Social Media Marketing Tools Every Marketer Needs -

Social Media Marketing Tools Every Marketer Needs -

Anyone who’s been in marketing for the past couple of years knows that Social is where the $$$ is. With so many people now interacting with content on their handheld devices it would be foolhardy for any marketer to ignore the huge marketing potential that is yet to be exploited through social media.

Like with all marketing campaigns social media marketing has its own challenges and top on the list is how to effectively scale social media campaigns given the explosion of social media channels. You can expect a new social media app every new year, and that’s not even factoring in new features introduced by the already existing social media channels.

There are all kinds of tools that are a necessity in social media marketing and you would be wise to start using them in 2018 if you don’t want to be left behind.It’s hard to cover all of these aids in just one post. So we’ll split this topic This will be the first part.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock there’s no way you shouldn’t have heard of Buffer. Buffer is a social media automation tool that allows you to schedule and post content automatically on all social media channels where you or your organizations maintains a presence. This includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn just to name a few.

What makes Buffer stand out from other automation tools is the fact that it has both free and paid offerings.

So if you’re just about to start out to manage your small websites social media presence and are wondering how to go about it, Buffer takes out all the stress for you.

In addition, to the automatic posting feature you can set it up to follow up on any of the posts you publish. This way you’re able to evaluate which posts are most effective and why they are effective. Thus scaling your efforts in areas where you’re likely to get the greatest return.

If you’re looking for a tool that does more than just schedule posts, then you should take a look at Sprout Social. In addition, to the automated publishing on your social media channel of choice, Sprout Social also enables you to coordinate and delegate tasks to your team members. To get an in-depth understanding of what your demographics are saying, Social Sprout acts as a social media listening tool. It’s analytics tools are known for their granularity, so organizations with a huge social media following would be better off making the most of it.

All of this functionality comes at a price though. Even though they don’t have any free packages, their low tier package starts at $99/month (as of the writing of this article) and goes all the way to $249 for their enterprise package.

We all know how important evergreen content is. Not only does it constantly draw in new traffic but just in case you get writer’s block, evergreen content offers your social media audience something to read through. The trouble is, if you’re constantly churning out new content, you might forget about your evergreen content as it gathers dust somewhere in your WordPress archive.

Thankfully, MeetEdgar is here for exactly that. MeetEdgar, allows you to remind your audience of evergreen content that got published eons ago. All you’ll need to do is organize your evergreen content by category and schedule it by category as well then leave all the rest to MeetEdgar.

MeetEdgar will go through the posts as they’re scheduled then recycle the list once you’re out of scheduled posts. For $49/month, you can get started on Edgar. I know that might sound a little bit expensive but when all is considered it’s actually pretty fair. Keep in mind the $49/month can be used on 25 different accounts. Also, if you choose to purchase their annual subscription, you get the first month free.

HootSuite is similar to Buffer on many accounts. However, the major difference is that, even though Buffer has a “free forever” offering, you can only use HootSuite for free for the first month. Which is quite a bummer if you’re on a limited budget.

If you choose to go for their paid plans you’ll benefit from the certification and extended training on how to use HootSuite which can come in handy considering that they have over 10 million users. You also benefit from their custom analytics reports as well as the ability to export the reports (depending on your plan). Hootsuite is definitely worth checking out.

Yeah, I know it sort of sounds like a global organization aimed at combating famine, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. IFTTT stands for “if this, then that”.

Prounounced as “if-tt”, IFTTT is a tool that operates based on recipes that are contingent upon conditions. For instance, you could create a “recipe” that sends out a tweet every single time you post something on Instagram. Cool, huh?

What makes IFTTT super awesome is its versatility. Not only can you use it for scaling your social media campaigns but it works with IOT (Internet Of Things) as well.

It’s free so the only disadvantage I can think of is that it’s a bit convoluted so it’ll take time to get your mind wrapped around.

Think of Social Oomph in the same way Gandalf explained Sauron’s ring; one ring to rule them all. Like other tools mentioned on this tool, Social Oomph helps manage your many social media accounts. The one thing that sets it apart from its competition is the fact that you can upload a list of blog posts and have them published at various intervals.

This saves an incredible amount of time given the fact that most tools require you to manually update this information on their dashboard. If you choose to go for the paid plan you will be able to access follower analysis features. In addition, you will have access to tools that are geared towards an improved audience engagement. Social Oomph has a base plan that’s free, but most resourceful features have to be paid for.

BuzzSumo has many uses, but I personally have found it to be very useful when discovering popular content when I’ve ran out of ideas. All you need to do is insert keywords associated with the topic that you have in mind and BuzzSumo will give you a whole bunch of content in that niche that has been popular on various social media channels including Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and Google+.

BuzzSumo is also a great way to identify social media influencers in your area of interest. The folks over at BuzzSumo are a great bunch of people. They allow you to use BuzzSumo for free though with limited results.

However, if you don’t like getting some and not all of your results you could purchase one of their paid plans which start from $79/month. Their enterprise plan allows you to search their 5 year old archive for content that has been popular in the past. However, at $500/month I think that’s a bit pricey.

I hope that this post has provided you with useful information. Look out for Part 2 of this post for more useful social media tools.

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