I have quite a few problems, and I think you will be suffering from the same ones!
If you are a marketer or run your own business, you'll probably struggle with a lack of time and lack of planning. You might not have a proper strategy and you may be inefficient in how you run your social media campaigns or in how you engage with your social media conversations. Perhaps you lack the resources to be effective? That could be struggling to find engaging images, articles or the manpower to deal with the conversations online.
Choose the Right Tools!
Social media tools won't solve all your problems, but they can make you more efficient and productive. Some can even help you make smarter business decisions!
The problem is that there are so many social media tools out there. How do you make the right decision?
The main aim of my blog is to help you make smarter decisions on the best tools for your business and situation. That might mean using a social media management tool such as Hootsuite (or maybe NOT Hootsuite) or perhaps Social Report, Sprout Social, AgoraPulse, Sendible or MavSocial. Of course there are other more niche tools such as Buffer, ManageFlitter and Friends+Me that aim to help you with other areas of your social media management.
There are thousands of social media tools out there and it's so difficult to choose. That's why I've come up with a list of social media tools that will boost your effectiveness in this noisy world. Some of these are well known and some you may never have heard of.
Social Report is a powerful social media management tool that I've only recently come across. All their plans come with multi-user access. Their entry-level standard plan comes with 5 users, 5 projects and social media channel management, 15 automations, business reviews, reports (export in Powerpoint & Excel) and contact management - all for an incredibly reasonable $49/mth. That's more expensive than the basic plans from Buffer and Hootsuite but amazing for what you get. It integrates with Facebook (profiles, pages & groups), Twitter, Instagram (including direct publishing), Google+ (pages & events), Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Vimeo, YouTube, Yelp, Reddit and more! That's a huge number of social networks to manage from one dashboard. It's also important to mention they're a Facebook and Instagram Marketing Partner.
AgoraPulse is an amazing social media management tool and one that I use on a daily basis. It integrates with Facebook (pages), Twitter and Instagram, LinkedIn (profiles and pages), Google+ (pages) and YouTube. AgoraPulse has a full team management workflow, so you can schedule content or delegate to team members and then approve for posting. One of the best features for me is the way you can quickly respond or archive all your social mentions and messages and get down to inbox zero really quickly each day. Their reports are beautiful and powerful, and you can download as a Powerpoint presentation. AgoraPulse is also a Facebook and Instagram Marketing Partner.
Buffer is a very well known social media scheduling tool, but not everyone knows about their power scheduling tool which allows you to repost content across all your social networks. Buffer has a powerful free version as well as an inexpensive pro version at $10/mth. It doesn't help with responding or engaging and its analytics are very basic, but it is amazing at what it does. It also integrates with all the main social channels including Twitter, Facebook (pages, profiles and groups), LinkedIn (profiles and pages), Google+ (pages), Pinterest and Instagram
I've mentioned this wonderful little tool many times before. It's similar to Buffer but allows you to re-post to your Google+ profiles, pages, communities and collections. You can also post to Tumblr. It converts Google+ into a social media management tool or if you prefer you can use the browser extension to bypass Google+.
IFTTT is an amazing tool that connects multiple services together. You could connect Twitter to your light bulb if you wanted, but I prefer to use it to connect Feedly with Buffer or Instagram and Twitter. Check the slides below to see a few examples.
Social Champ is another scheduling tool, but it focusses on recycling your evergreen content. These days, you have to be careful in posting repeated content to Twitter (due to their rules), but it's a great tool for managing your library of evergreen content and posting it out regularly across your social networks.
Buzzsumo is a search engine for content ranked by how many times they've been shared. You can view who has shared the content too, which allows you to build relationships with influencers. It also offers trending content (I subscribe to these in Feedly using Buzzsumo's RSS feeds) and they also offer content reports and alerts.
Want more? Here are 30+ tools
I didn't have enough time to mention all the tools I would have liked but fear not. I've written a guide which includes over 30 social media tools which will help you boost your business! Did I mention it was free? Visit the tool guide page to download.
Need more help?
As I said, finding the right set of tools for your business can be confusing- even a bit of a nightmare. Fear not, if you are still struggling, I'd love to help. I offer a consultation service which will allow us to dig deep and find the best solution for you. Check out my Social Media Consultancy & Training service here.
So, over to you!
What tools do you use for your business? As you know, I am a big tools geek, so do share- I'd love to know!
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Dear Ian
this articles very helpful for me thanks
Thank you, these are useful tools, and I have just registered to get the other 30+ social media tools
I consider our world as a “Noisy World” also because of being flooded with too much information. For social media managers who feel like me, I would like to recommend on TimelyPick website the marketing topic (timelypick.com/marketing)- which curates every 4 hours the most popular marketing posts on the web.
Thanks. Hope you find the 30+ social media tools download helpful. Your timelypick curation page is also very helpful. Thanks for sharing.
Ian
[…] 7 Social Media Tools to boost your effectiveness in a noisy world – iag.me […]
I’ve been using Buffer for a few years now. It’s a great solutions for small businesses that is affordable and will grow with them. They are continuously updated it and adding new features. So much so that occasionally you can miss one. This happened to me with the power scheduler. I saw the tab appeared, but then my brain just ignored it. Until I saw someone else post about it. Whoops! Now I use it when I dig back in my archives to update a post and reshare. Speaking of updates, just today I noticed Buffer added Instagram and Pinterest… Read more »
Hi Laura, thanks for your comment. You’re not the only one who didn’t notice the Power Scheduler. I can’t remember when I came across it, but I think it was a number of weeks (or maybe even months) after they announced it. I don’t think they publicised it in any great way. It really very powerful (it’s not called the power scheduler for nothing!). I do love the way you can use Pinterest with Buffer now, but I didn’t know they had added this to Pablo. I’ve not really used Pablo very much, but I should look at it again.… Read more »
Hey Ian!
Wow, Friends+Me is a first for me. Did not know they had a “Buffer” tool for G+! Might have to try that out.
I really want to learn more about IFTTT, however I feel that I don’t have much time to figure it out and set it up. Do you have a good guide on this?
Best,
~Jason
Thanks, Jason. It’s a shame Friends+Me isn’t as well known. It’s a great little tool, and really powerful too. IFTTT can really blow your mind- so many powerful things you can do. I mentioned a few in the slides which should get you started. I have written about IFTTT many times before: 5 Ways to Turbo Boost your RSS with Feedly and IFTTT, How to Replace IFTTT Twitter Triggers Now that they’re Gone and Archive your Life – How to Archive your Social Channels with IFTTT. So, I suppose I shouldn’t mention another tool called Zapier which is kind of… Read more »
Haha, no you shouldn’t ;).
Thanks Ian! I put those articles in my to-do pile and will start going through them.
Thanks for the kind words too. Had a glitch w/Mailchimp. and had a severe drop in email opens.
I wanted it to be a surprise, but I included you in the section “The Essential Influencer Outreach Process.” If you didn’t get it and are interested, I can send you a link if you like!
Thank you for this article. I have just started using Buffer for my Twitter and Google+ pages.
I have one question. Buffer helps you to post on multiple social networks at once, don’t you think we shouldn’t share same content on different social networks?
The reason I’m thinking about that is that a same person would not follow you on another social network if you share same things on it.
Great question. I think you should post the same content on different networks because there audiences will be different. If you only post to Twitter, those on Facebook will miss out on your posts. Of course, it does mean that people who follow you on both will see the same posts on different networks, but they should be slightly different anyway. It’s always best to craft each post to each network differently. If you only write 140 character posts on Facebook then you are missing out on a lot of potential. Each network has different mechanisms, and different audiences.
Hi Ian. I appreciate your overview of all these tools. I love Buffer and use it every day. They’ve recently done some re-tooling, though. Hope the will still offer the membership I have. I also love TweetDeck. I schedule image tweets once a week, and I visit it daily to reply to people who have touched me – following, retweeting, etc. It helps me get up close and personal with people on Twitter. I’ve recently learned about IFTTT, and it looks so cool. I haven’t taken the time to learn it yet, but it’s on the agenda. I will make… Read more »
No problem, Leslie- thanks for your comment. Buffer still offer their free and awesome plans (which is $10/mth). They now offer a set of business plans, but I haven’t personally given them a test drive. TweetDeck is great, although I personally use AgoraPulse more and more. TweetDeck is particularly good at managing multiple accounts as well as Twitter searches and doing Twitter chats.
Definitely check out, IFTTT, although prepare to be hooked!
Let me know how you get on! Ian