As social media evolves, so does our marketing framework and strategy! The digital age marked a pivotal moment within marketing and advertising, and as a result, the landscape of the traditional marketing model shifted, forcing marketing managers to adapt.
Here in 2020, it’s less about purchasing ad space and more about gaining the attention of your audience through interacting with them on a personal level on the different social media platforms.
However, the internet is always changing, and so is social media. It’s not simply about posting an update about your business on your Facebook page or tweeting out the latest article written by your company.
It’s about creating posts that will inspire your audience and encourage them to interact with your business, while also sitting down and taking the time to reciprocate that engagement.
This in itself is a full-time job – seriously! In order to take your social media to the next level and put your business on top, you must be willing to put in the time and effort to do what it takes to get there.
Ultimately, if you are looking to have an online presence, you must be all in, or else you will end up doing more damage than good to your brand‘s reputation – social media has no room for laziness.
The good news is that there are a ton of different tools and applications out there that are results-driven and work to help you successfully achieve your social media marketing goals.
We have provided you with a few different options that are aimed at assisting marketing managers in executing their strategy with confidence and ease. Let’s take a look.
Photo Editing Tools
If there is one thing we have all heard over and over it’s that a “photo speaks 1,000 words”, and on social media, this is entirely true.
Regardless of what platform you are posting on, it’s important to have well-curated and edited photos and visuals. This speaks to the quality of your brand and will also be the key to grabbing your audience and potential customer’s attention.
There is no denying that there are a plethora of options out there when it comes to photo editing. Some simple ones that are easy to use and will give you quality results are Snapseed by Google, VSCO Cam, and A Color Story.
These work particularly well if you are starting a small business and don’t have the budget to be using Adobe Photoshop or other professional editing tools.
Post Scheduling Tools
If you are a seasoned community manager, you already know that the ability to schedule posts for your different social media outlets is a huge time-saver.
Spending a few hours each week populating each platform with content related posts from your editorial calendar will allow you to spend more time on a daily basis engaging with your audience and providing real-time updates on your business.
Hootsuite, a popular choice for many businesses and individuals, is continually updating their dashboard to provide you with more options when it comes to managing all of your social media accounts.
However, Hootsuite isn’t your only option! Try using Tweetdeck, Sprout Social or Buffer, all great established social media management platforms. The key is finding the one that works the best with your company and social media strategy.
Analytics Tools
Data is never anyone’s favorite thing to work with, especially if you are creative!
However, it is one of the most important pieces of your marketing strategy. This is what is going to tell you your ROI and explain what is working and what isn’t working so that you can change your plan of action and execute your social media accordingly.
It will tell you your reach and how well you are engaging with your audience, which is the ultimate goal.
The easiest (but time-consuming) way to get your basic analytics is to go into each native platform, collecting and analyzing the data yourself.
Instagram is one of the only applications that doesn’t provide much in the way of analytics unless you go through each and every post you put up that month. Iconosquare is a great solution for this and will monitor your Instagram for you and provide trends and key metrics that are beneficial to keep track of.
If you are using Hootsuite or Sprout Social for scheduling your posts, then you can also use both of these dashboards to keep track of your analytics.
Lastly, two other extremely popular tools for collecting your online marketing research are Google Analytics, which will work in sync with your website and Google account, and Cyfe, another all-in-one social media dashboard.
Graphics Tools
Just as with your photos, it is important to have graphics that are on brand and are good quality, as they are another form of visual content that will help to grab user attention.
It’s just a fact that not everyone is a graphic designer and if your budget is smaller, you probably don’t have the funds to hire a pro.
Lucky for you, there are some great tools out there that make it easy to find templates and create high-quality graphics from your computer – no one will even know you did it yourself!
PicLab, Canva and Adobe Post are three easy-to-use design tools that will provide you with all of the supplies you need, including different layouts, photos, fonts, icons and inspiration for your graphics. They also make it simple to download your graphic in the proper format and size for the specific platform you plan on using it on. Best of all, they are all free!
Links & Hashtag Tools
Both of these are important to include in your posts! It’s how you expand your reach, tap into new audiences, and ultimately drive traffic to your website.
A bundle is a tool that helps you to discover new relevant hashtags that your company should be using and allows you to “bundle” them by category, post type, campaign or whatever is important to your company.
Ultimately, you don’t want to use all of the same hashtags for everything you do, so this is an easy way to organize them and sort them according to your strategy.
Bitly allows you to shorten your URL links into something that is not obnoxiously long, giving your posts a clean and consistent look across all platforms. You can then track the performance of the link through this app and see where it is shared, track audience engagement and other specific analytics related to that link.
This is a really good tool to have onboard if you are sending out a campaign, as it will work well when you are calculating the ROI and success during the entire time span once it is over.
What Social Media Tools Do You Like?
Do you use any of the tools mentioned here?
What other tools have you found to be useful?
Are there any other categories we should have covered?
Let us know in the comments section below!
