Digital tools and apps can ease your social media workload, but who can keep up with the thousands of tools that are out there? Each month there are 60,000 new apps in the Apple Store alone.
To help you cut through the clutter, we asked ten socially savvy marketers to share their must-have social app or tool.
Social management and reputation monitoring
1. If This Then That
What it does: This social media management tool allows you to automate tasks and monitor your business and competitors.
Why it’s loved: “I am the co-founder of a podcast editing and production startup. We use If This Then That to generate leads for our business. Whenever anyone tweets with the terms “new” and “podcast” our team gets an email that lets us know that someone is launching a new show and they might be looking for a service just like ours.”
-Bryce Conlan, Co-Founder of TurboPodcast.com
2. Mention.com
What it does: Ever wonder if your business or brand is mentioned online somewhere? Well, Mention.com monitors millions of channels and will notify you if you’re mentioned online.
Why it’s loved: “I’ve found it to be far more up-to-date and accurate than Google Alerts or similar tools. Plus, all the mentions are incredibly easy to manage within the platform.”
-Zach Bowers, Digital Marketing Specialist at Tuna Traffic
3. Buffer
What it does: Buffer is a scheduling tool that allows you to plan content across multiple platforms.
Why it’s loved: “I love Buffer because it’s easy to use, schedule and coordinate your marketing strategy and content distribution. You have easy-to-use dashboards, extensions and integration that allows you to quickly share content across your networks.”
-Patrick Delehanty at Marcel Digital
4. Edgar
What it does: A social media management tool that allows users to schedule messages based on categories.
Why it’s loved: “It stores your tweets in specific categories such as inspirational, funny, my blog posts, questions and promotional. Plus, it automatically imports your blog posts via an RSS feed and creates Tweets or other social updates for you using the blog title and a link to the blog.”
-Chanelle Segerius-Bruce with Segerius Bruce Services
Social productivity
5. Rapportive
What it does: Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts, including their social media channels, in your inbox.
Why it’s loved: “Rapportive shows me the social media profiles of people I email. Once I start emailing someone, I can see their LinkedIn profile and other social profiles. It’s a really cool tool that helps me connect with people easily.”
-Keren Brown, Founder of Foodportunity.com
6. Pocket
What it does: When you find articles you want to read, but don’t have time, put them to your Pocket for later.
Why it’s loved: “Pocket let’s me easily save and sort so that I can then parcel out the right mix through automators like Hootsuite. It’s so simple and intuitive, which allows me to recommend it to everyone I know, whether they’re tech-savvy or not.”
-Sarah Parker Ward, Social Media Strategist at Kathleen Palmer Media
7. Crowdfire
What it does: Grow and manage your Twitter and Instagram accounts and track of how people interact with your social channels.
Why it’s loved: “Crowdfire is my go-to for follower management and growth because you can copy followers from likeminded accounts, unfollow those not following back and unfollow inactive users.”
-Sabrina Wottreng, Public Relations at KIG Commercial Real Estate
Social curation
8. Scoop.it
What it does: Scoop.it is a curation tool. By entering keywords, it will provide a full list of relevant content that you can share.
Why it’s loved: “Scoop.it curates content for me so I do not have to spend a lot of time searching for interesting and relevant content to post on my social media sites and can still be seen as a thought leader by providing helpful information to my followers.”
-Jennifer Lynn Robinson, CEO at Purposeful Networking
Art for Social
9. Canva for Work
What it does: Helps brands create marketing materials with it’s easy-to-use graphics designers. It’s probably best known for its easy-to-make infographic capabilities.
Why it’s loved: “Canva for Work has been a Godsend for our community managers, allowing them to create beautiful on-brand marketing materials and social graphics for all of the brands we manage in a matter of minutes.”
-Casey Fisk, Creative Director at Boogie
10. WordSwag
What it does: Put text over your photos in seconds, that’s the entire purpose of this app. It makes great memes that you can share on social sites.
Why it’s loved: “This iOS app helps you create engaging text overlay images for social in just seconds. Super simple to use and we get great results.”
-Nick Haase, CEO of Loot!
What’s your favorite tool? Share it in the comment box below.
