Tag: Buffer

#EducationMatters – Simplify Your Social Media With Tools

This month is all about #EducationMatters. Social Media can be a major time-suck but it doesn’t have to be that way. We’ve listed our top Social Media Tools to help keep you organized, stay on track, and, best of all, save you time so you can focus on other aspects of your business.
  1. Canva: Incredibly easy social media imaging tool that takes the guesswork out of image sizes. With over 50 templates available for various social media sites (From Facebook to YouTube channel art), Canva can deliver high quality productions with a wide variety of image and font choices, making it easy to #BeAwesome. Their price range for images are from $0-$1, but you can always upload your own into the template for free. It’s also available as an app for iPad and iPhone. Android users need not worry. There’s a Canva app on the way for you as well!
  2. Hashtracking: Have you ever wondered if a hashtag you use is a relevant one? Or what a popular hashtag would be for a certain product or service? Hashtracking.com takes the guesswork out of hashtags for social media campaigns and events. If you’re not willing to pay for ongoing report options, they offer free social media snapshot reports without a subscription. You simply need to log in to your Twitter or Instagram account to use the service. This is a one-time log-in.
  3. Feedly: Have all your content curation in one spot. Feedly is an RSS aggregator. This RSS reader can gather feeds from multiple sites based on your preferences, add feeds from publications, blogs, podcasts, and even YouTube channels. It works well with Google Alerts as well as a multitude of other apps. The best part of the service is that you can organize all your feeds into collections that make them more accessible in the future. One of its biggest pluses is the integration it has with another social media tool, Buffer. 
  4. Buffer: Posting your social-media content across multiple social-media services just got a lot easier. With Buffer you can schedule Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google+ pages all it once. To use Pinterest, you’ll need to pay for their service, but the others are free. Please note that you’ll need a mobile device to push out your Instagram posts, but that’s an Instagram requirement, rather than a limitation to Buffer. 
  5. Hootsuite: Another option for social media content scheduling and sharing is Hootsuite. Hootsuite can connect to Twitter, WordPress, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram. Please note that their free version limits you to three social media accounts. Their pro version is $9.99 a month and allows you to have real-time analytics and 50 social profiles. Like Buffer, you’ll need to use a mobile device to push out your Instagram posts.
  6. Commun.it: For businesses that find Twitter especially valuable, this tool helps the user to manage their engagement and presence on the platform. This relationship management tool allows users to monitor and respond automatically with potential leads on the site. It will also track and monitor accounts you have expressed interest in and report their daily activities to you. As with most of the tools mentioned, there are both free and paid versions that offer different features.
  7. Trello: This website exists as an online program management tool with a free option. Users create lists and cards to organize their projects. For businesses with team member, it is simple to assign different individuals to various cards as an indication for team assignments. 
  8. Google Drive & Dropbox: Both of these sites are excellent (and FREE) options for cloud storage that can be easily shared with clients and team. Dropbox is more for just storing the files themselves, while Google Drive is an online document center allowing individuals and team to work within files right on the site. 
This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Social Media Tools. Is there a place where you struggle with time? If so, let us know in comments and we might be able to direct you to just the right tool to help you #BeAwesome at what you do!
Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!
Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+,YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them.

#GiftYourBusiness – Gift of Budget

There are new social media tools being created every day. Many of these tools make the process of curating and scheduling content more efficient and less time-consuming. When it comes to running your own business, saving time is one of the most important aspects of becoming profitable. Therefore, one of the best ways to gift your business this holiday season is to sign up and incorporate some free social media and online tools into your daily routine. Here are recommendations for some of my favorite free social tools.
Canva
Since visual content is so important to social media, a tool like Canva is invaluable. Canva allows users to create social media and marketing images quickly and easily. These high-quality, easy to design images can be used anywhere. Not everyone is a graphic designer or has access to photo editing software. Canva eliminates the need for either of those and makes image creation simple and amazing.
Buffer
For those maintaining a presence on Twitter, Buffer is a fabulous free tool. Buffer allows users to track their follower activity and gives suggestions as to the best time to post or schedule tweets. It has built in scheduling and analytics. The analyticsmeasures all major engagement statistics for posts on the major platforms.
Hootsuite
If we were to log into social mediaevery day, all the time, nothing else would ever get accomplished. However, it’s important that our brands remain reliable and visible on each of the social platforms to maintain our following. Hootsuite is a widely known and popular tool for scheduling out content. It has also RSS feed capabilities and allows users to interact on various platforms via one place.
Commun.it
Another tool that is nearly essential for Twitter users is Commun.it. This tool is based on the need to stay on top of relationship management within the platform. It tracks all the major interaction on your Twitter account and automatically works to nurture and engage fans and followers on the site.  The tool monitors what others are saying about you, your brand and your business. It also shows who is linking to your site, discovers new leads for you, tracks who follows and unfollows, and reports back on community engagement. There are options to auto-engage people who follow, mention, post or retweet your content. This helps keep Twitter accounts relevant on a platform that moves very quickly.
Paper.li

This tool provides an area online to automatically curate and organize content based on chosen topics. It is displayed in a visually appealing newspaper format. These newspapers are a great place to gather together content into a readable feed. Feeds can be organized by topic or by type of media. Users can create multiple newspaper feeds at a time and can follow people, lists, and hashtags. It also has the capability to follow Twitter lists without actually following them via your own Twitter account.
These are just some of the tools available to make life and work easier for business owners and marketers. All of these tools offer a paid upgrade option with additional features in case you stumble upon one you just absolutely love and want access to additional benefits. However, each of these tools can be incorporated into your company today at no cost to you. So, give your business the gift of both time and money this holiday season by finding tools that make you more productive.  Use all that extra time you now have to come up with even more ways to #BeAwesome!
~ Social Media is changing the way people do business.  Don’t get left behind ~ 


Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere, of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn,Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+ , YouTube,Pinterest, Instagram  and the tools to manage them. 

Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars.

Social Seven: Tools of the Trade – Buffer

Social Seven – Social Media Podcast
With Erin Cell of Socially Powered and Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor



Tools of the Trade – Buffer

Buffer is a content creation and management tool to help increase engagement and save time. Content can be created within the tool and scheduled for posting. There is a queue where content can be added and then scheduled and posted as desired. This allows users to pick the best times of day to post and schedule social media content in advance. 
 

Buffer can be used in tandem with Hootsuite. Buffer is great for tweets and Google+, but can’t be used for Facebook. It is more beneficial to post content natively in Facebook, when possible. However, these tools compliment each other so well that is often best to use them together instead of separately.
Buffer offers up to ten different feeds for favorite social media accounts. Users can add RSS feeds and share links from websites instead the tool’s dashboard. Buffer will pull the latest stories and content for you and allow you to share it.
Buffer analytics are available as well. For some clients, numbers matter and they want to see engagement ratios. There are some aspects, such as dark traffic, that keep users from getting visibility at all since it is mobile activity. How do you track mobile users versus other users? Are those numbers actually right? It’s hard to say. So, it’s important to keep them in mind when viewing analytic reports. Each platform offers it’s own set of analytics. However, Buffer does offer this as an option.

Think Buffer might help you with scheduling content and staying on top of your social media? Follow us on social media to find out when our Social Seven podcast is streaming live!

Top Tools In Planning and Managing Your Social Media

https://thesocialmediaadvisor.com/Services.html

We talk frequently about content, consistency and planning ahead using editorial calendars.  We have gathered up a handful of content posting tools, management options and response platforms for you to try on for your business and success in online marketing with social media.  


Content Scheduling Tool

From TweetDeck and HootSuite seem to have the most similar options for Content Scheduling, but we prefer and recommend  HootSuite to our clients.  There are not only :”Free” options (for brands with under 3 profiles to manage), but affordable upgraded  options that provide value and (at times) critical options for Team Assignments, App Integration, Custom Reporting and  engagement options right in the platform.  There are over 75 (the list continues to grow and change frequently) application tools  such as RSS feed integration, newsletter integration and a variety of follower tracking options.
If you are looking to optimize budget and scalability, this is a great tool for that. You can register for a trial version of the upgraded option at: http://bit.ly/15gQM7t

Content Idea Tool

All of your content should be rich with ideas, perspectives, tips, testimonials, news and rich with images.  If you haven’t incorporated a Blog yet, definitely consider including one in your marketing strategies as it adds searchable evergreen content to the search engines providing updates to you’re your website, links to your site and a storehouse of content to be used and reused at later times (which helps with visibility and maintaining consistency).

Should you run dry on content ideas, you should consider sharing posts and blogs from influencers in your industry.  This increases your credibility and enhances the expertize in your brand. Sharing (with permission) from influencers is great for industry networking, co-marketing and enhances your viewers relationship with you.

**If you are only sharing your own content, your audience will feel bored and “spammed” with self promotion.

I recommend using “Suggestion” ideas from HootSuite and Buffer: http://www.buffer.com  I find a wider variety of suggested post ideas from my industry influencers, inspiring quotes, etc.  You can customize your options in both tools as well.

Management Tool for Engagement

Managing conversations, replying and pruning followers are key to keep up with fresh visibility and show your presence is active and engaging.  In addition to engagement options in HootSuite and Buffer, I like the functionality of Commun.it  which allows you to clean up your follower list, send auto (customizable) responses to engagement and a variety of scheduling and reporting options.  It really helps you learn more about your audience and how they engage best with you.

To try out Communi.it, click: http://bit.ly/1RKhPv2

BONUS: Tool for Creating Images for your Brand

As an added BONUS, because visual content is key in ALL of your online marketing, I recommend a popular tool called, Canva found at http://www.canva.com

Canva provides you with template and low cost options for creating branded images quickly and easily for your blog, website and social media posts that are already formatted in the dimensions you need for your brand.  It is an easy to use tool that is very cost effective, maintained well and a variety of tutorials are available as well.

Keeping your social media consistent and up to date with the most engagement options possible, I encourage you to try on these tools, build an editorial calendar to maintain visibility and remember, if you aren’t having fun, you are doing it wrong.

To your success!

~ Social Media is changing the way people do business.  Don’t get left behind ~ 



Hollie Clere, of The Social Media Advisor is a “Be Awesome” Developer, Social Media Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+ , YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them. Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars

  • 1
  • 2

Learn how to use social media to grow your business online with our video series!

  • Learn the fundamentals of social media
  • Learn how to build better brand engagement
  • Learn how to enhance your visitors' experience
  • Learn how to grow your business using social media strategies.

If you want someone to break down aspects of social media to get more clients and build your business using social media, this is the program for you.

Start Learning Today!

Follow me

Categories

Latest Articles

©2008-2023 Clere Communications / The Social Media Advisor