousands (or even millions) of social followers. There are a few different ways to accomplish, but if you’d like to speed up the process, tools like CrowdFire can help you with this. CrowdFire works with both Twitter and Instagram, and through the web site or mobile application, accounts can start following other relevant accounts in hopes of getting them to follow back. It’s a manual process, but it does seem to work pretty well. CrowdFire is a paid application which charges on a monthly basis.
7 – Buffer
Buffer is one of the most popular tools out there for social media management. Similar to a few other tools on this list, Buffer allows you to set up and schedule content to be sent out to your social profiles. One of the most attractive features of the tool is the ability to set up scheduling of social updates during peak hours of the day. This is something that can be scheduled and tracked from right inside the platform. It’s free to use, and also integrates with other third party solutions on the market. There is a premium version that includes more advanced features like RSS feeds, calendar scheduling and social media analytics and tracking.
Make the Most Out of Your Social Media Efforts
With over three billion users spread across all of the major social networks, it’s extremely important for you to be tracking results wherever possible. At the same time, this simply can’t be done manually. Many of the tools above are used for automation and scheduling. Once you’ve gotten your hands wet with these tools, be sure to play around with the others for improved content creation methods and increasing retweets and engagement.
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