Blogs are the best way to share your knowledge, expertise and experience with the world. They allow you to create a space where readers can connect with you and learn more about your company.
Blogs can be used as a platform for marketing, branding and sales. It provides businesses with an opportunity to reach out to their target audience on a larger scale than social media platforms.
Below are some examples of tools that can help you create a blog:
Examples Of Social Media Tools
Marketers are faced with an ever-growing list of responsibilities. From social media marketing to customer experience and advertising, it can be a challenge to stay on top of everything.
Luckily for us, there are a plethora of great social media tools on the market to help you succeed in your role and stay productive.
Tools for content curation, discovery, scheduling, publishing, analytics, and more can be used to enhance your effectiveness.
This week on The Science of Social Media, we’re exploring the top 10 social media tools brands are using to succeed in 2019. Utilizing these tools in your daily workflows will help improve results across the board.
Let’s dive in!
The 10 top social media tools to try in 2019
Here are some of the most-used social media tools used by some of the world’s top brands:
1: BuzzSumo
2: Google Trends
3: Buffer Publish
4: Canva
5: Unsplash
6: Animoto
7: Feedly
8: Buffer Reply
9: Native Analytics
10: Todoist
Honorable Mentions
- BuzzSumo
Social Media Tools: BuzzSumo
Website: https://buzzsumo.com/
Pricing: Plans start at $79/month
Details:
BuzzSumo is a tool that lets you find the most shared content and trending influencers. You can use it to analyze which content performs best for any topic and all you need to do to get started is to search for a topic or a domain.
Through BuzzSumo you’re able all gather a better understanding of your impact on social media and develop smarter content strategies by seeing which of your own pages were engaged with the most. BuzzSumo will break the results down by Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Reddit shares.
This provides the added benefit of being able to see which articles are performing well across the web without having to constantly monitor multiple social channels.
Similar tools: Ahrefs, Meltwater, Mention
- Google Trends
Social Media Tools: Google Trends
Website: https://trends.google.com/trends/
Pricing: Free
Details:
Google Trends is a completely free tool that Google created to help anyone search for trending topics online.
Brands use it to monitor notable things that are happening in the world. Many professionals use this as a way to discover and share information related to what’s most popular right now.
You can also use Google Trends to monitor keywords to see if they are trending and how their current volume compares to previous months and years. You can then use this information to inform your content and social media marketing strategy.
Similar tools: Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, WordStream
- Buffer Publish
Social Media Tools: Buffer
Website: https://buffer.com/
Pricing: Free (paid plans start at $15/month)
Details:
Buffer is a suite of brand building tools designed to make it easy for businesses and marketing teams to schedule social media posts, analyze performance, and manage all their accounts in one place.
For example, Buffer Publish allows you to set up a schedule for your social media profiles, and after you add content to your Buffer queue, it will publish at the times you’ve designated.
In addition to our web application, we also have both Android and iOS apps as well as a fantastic Chrome Extension that’s great for Buffering while you’re browsing the web or on the go.
Similar tools: Hootsuite, Falcon.io, Sprout Social
- Canva
Social Media Tools: Canva
Website: https://www.canva.com/
Pricing: Free (Canva for Work starts at $12.95/month)
Details:
Another fantastic tool that absolutely every brand or business online should know about is Canva.
Many times social media managers and marketers need to be able to create beautiful images without a designer. It’s what makes up part of a great social media strategy.
Canva is the tool so many marketers rely on for making great-looking social media images quickly. You can use the ready-made templates, icons, and illustrations to make your images look professional without having to do much of the actual design work.
Canva has an easy to use drag-and-drop interface plus a massive library of over two million graphic elements.
Similar tools: Crello, Buffer Stories Creator, Bannersnack
- Unsplash
Social Media Tools: Unsplash
Website: https://unsplash.com/
Pricing: Free
Details:
One of our favorite tools in the design, photography, and video space is Unsplash. Unsplash is a massive library of free professional photos you can use — free!
Unsplash photos are really popular with many social media marketers because they can help give your content a professional, polished look.
And there are so many Unsplash collections to explore. We recommend finding a couple of creators whose photos you really enjoy and following them so you can always find their latest work.
Similar tools: Pexels, Storyblocks, Videvo
- Animoto
Social Media Tools: Animoto
Website: https://animoto.com/
Pricing: Plans start at $5/month
Details:
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Animoto is one of our go-to social media tools for quickly creating stunning marketing videos.
Their video maker turns your photos and video clips into professional content in just a few minutes. They describe it as “fast and shockingly simple,” – and we would agree with that.
There are so many benefits to being able to quickly create engaging marketing videos. Video is a content format that we know a lot of people struggle with, but Animoto helps to bridge that gap.
We’ve used it to create quick recaps of recent blog posts for social media, videos promoting a big announcement, and videos around product launches.
Using Animoto, there are plenty of opportunities for you to add value to your audiences’ lives.
Similar tools: PowToon, Adobe Spark, Crello
- Feedly
Social Media Tools: Feedly
Website: https://feedly.com/
Pricing: Free (paid plans start at $5.41/month)
Details:
Our next tool is Feedly. Feedly is great for so many things. Maybe you work with influencers and want to follow their blogs, or you need to keep up on industry news, or any other reasons that you might visit several websites. Instead, you can add all those RSS feeds to Feedly and see them there. A huge time saver.
Feedly is also great for content ideation. You can add several of the blogs, writers, and publishers whose content you like to one feed and see them in one glimpse.
It even has a Buffer Publish integration so you can schedule your content to go out right from the Feedly dashboard.
We also want to give Flipboard a quick shoutout here, too. While it’s not an RSS aggregator like Feedly, you can follow topics on Flipboard and it curates the world’s news stories to help you stay informed.
We’ve used Feedly to follow specific influencers and industry news, and Flipboard to keep up to date with bigger stories.
Similar tools: Flipboard, Quora, Pocket
- Buffer Reply
Social Media Tools: Reply
Website: https://buffer.com/reply/
Pricing: Plans start at $50/month
Details:
This next tool is one of our very own at Buffer: Reply. I think we’ve mentioned it a few times on the show but we’ve never gone too deep.
Buffer Reply makes social media engagement easy for marketing and support teams who need to respond to social conversations. It’s all in one inbox.
What’s great is that through Reply you can see social conversations across social networks:
On Twitter, you can see public tweets that @ mention your handle, direct messages, and any searches you have set up for keywords or hashtags.
On Facebook, you can see comments on your Facebook Page posts and ads, visitor posts, private messages, and reviews.
And for Instagram business profiles, you can see comments on your posts and ads as well.
It’s a single inbox where you can see all of these conversations happening. It’s a huge time saver. In our case, our customer support team and social media manager, Bonnie, spend a lot of time in Reply every day, and we know that when someone reaches out, they would be getting an answer from us.
Similar tools: Hootsuite, Mention, Sprout Social
- Native Analytics
We would be remiss if we didn’t mention native analytics for each social platform, which is completely free.
(If you prefer something more advanced, we would love for you to try Buffer Analyze, our social media analytics and reporting tool!)
Let’s quickly go over the top three, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Facebooks Analytics
Facebook Analytics
Under the Insights tab on your Facebook Page, there is just so much information. Everything you ever wanted to know about your engagement, number of likes and followers, how your posts are doing, and, of course, Facebook’s Pages to Watch which lets you compare the performance of your Page and posts with similar Pages on Facebook.
You also get insights for Facebook Groups so if you run a Group definitely check those out.
Instagram Analytics
Instagram Analytics
With Instagram Insights, you can see activity around how frequently users interact with your posts, see how your posts are performing over time, and find out where your audience is from as well as their age range, gender, and when they are online.
Twitter Analytics
Twitter Analytics
Starting with Twitter, their analytics can reveal a lot of valuable data about your audience, how well you’re engaging your following, and what your top-performing content is.
All you have to do is go to analytics.twitter.com to log in and start learning more about your audience and their interests.
- Todoist
Social Media Tools: Todoist
Website: https://todoist.com/
Pricing: Free (plans start at $3/month)
Details:
The last tool we want to mention today is related to your productivity as someone managing social media: Todoist.
Specifically, within Todoist, I have created a free Social Media Calendar by Buffer that you can use to make sure that your brand and business are posting to important social accounts on a regular basis.
This type of calendar is important because, by consistently posting great content, you’ll be able to grow your audience, increase engagement, and build a community online.
This sample social media calendar is based on real content and scheduling times from Buffer’s own social media accounts.
Similar tools: Wunderlist, Trello, Any.Do
Honorable mentions (more social media tools)
Although we couldn’t cover all of our favorite social media tools in this episode, we wanted to share some more of our favorites!
AdRoll
IFTTT
Zapier
Iconosquare
Quuu
Brand24
Buffer Analyze
How to say hello to us
We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!
Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website
Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website
Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.
Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!
—
About The Science of Social Media podcast
The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode. It’s our hope that you’ll join our 20,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!
The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.
social media tools and applications
There are a lot of tasks and tools to choose from when you work in social media. These tasks can come in the form of content, visuals, strategy, analytics, or any combination of these. Not only is there great variety in the types of responsibilities, there’s also variety in the needs of each.
The laundry list of things to do may include coordination, collaboration, analytics, research, scheduling, social listening, content production, data insights, learning, and organization. So, how do you keep it all under control and focus your efforts?
One method is to streamline collaboration and daily tasks, and automate data and listening. The more you can automate and streamline, the more you can concentrate on key elements and actually get things done successfully. However, you must maintain the human element on a consistent basis.
While there isn’t one magical tool or solution, below are some tricks, tips, and tools I’ve picked up over the years that allow you to focus on the stuff that matters most.
Collaboration
- Slack
Slack is a messaging tool you can use to collaborate and coordinate with individuals and teams. It is a great resource to cut down on one-line emails, communicate with team members, and even allow others to see what goes into projects without having to be directly involved. There are also some great IFTTT recipes that allow you to receive updates and RSS feeds automatically.
slack
- Asana
Asana is a great project management tool to get multiple teams and people on the same page when working on projects. You can keep documents, deadlines, and responsibilities all in one place to, like Slack, cut down on email and organize communication. Some other similar tools are Basecamp and Trello. - Any.do
Have a desk littered with post-it notes? Any.do is a solution for that problem. Any.do allows you to digitize your daily tasks, set alerts and reminders, and save notes — all the while syncing across all of your devices.
any.do
Data and Listening
- Chartbeat
Chartbeat gives you real time data on the activity on your website. This information includes where traffic is coming from, what is being shared on social, social audience growth, popular content, and overall traffic. You can set alerts based on traffic, compare traffic to past trends, and see where your content is being shared on social (this is based on links meaning your handle does not need to be mentioned, which can help with monitoring dark social).
chartbeat
- Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo tracks trending content and influencers, both overall and in your market/content areas. Additionally with Buzzsumo you can see where content is being shared and who is sharing it to not only understand what is picking up attention, but where the conversation is happening and how you can insert your brand. - The Google Trio
No one is a stranger to Google by now, but there is some value in the platform to digital pros beyond search, document sharing, and website analytics. First, you can set custom alerts in your analytics to receive immediate information about trends happening on your site and social traffic. Additionally, alerts on search trends and media mentions on topics of interest interest can be set in Google Trends and Google News Alerts, respectively. - Cyfe
Cyfe is a dashboard tool that you can use to track social media, analytics, marketing, sales, and support all in one place and in real-time. In terms of social media, two great features are being able to track the ROI of Facebook ad spend and Twitter mentions. - Iconosquare Brand Index
Iconosquare Brand Index is a free tool that allows you to see how your brand is performing on Instagram. Not only can you track your brand, but you can also see how your competitors are doing, what is working in different verticals that may be transferrable to your own brand, and understand the metrics for the top brands on the channel to provide context for your own numbers. - Klout Extension
Klout is a website and mobile app that uses social media analytics to rank its users according to online social influence via the Klout Score, which is a numerical value between 1 and 100. Some criticize the true value of the Klout Score for determining influence, but there are few other metrics as widely accepted. The extension automatically gives you the score of any twitter account right in your feed, which is a good way to see its influence. - Commun.it
Commun.it gives you quick data on the Twitter accounts that have engaged with your brand, along with a breakdown of the activity of your followers and suggestions for potential followers. The tool provides suggestions for accounts to follow (and unfollow), along with a categorization of the accounts that have engaged with yours.
commun.it
Production
- Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows you to manage all of your social accounts, schedule posts, publish posts, and retrieve analytics on each channel. The tool also includes automatic short-linking and the ability to save UTM code presets for posts. Some other options include Buffer (see below) and Sprout Social. - Effinamazing UTM Builder
UTM coding is crucial in determining where your traffic is coming from and tracking campaign effectiveness. This browser extension allows you to easily plug in all of the elements to a UTM code, save presets, and sync with Google Docs to save previous campaign structures. - Buffer & Buffer Extension
Buffer is another social scheduling and management tool that has a lot of the same capabilities as Hootsuite. Two nice features that come with Buffer are the ability schedule posts based on when people have historically engaged with your content and an extension that allows you to create posts from any page you’re on (this includes pulling the page title, automatically shortening the URL with UTM coding, and pulling any associated images).
buffer_extension
- Giphy Gif Maker
Gifs are becoming increasingly popular in social media marketing, but they can be hard to make without the right resources. Giphy has done something about this by offering a free gif maker. All you have to do is upload a video or paste a video URL, select what part you want to turn into a gif, choose the length, and you’re done — Giphy does the rest. You can also establish your own Giphy page so that others can engage with your brand and use your created gifs.
giphy_gif_maker
- Giphy Extension
Have the right social post but need a great gif to make it spectacular? Well, you’re in luck. Giphy offers a browser extension (and app) that allows you to quickly search their database for the perfect .gif. - Sprout Social Landscape
Landscape is a brand new tool from Sprout Social. This tool allows you to create images for any social channel and any photo element of that channel with the right dimensions. Once you’ve selected all of the necessary parts and cropped your image, you can then export them in the social friendly .png format. - Canva
Canva is a tool to make quick graphics from flyers to social posts. There are a lot of templates to get started from in all of the right dimensions. Canva is a great place to start, get ideas, and turn around high-quality graphics quickly if you are intimidated by Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
canva
- Stock Images
Images are crucial are for great content and social posts. Most stock images are pretty terrible, but there are great free resources for realistic images that can boost your digital marketing efforts. - Hemingway App
Hemingway App is a tool to help cut down sentences and make your writing more effective. The app also offers suggestions for better word choices, catches passive voice, and registers the reading level of your writing.
hemingway_app
Learning
- Newsletters
Newsletters are a great resource for staying up on the latest trends in digital marketing. The formerly un-trendy format quickly became the medium of choice for some of the most popular and talked-about online publications for Millennials, and, as a concept in general, gained a surprising amount of steam as of late.
A newsletter, just like those relics of magazines and newspapers, is a one-way form of communication, meant to be created by creators, and consumed by consumers. It doesn’t need to have a comments section or a “Tweet” button, but rather it’s best consumed in solace, seemingly far away from the pressure of constant sharing and interaction (via SMW News).
- Podcasts
Once seen as an out of favor medium, podcasts have hit a new renaissance due to the ubiquity of smartphones. For social media and marketing professionals, podcasts can serve as a great means for staying up on the latest trends in the fields or hearing about what is top of mind for industry leaders. Now you can listen to these conversations easily and routinely, whether it is during activities like the daily commute, working out, cooking, or something else. Here are some marketing podcasts to get started. - Pocket
With all of these resources, you’ll need a place to save the content. That is where Pocket comes into play. Pocket is an app to store articles and webpages to view later. It is a good way to keep everything you’ve been meaning to read in one place or save useful articles for easy access and reference later. You also have the ability to sync the app across devices in case you see something while on your phone, but want to pick it up on your desktop later.
Conclusion
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Check out other publications to gain access to more digital resources if you are just starting out with Flux Resource.
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