Tools to help with your social media marketing management: Ep#37

Five tools to help with your social media marketing management

Most of my clients know that I am a ‘social media puriest’. What this means is I like to use the social platforms as they were designed without a lot of automation as I believe spending time on the platforms is a key to success as it allows us to better understand the platform capabilities and better understand our audience on these platforms.

However most of us have a lot more to do than hang out on social media all day and generally have guests to attend to, staff to manage and suppliers to stay on top off. That is why incorporating the right additional social media management tools can help you better manage and deliver your social media plan.

[Tweet "The right social media tools can help you better manage & deliver your social media plan"]

There are so many social media tools out there and new ones entering the market all the time.

I have selected five that I am familiar with that I think are worth the investment.

Please note I am not affiliated with any tool and don't get any kick backs etc, this post is written to hopefully offer value to you and help you best manager your social media marketing.

1. MeetEdgar

Meet Edgard is a tool to schedule social media posts especially for Twitter but it works for Facebook and LinkedIn too. Edgar recycles content and builds a library of social content so you never run out of posts.

When you craft and send a Tweet not all your followers are going to see that Tweet, for it to really get traction it needs to be sent multiple times. What this tool does is once you create an update or post - you add it to a category say Blog Post or Fast Fact or Promotion and the update gets stored in your library. When every other update in that category has been posted, Edgar will post this one again, so it can be seen by a new audience.

Until recently I had been using Hootsuite to schedule tweets however I was never happy with the way they displayed images and if I wanted to post the same tweet multiply times (and I think that is a smart thing to do) I had to write out each tweet, add the image multiple times and decide what time to send it. I am really happy with how Edgar displayed the images and how you can map out your schedule really clearly for each social channel.

Also you can give Edgar your RSS feed and it will actually create posts for you and automatically update when you post new content.

They offer a 14 day free trial so give it a go and see what you think. The only down side is its $50US a month - so about $15 a week - so you need to weigh up if it saves you $15 a week in time.

Now a side note here: just because you are scheduling Tweets it doesn't mean your work is done on Twitter, what it should mean is that your time spent on that platform is engaging with others, their content and replying as thats the important stuff!

2. CrowdfireApp

JustUnfollow.com have changed their name to CrowdFire - this is a mostly free tool - well I only use the free level. This tools identifies who on Twitter and Instagram is not following you, who your recent followers are, your recent unfollowers and the bit I like the most your inactive followers. It then allows you to bulk unfollow or follow accounts. Between 25 and 100 in one session.

I use this for identifying inactive followers and unfollowing them - you can see who has been inactive for 6 months or more or 3 months or 1 month.

I believe it is important to keep your social media accounts healthy and unfollowing inactive accounts is part of that.

Now just because someone isn't following you it doesn't mean you shouldn't be following them - there are loads of accounts I follow that don't follow me but it can be good to keep an eye on things and do a cull every know and again.

3. Schedugram

Scheduling Instagram doesn't sit 100% comfortably with me however I ...

Five tools to help with your social media marketing management

Most of my clients know that I am a ‘social media puriest’. What this means is I like to use the social platforms as they were designed without a lot of automation as I believe spending time on the platforms is a key to success as it allows us to better understand the platform capabilities and better understand our audience on these platforms.

However most of us have a lot more to do than hang out on social media all day and generally have guests to attend to, staff to manage and suppliers to stay on top off. That is why incorporating the right additional social media management tools can help you better manage and deliver your social media plan.

The right social media tools can help you better manage & deliver your social media plan
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There are so many social media tools out there and new ones entering the market all the time.

I have selected five that I am familiar with that I think are worth the investment.

Five tools to help with your social media marketing management

Please note I am not affiliated with any tool and don’t get any kick backs etc, this post is written to hopefully offer value to you and help you best manager your social media marketing.

1. MeetEdgar

Meet Edgard is a tool to schedule social media posts especially for Twitter but it works for Facebook and LinkedIn too. Edgar recycles content and builds a library of social content so you never run out of posts.

When you craft and send a Tweet not all your followers are going to see that Tweet, for it to really get traction it needs to be sent multiple times. What this tool does is once you create an update or post – you add it to a category say Blog Post or Fast Fact or Promotion and the update gets stored in your library. When every other update in that category has been posted, Edgar will post this one again, so it can be seen by a new audience.

Until recently I had been using Hootsuite to schedule tweets however I was never happy with the way they displayed images and if I wanted to post the same tweet multiply times (and I think that is a smart thing to do) I had to write out each tweet, add the image multiple times and decide what time to send it. I am really happy with how Edgar displayed the images and how you can map out your schedule really clearly for each social channel.

Also you can give Edgar your RSS feed and it will actually create posts for you and automatically update when you post new content.

They offer a 14 day free trial so give it a go and see what you think. The only down side is its $50US a month – so about $15 a week – so you need to weigh up if it saves you $15 a week in time.

Now a side note here: just because you are scheduling Tweets it doesn’t mean your work is done on Twitter, what it should mean is that your time spent on that platform is engaging with others, their content and replying as thats the important stuff!

2. CrowdfireApp

JustUnfollow.com have changed their name to CrowdFire – this is a mostly free tool – well I only use the free level. This tools identifies who on Twitter and Instagram is not following you, who your recent followers are, your recent unfollowers and the bit I like the most your inactive followers. It then allows you to bulk unfollow or follow accounts. Between 25 and 100 in one session.

I use this for identifying inactive followers and unfollowing them – you can see who has been inactive for 6 months or more or 3 months or 1 month.

I believe it is important to keep your social media accounts healthy and unfollowing inactive accounts is part of that.

Now just because someone isn’t following you it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be following them – there are loads of accounts I follow that don’t follow me but it can be good to keep an eye on things and do a cull every know and again.

3. Schedugram

Scheduling Instagram doesn’t sit 100% comfortably with me however I understand for the right business how this could be really useful. Schedugram is pretty darn cool and developed by an Aussie dude Hugh Stephens. It is a tool that allows you to schedule Instagram posts. It is pretty straight forward and you can schedule instagram posts from the desktop, it supports multiple Instagram accounts and multi users and it also has a bulk upload feature

It is about $20 a month per Instagram account – a little more if you have more than 10,000 followers and it has a 7 day free trial feature.

If Instagram is one of your key platforms and you are posting multi times a day from pre created content then you may like to consider it. I don’t currently use it however I have given it a go in the past and can recommend it.

4. Bitly

Bitly is a URL shortner which also tracks and measures clicks to that URL. All you need to do is copy the URL from your browser, paste it into the correct spot in Bitly .com and it spits out a shorter version of that URL that when clicked, it goes through to the page you copied it from.

At one point Facebook was recommending that you use a URL shorter such as Bitly so when you post an update you don’t have a big long ugly URL in your post you have a nice neat short one PLUS you can track exactly how many people clicked on that URL. I mean Facebook does track that too but its really clear and easy to see it Bitly.

One other cool feature in bitly is that you can customise the URL so for example say you were sharing a page or post about your latest spa suite package – you could copy the URL from your website or blog post, paste it into bit.ly it spits out a shotenered URL and then you can click custom and change it to ready something like bitly slash spa special.

The other cool thing is that it ties into MeetEdgar so you can link your two accounts and meetEdgar will automatically shorten your links to Bitly links which then show up in bitly.

There are other URL shortners out there including

owl\.ly

goog.ly

Tiny URL

Keeps your post looking neater and you can instantly track clicks and it can save a little space in a tweet.

The main downside is people cant see what site they are going to so it may bring up some trust issues but i dont think this enough of a reason not to use one.

I have also just found out about Pretty Link which I will start looking into as it sounds like it has all the features of Bitly but you can filly customise the URL so it doesn’t even look like you are clicking on a shortened URL yet it is short and trackable but I think it only works in relation to wordpress. Watch this space ill check it out and let you know in a future podcast

5. Twitter Lists

A Twitter list is simply a curated group of Twitter accounts organised into one group and then one stream that you can easily monitor. Curated group of specific Twitter uses so you can just monitor what they are sharing posting saying.

As you spend more time on Twitter you end up following more and more people and it can often mean you miss tweets or updates from people in your network

A Twitter list lets you pull out certain users so its easier to monitor their feed.

So a few examples of this;

I sometimes just want to know what my immediate tourism network is saying or sharing – people that i actually know and have had interactions with – often these are people who come along to my regular live tourism tweetup events, so I have a Twitter list of about 50 people/users that are key people who regularly come along to Tourism Tweetup. I can scroll through this and really easily see what those people are sharing and talking about. I can stay on top of my immediate network and jump into conversations easily. I also want to support these people so I am more likely to retweet or engage with them.

Another example happened quite recently – I have a follower tweet me to ask them how they could connect with other tourism marketing people in a specific area and that area was Adelaide and South Australia. I immediately thought of Swanny – Lacklan Swan from SATC so I tweeted him and then he referred this person to a list he had curated specially with SA tourism industry tweeters – boom – easy – and quick and awesome!

What tools do you use on a regular basis? 

Would you like to hear more about social media tools and hacks?

Let us know in the comments below.

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