10 Tools to help you get ahead in social media

Social media marketing can be time consuming. You may spend hours upon hours trying to get it right and still see little growth in your followers. So what can you do to be more effective and save time in the process? Here are ten tools that can streamline your social media efforts and even offer guidance.

Headlines

Let’s face it, most small business owners are not experts at writing compelling headlines. Thankfully, there are several social media tools that can help you get it right. Here are two of them.

• Headline Analyzer - When it comes to spurring people to action, appealing to emotions can be very effective. This free tool analyzes and scores the emotional aspect of your headline and then informs you of which emotions are being communicated the loudest.
• Optimizely - It’s one thing to hear a so called expert claim that a specific type of headline will work, and it’s another to see it for yourself. This tool enables you to A/B test your headlines, images or variations of them to see which are most effective.

Content Generation

When you’re generating new blogs, marketing messages and other content on a regular basis, sometimes the creative juices run dry. This is where these three tools can come in handy.

• Portent - Whether it’s blogs, memes, videos or other social content, Portent provides easy idea generation. Simply enter a subject you want to create content for, and Portent will give you some ideas.
• Hubspot Blog Topic Generator - Similar to Portent, but for blogs only. Enter three topics into this tool, and it will instantly give you a week’s worth of blog titles to write about.
• Banner Ads Creator - Creating an effective ad can be a real pain in the rump. But this easy-to-use tool enables users to generate ads almost effortlessly in a matter of minutes. Use it to create ads for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, your website and more.

Management

Perhaps the most difficult part of social media marketing is the management aspect of it. These tools will help you be more efficient with your time and create maximum impact.

• Social Rank - Curious to know which of your followers are most engaged? Well, now you can with Social Rank. This nifty tool enables you to identify, manage and organize your followers on Instagram and Twitter.
• Riffle - Mingling with influencers can have a huge impact on the number of your followers. While doing that may sound easier said than done, this tool enables you to do just that. Riffle will help you find and connect with social influencers on Twitter, and engage with them when they’re active on the platform.
• Hootsuite - How would you like to manage all your social media accounts from one location? That would probably save a lot of time, right? Hootsuite offers just that, and enables you to grow your brand by allowing you to schedule updates and engage with your audience from a single platform.

Video and Images

What many consider the bane of social media marketing, finding affordable images and videos on a weekly basis can be both frustrating and costly. These two tools will hopefully make your efforts a bit easier.

• Unsplash - This tool gives you free access to thousands of high resolution photos that you can use however you please. And to ensure there is an influx of fresh new images to choose from, the service adds 10 new photos every day.
• Mazwai - To go along with your free images, how about some free video? That’s exactly what Mazwai does, offering you the ability to download videos under the free creative common license. All you need to do is credit the video producer, and then you are allowed to use the footage.

We understand that for the small business owner, social media marketing can seem like a monumental chore, and we hope these tools will help make it a smoother process. If you need any advice or assistance with your own social media marketing, give us a call today.