Stay curious and keep refreshing what you have learned. Especially tools to enhance productivity. Do you explore and test a lot of new tools on a consistent basis? Perhaps you are a tool addict like me? I am always on the lookout for simple ones that make the biggest difference to enhance productivity on social media.
Through many experiences, I have found this passion is a disability in terms of the time required.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 9 out of 10 marketers are using content marketing. While more marketers are shifting their content creation efforts in-house, at the same time, the state producing enough quality content is their biggest challenge. And that does create a time drain also.
Apply these tools: A How-to Guide for Small Business Social Media Marketing
Marketers certainly need to focus less on producing more content and turn their attention towards producing better quality in their content. And, while content marketing is more than just tools and needs a solid strategy to be successful, there are a plethora of tools out there that can make the job of creating content easier.
Want to learn more about writing productivity tools?
The one tool that will do my job for me. Seriously. I know that it doesn’t exist, but I am always on the lookout, and when I am blocked on a project, I play in the app/tool store. I waste time.
Hunting for the best tools is a game, the addictive kind that robs from my productivity. In the end, I would be better off just writing, mustering up a bit of self-discipline.
When I look for helpful, time-saving tools, I often grab ones that make a difference in one or more of these areas. It’s how I got started with Buffer’s sharing app, and it’s how I’ve tested tools in the past.
Each of the time-saving social media productivity tools I’ve highlighted below is ones I have found most useful. Especially the free ones. Here’s hoping that they can unlock some spare time for you.
Tools to enhance productivity … criteria for best tools performance
An awesome tool strikes a subtle balance that makes you happy but does not waste your time. I have found, in my wandering, criteria for measuring the quality of an app for bloggers. I review the apps to see if they are:
Focusing
The best tools allow you to focus on and spend more time in your content world, writing. Your value as a blogger is your ability to string together words that communicate effectively, and being in a flow state produces your best writing. The best apps do not interfere with your flow in writing but facilitate it.
Tools to enhance productivity … productive
The best tools produce, adding to your skills and abilities without overpowering. Your job as a blogger is to produce quality writing, so the best ones should add to and accent your work. Many tools can be productivity black holes, and you need someone with experience to help you locate the best.
Efficient
While producing and managing your awesome content, the best tools also need to be efficient. They work hard, fast, and accurately. You don’t have to waste time waiting on the tool to work or on trying to fix it. Efficient tools augment your flow in writing.
I expect a lot of my priority tools, and you should too. Your time is your most valuable asset. All of the tools that I share with you here meet the three criteria for a great tool. You can make your social media more powerful by using these tools.
Nimble
I experiment often with CRMs, which I know if not ideal. But my current favorite, Nimble, is for the contacts for which I need to stay in close contact. The tool also is helpful in providing the most information on these contacts as possible. And the automatic social integration is what makes Nimble a great choice.
Tagboard
Tagboard gathers text, video, and image posts to give you an overall picture of what’s being said around a hashtag.
After grabbing relevant conversations from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Vine, Tagboard puts them in a user-friendly interface where you can interact with the results. A very good research tool that I couldn’t live without.
As a user example, Audi used Tagboard to track their Super Bowl ad for #Bravery in 2013. They were able to pull in tweets, Facebook mentions, and Instagram mentions.
Highlight
The highlight is all about people’s location discovery. It connects to your Facebook and other social networks to identify the people around you. If someone near you also has Highlight, their profile will appear on your phone. Most of the time, this person might be a complete stranger, but Highlight does a good job letting you know if there are any shared interests or connections.
Sometimes it might suggest a person nearby whom you already know, and this provides a great opportunity to reconnect – especially in an age where an increasing number of folks are co-working out of offices and coffee shops.
I find Highlight especially useful at jam-packed conferences because it can quickly tell you who might be present from your network – and, of course, it reminds me of their names!
55 Free content creation templates
Hubspot is one of my favorite social media companies. Over the years they’ve put together various templates to help consumers create content. These include infographic templates, SlideShare templates, social media templates, and call-to-action templates.
And all of these templates can be used right in PowerPoint to make it easier to create visual content for us marketers who aren’t comfortable with some of the other design tools. All of this help to reduce the time required to produce awesome content,
Rapportive
This is a pretty simple browser plugin that keeps contact and social details from anyone that sends you an email in the sidebar of your email reading pane. That way when you get an email from someone you know or don’t know, you’ve got some pretty handy information at your fingertips.
Buffer
If you don’t want any fancy features, are starting out or like to keep it simple, try Buffer. Signing up is pretty simple. They give you four options to log in – Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or email.
The interface is delightfully clean with lots of whitespaces that’s easy on the eyes. The free trial account can sync major social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+.
I love their “Suggestions” tab that has a list of posts I might like to share with my followers in the categories of marketing, inspiration, lifehack, etc.
Another plus is I don’t have to attach my personal profiles – I can choose to attach a Group on Facebook or a Page on LinkedIn, for example.
Pricing: $10/mo. or $102/yr.
Twibble
With Twibble, you can set up any RSS feed you want to publish automatically to your Twitter feed, complete with a featured image pulled directly from your article. And the fun doesn’t stop with images: You can edit the times that new posts go out, the frequency with which they’re sent, and the text and attribution on each.
You could end up with something like this: Twibble offers filters, too, in case you only want to post articles containing certain words (or want to exclude articles that contain certain words). You can wire up multiple feeds and track clicks and performance, too, all for free.
Price: Free
Also consider: TwitterFeed, TwitRSS, the new Feeds inside Buffer
Pocket / Instapaper / Evernote
Read-it-later extensions are a super time saver. Pocket, Instapaper, and Evernote let you save a blogpost or article to read later, and you can do so with a single button click via the extension. I am a big Evernote fan, so I rely on their tool.
Available on Chrome, Firefox, Safari
SiteDrop
Collaborating on your work should be a snap, especially if you and your team are spread out with travel or remote work. One way to keep a project in sync is with SiteDrop, a fun tool backed by the team behind Digg and Chartbeat.
SiteDrop syncs with a chosen DropBox folder pulls in all the files and photos from the folder and display everything in a stream of information that you can easily share with teammates. Each file comes with its own areas for likes and comments, and you can create as many different sets as you like, based on your DropBox folders.
SiteDrop pitches itself as a tool for project management, design, and photography, and my team has applied it for coordinating content research, social media campaign ideas, and more (although we rely predominately on Evernote).
Price: Free
Also consider: Icebergs, Evernote
IFTTT and Zapier
Two of our favorite automation tools—IFTTT and Zapier—can help you coordinate and automate your marketing efforts in a variety of fun, unique ways. See the article about 34 tips to wire up an IFTTT recipe for social media, and anything you can’t figure out with IFTTT, you can try with Zapier.
The former is a free service, the latter gives you your first five free and then switches to paid plans (Zapier has hundreds of connectable apps and services, compared to IFTTTs dozens).
Here are a couple of examples of the way we use each service.
Price: Free for IFTTT, Free-to-paid for Zapier
Riffle
This browser extension adds a whole new layer of information to your Twitter stream. Click on any Riffle icon or Twitter username, and the extension opens up a display of that user’s data, including other social accounts, Twitter statistics, most-used hashtags and categories, top mentions, top URLs, and much more.
Available on Chrome
Typeform
This is an awesome tool for building beautiful surveys. I prefer a survey that doesn’t feel like a survey. Those are exactly the type that TypeForm specializes in.
Typeform surveys ask one question at a time; survey takers move through the survey chronologically via the smooth UI or keyboard shortcuts (e.g., press Enter to go to the next question). Plus, you can add visual components to your questions and that makes it even easier on those filling out your form.
Creating a new survey is a time saver as well. You simply drag and drop the types of questions you want to include, and you can set the color scheme, fonts, and images with just a couple of clicks. And of course, TypeForm provides all the relevant analysis and data that you might need from the survey results.
Price: Free
Also consider: SurveyMonkey
Gifmaker
Animated gifs have slowly but surely found their way onto many major social media networks—Tumblr, Google+, Pinterest, and most recently Twitter. (Facebook is still a holdout.)
With Twitter and Pinterest now supporting GIFs and other social media sites like Google+ and Tumblr enjoying great engagement with them, it’s become increasingly handy to have a pitch-perfect GIF at the ready to express how you’re feeling in your update, reply, or comment.
If creating a GIF seems like a daunting task, rest easy. There’s a tool for that. Gifmaker is one of my favorites for creating a quick and easy GIF from existing photos on your computer. Simply upload your pics, place them in order, and set the timing, and Gifmaker will combine them into a single animated image—for instance, me with Kanye glasses, a tiny top hat, and a mustache.
Price: Free
Also consider: Makeagif, IMGflip (GIFs from video)
Social Rank
Looking to select where and how to engage customers on social media? Look no further. For example, I sometimes wonder how I should spend my time on Twitter. Are there particular people I should be engaging with? Which of my followers should I be focusing on?
Social Rank answers these questions with its follower reports, identifying which of your followers have the most influence and which are most engaged with you. The output from Social Rank makes it quick and easy to see some spots where you can focus your Twitter time.
Free accounts are allowed to run a report every month.
Price: Free
Also consider: Followerwonk
The bottom line
Social media moves quickly and your content design has to keep up. The demands of a market that’s evolving by the minute heighten expectations for fresh, quality content on a nearly impossible scale.
