Spending hours learning how to implement the smallest improvements on your social media performance is my biggest source of frustration. Hands down the biggest for me.
You probably understand how important it is to give your visitors a great reader experience.
And to do that, you need to optimize many areas of your social media as well as your blog.
I love to read, learn, and try new things. Like new apps for my smartphone and iPad. Often, I’ll see something that I want to try, save, and connect with other new apps I am using.
Ideas that come from previously unconnected planes of thought.
There are many apps for workers looking to improve social media performance that can be a big help in this regard. And less wasted time? Yes, very good for that also.
Related: 12 Extraordinary Graphic Design Tools You Should be Using
Ponder for a moment … the iPad, Cloud computing, and Apps. A few years ago, they barely existed. Now they’re an integral part of our lives. That swift journey from nonexistent to indispensable seems to happen a lot these days.
But it gives us unlimited access to improve our learning and utility for things like through apps and idea connection.
This makes you think: What social media apps were you not using two years ago that today you can’t imagine living without today?
Here are my favorite of these very essential apps. They will help you either create content faster or create content that wasn’t possible before.
VideoScribe
No doubt you’ve seen explainer videos before. They look as if someone is drawing images on the screen.
In most cases, they aren’t. They use a tool such as VideoScribe instead.
It is one of the coolest tools I’ve seen. It allows you to create different images and then pick a style of hand and pen.
Then, the tool puts all your images together to form a video. But the useful part is that it draws the images for you.
It loads the background first and then moves the hand around to make it look as if it’s drawing the other lines and pieces as they load.
Snov.io
Snov.io is the perfect all-in-one cold outreach automation platform you never realized you needed. With it, organizing your cold email campaign is streamlined to the max.
Snov.io Email Finder will find prospects’ emails on any website or a professional network in seconds – all you have to do is simply add them to the list. An inbuilt email verifier tool checks the emails for validity to boost the delivery rate.
Once your list is ready, it takes only a few minutes to create your first automated email campaign with triggered follow-ups. Snov.io’s Cold Email Sender with a drag-and-drop campaign builder lets you add triggers, delays, goals, and create personalized emails right in the campaign builder. You can watch the campaign statistics in real time: open, click, and reply rates are presented as nice visuals with percentages.
And for email marketers who want to pay special attention to specific clients and know exactly which ones are interested, Snov.io offers an Email Tracker – a forever free browser extension that doesn’t add any signatures, links or logos in the email body, and integrates seamlessly into your Gmail to help you monitor email opens and link clicks. A reminder feature has just been released with the latest update.
Social media performance … Buffer
Buffer has been one of the first social media marketing tools we have been using on a regular basis and it kind of stuck with us.
Buffer simply is awesome for scheduling tweets. And it has a free version that allows you to schedule up to ten tweets – that will get you far especially when you are just starting out on Twitter.
Buffer can also schedule posts for Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. I rarely use this function, however.
Either there are better ways for me to schedule posts for these networks, or I do not use a scheduling tool for them at all.
But for scheduling on Twitter, Buffer is simply the best there is. Also, take a look at the analytics part of Buffer which is great if you want to test headlines or tweet images.
Pablo
Another one of those simple design tools is Pablo.
This one is made by the same people behind Buffer. Pablo is extremely simple to use but focuses especially on social media images.
However, there’s no reason why you can’t use these in your blog posts as well.
Having images optimized for being shared on social media sites will increase the re-shares and, consequently, the traffic you’ll get.
On the right side menu, you have three sizes of images to choose from. For a blog post, you’ll probably want the “wide” picture or the square one:
Pick the size that corresponds with the image size used within your most important social network. This will change the size of the canvas in the middle.
Next, you’ll want to pick a background from the left side menu:
Finally, you can click the default text and type whatever you’d like.
Social media performance … Canva
Canva is my go-to tool when it comes to creating images for my online marketing. I am a design-moron. I admit it. When I started creating images for Pinterest, Facebook, and co. the first attempts simply were ugly.
And then I discovered Canva and the design templates they provide for free. And I learned a lot from them: About combining different color schemes, typefaces, and images.
Canva sets you up with the right dimensions for many different purposes like Pinterest posts, Facebook adds or Twitter headers.
They provide a couple of templates, some free, some for a fee. You can use a ton of elements in your design process and play around with filters.
The free account of Canva gets you far, if you need more templates or elements for your designs, you can pay for each element as you need them.
If you need more features, the Canva for work option may be for you.
If you need something to get started with designing graphics, you must try Canva’s design school, also free.
ManageFlitter
ManageFlitter is easily the best tool I know for managing your Twitter following. You can find accounts to follow; they help you find accounts you should unfollow.
ManageFlitter is the best tool to use in the follow-unfollow routine and help you grow a targeted audience.
