Social media marketing is highly competitive – which is why it’s so important to have a solid strategy in place. Users can now essentially follow and interact with any brand they want to on social platforms – which is why we’d highly recommend keeping up to date with the most effective tools to ensure your target audience are finding you.
Whether you’re looking for a way of creating social media content, publishing on multiple platforms or keeping on top of analytics and reporting – it’s more than likely that there is a tool out there to help you.
So, we’re going to highlight our favourite tools and websites to help you save time on your accounts and more importantly produce high-quality content for your target audience.
Buzzumo
Buzzumo is a research and monitoring tool that many digital marketing agencies or businesses benefit from when looking for new and unique content to share. It’s a user-friendly platform that allows you to type in a specific topic and find any relevant articles that have been shared online in the last week, month or year. You can do the same thing for content that is shared specifically social media channels.
If you want to find out your target audience are currently talking about online – you can use Buzzsumo’s content analyser tool which gives you access to any trending topics and important conversations in your industry.
Another aspect of the tool is the ‘alerts function’ which when switched on means you will be notified whenever your brand name is mentioned in online content, i.e. a blog or a ‘tweet’. Again, this is a great way of gaining insight into your audiences’ interests and pinpointing those areas you can focus on.
We also recommend entering both your own domain and any relevant sites – such as your competitors – to see what content is being shared on social channels from companies sites. All in all, Buzzsumo can help you determine what your target customers really want to see when browsing your social platforms.
Hashtagify
As suggested in the name – this tool is all about finding the best hashtags for your posts. Hashtags have become a crucial part of social media marketing – and your posts are much more likely to drive the right traffic if you’re using the perfect hashtags. How exactly does Hashtagify work? Well, all you need to do is search for a word or topic that you’re interested in writing about – and it will reveal the top ten hashtags that are related to your chosen terms.
For example, as a digital marketing agency – we will want to share posts on Twitter about the latest PPC or SEO industry updates. In this case, we would simply enter ‘PPC’ and find the most appropriate hashtags about paid search . The next step would be to try and use those popular hashtags in our posts – and therefore reach out to users who are genuinely interested and likely to interact with you.
Buffer
Buffer is designed to help avid social media users (i.e. social media influencers) and advertisers manage their accounts within social networks. The software application can be used on both web and mobile devices to schedule posts on multiple social media networks (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc).
It provides a sense of control for users who want to schedule posts across platforms and plan when to automate them. For example, you might want to share a weekly status on Friday’s – meaning as opposed to re-writing your post each time – you can just schedule it through the app. Another helpful aspect of Buffer is the ability to follow-up on your posts and find out which ones are generating the most engagement with your target audience. You can find out more about Buffer here.
Sprout Social
Similarly to Buffer – Sprout helps digital marketers and social media users to better manage their posts and levels of engagement. Sprout is great for companies and groups of workers, including us as a digital agency – because it offers multi-level access. This means that different tasks can be allocated to the appropriate team members – preventing any confusion and making digital marketing management more straightforward.
Besides this, Sprout Social also offers a social listening tool which means you can gain a clear understanding of how different demographics and users are interacting online. As a result – you’ll be able to produce more relevant and exciting content for your audience.
SocialFlow
We recently discovered SocialFlow which allows you to schedule your social media posts for when your target audience are active and likely to engage. All you have to do is upload your content and SocialFlow will use real-time data to determine what to post, and when to post it. You can check it out here.
Are you getting the most from your social media marketing?
There’s so much to think about when it comes to social media marketing – from scheduling posts and responding to customer queries, to consistently sharing creative content and monitoring analytics. We understand it can be quite tough to balance – but using the right tools and being confident in your strategy is certainly a step in the right direction. If you want to boost your social media engagement through organic posting or PPC – feel free to get in touch with our London based team who would be happy to help.