Best Social Media Tools: Monique’s Picks
The 5 social media tools I use most often.
I like discovering new social media tools and The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and JESS3 is a visual map of the enormous number of social media tools available. But there are a handful of tools that I regularly turn to that are beyond the typical mix of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.
Here are the social media tools I use on a regular basis:
1. Buffer is an easy way to post content on social media. The Buffer App lets you specify the number of times a day to post content. You add posts to the queue and buffer posts according to your schedule. The browser extensions are also an easy way to add content to the queue.
2. Hootsuite is a social media management tool with a great dashboard for tracking and collaborating with team members. Although I use Buffer to post content, I also schedule content via Hootsuite. More important, I use the dashboard to monitor various hashtags or accounts, follow Twitter lists and stay on top of mentions or direct messages.
3. Google Analytics is my weekly, if not daily, tool for tracking campaigns and getting insights into search, display, social and referral traffic. I have custom alerts and reports set up for various clients and I like noodling about to see how marketing campaigns are performing. It's not strictly a social media tool but I use it for monitoring social media referral traffic to my client sites.
4. Moz is an inbound marketing tool that helps with SEO, social branding and research. Again, it's not strictly a social media tool, but it is one of the few tools I pay for year after year.
5. Mention replaces Google Alerts and is a way to track keywords and listen for online brand mentions or other conversation.
6. Simply Measured offers free and paid social media analytics reports. I find these helpful for one-off audits or other check-ins on activity on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram.
7. Antavo is my go-to for social media contests. I like the templates, reports and easy setup.
8. Timeline Slicer is a handy tool for mocking up Facebook cover images and post images.
9. PicMonkey is my photo editing tool and it's a quick way to make collages or to add fun overlays to images.
10 Zapier is my superpower tool for automating functions like pushing favourited tweets to evernote.
I also have some common WordPress plugins that I can't live without.
- WordPress SEO by Yoast is a quick way to optimize for SEO.
- WPtouch Mobile Plugin is awesome for making a mobile-optimized site in a few clicks.
- Coschedule is an easy-to-use, drag and drop editorial calendar.
- Easy Tweet Embed is a way to embed tweetable content in posts.
Have a social media tool you can't live without? Please share.
