Social Media tools can help you achieve things online that you could never manage on your own.
“If you’re looking to generate sale leads successfully, you need to go where the people are. And currently, everybody seems to be on social media.” ~ Duct Tape MarketingÂ
The problem is that there are so many to choose from. So it is a tough task to sort through them all and find the ones that might work best for you.
In this post I have collected together 5 tools that offer a range of social media services, are very powerful, and could potentially boost your social media marketing.
Twtrland
This is a great way of not only analyzing your current Twitter following, but also finding people to interact with and follow. Something that is always time consuming on Twitter.
The information provided by this tool, although some of it is restricted to the paid plan, is astounding. You can find such things as:
- Overview – generally what is your best content, how often you are active, engaging and on Twitter
- Champions – people you are interacting with and how often/what percentage of the total
- Influencers – find the top people in your following OR people you should follow based on skills or other interesting criteria (location etc).
- Filter Following – you can also break down your current following into various categories and demographics making it easy to see your followers in detail
Sometimes you have to take the time to dive deep into your social media accounts and see who is really worth interacting with and even who you have forgotten about. This tool can help you do that quickly and easily.
Note: There is a lot more available in the Pro account, which is $49.99 a month. But with just the Free account I was able to find out a lot of interesting information about my Twitter account.
Lumen 5
You can make thumb-stopping videos in minutes with Lumen 5
It's known as the smartest way to create social posts, stories and ads.
Dazzle your audience with professional quality visuals. Unlimited access to millions of videos from Getty, Shutterstock, and more.
Lumen 5 is ranked as one of the top tools for marketers by Erik Fisher of Social Media Examiner. Erik says:
When you need to repurpose online articles as videos, try Lumen5, a free browser-based app you use on a desktop computer. Simply copy an article’s URL into Lumen5, and it converts the article into a slideshow. After the conversion, you can edit the images, text, and video transitions on each slide. In about 30 minutes, you’ll have a customized slideshow that you can export as a video.
Visually Facebook Insights
If you are looking for a quick, yet detailed overview of your Facebook page and all the interactions, likes, followers of that page over the last 30 days, then this is the tool for you.
AÂ free tool from the Visually team, Facebook Insights produces a fantastic infographic style report with a lot of helpful information from the last 30 days, such as:
- Likes and changes in likes
- Impressions and engagement (likes, shares, comments)
- Demographic breakdown of the above
- How viral was the content (was it re-shared and how many times)
This is certainly not enough information for a business to run an extensive social media campaign on Facebook, but for the average small business or blogger it is very useful and visually appealing (see below).
MavSocial
There are so many social media management and analytics tools around these days that I never thought I would see a new one with a genuinely different take on social media.
MavSocial have all the standard features you would expect from an enterprise Social Media Tool
- analytics & reporting
- multiple social channels including many you have never heard of
- scheduling & campaigns
But they have put a twist on it all – media. Meaning: images, video and audio.
Their focus is on sharing and reusing your existing media content in the easiest and fastest way possible.. Whether it be images, audio or video, they provide you with a large repository so you can easily reuse your stuff.
And, if you don't have the right image, they also have a large stock photo library (from Getty and BigStock) where you can buy images cheaply and easily (without leaving the tool).
They also have a built in image editor so you can quickly add or change anything you need before sharing it on your social channels. I personally prefer Canva, but for an all-in-one solution, it is a great addition.
And to add to the fun, their free account gives you access to almost all of the above features. It might just become your latest social media tool.
Sprout Social
This is a very powerful, enterprise level, social media analysis tool.
Simply Measured can dissect your data like almost no other platform. But it comes at a hefty price of $500 per month!
Fear Not, I am not wasting your time – they also have a load of free reports, which can provide us “normal” bloggers and marketers with amazing insights into our social media accounts.
Below is a list of the free reports that they currently offer (I put some on the same line, as they are related):
- Twitter Follower Analysis & Customer Service Analysis
- Instagram User Analysis
- Facebook Fan Page Analysis & Content Analysis
- Facebook Insights Analysis & Competitive Analysis
- Google+ Page Analysis
- LinkedIn Company Analysis
- Vine Analysis
- Social Traffic Analysis
- Traffic Source Analysis
I just ran the Twitter Follower Analysis Report and this is a portion of what the output looked like (the report takes a few minutes to run, so be patient – they email you when it is ready).
Final Thoughts
Making use of the best tools online to improve your social media marketing just makes sense.
So why not give some of these tools a try and see how they can bring your social media to the next level.
Recommended Reading:
- The Complete Guide to Using Twitter Lists Like a Pro
- The Tao of Twitter, Revised and Expanded New Edition: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time
- Duct Tape Marketing Revised & Updated: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide
Hi Ileane & Ashley.
Ashley, I’m looking for a tool that works with real reach figures for Twitter, not with assumptions far from reality (such as… potential reach = no of followers => unrealistic). Is any of these tools based on such figures? Or do you know other tools that meet this requirement?
Thank you in advance.
Hey Adrian,
Off the top of my head that is not an easy one to answer. You can try something like Followerwonk to look in depth into your Twitter following, and ManageFlitter might have some of the functionality you are looking for. There are loads of tools around, and I honestly do not keep track of them all. I mainly use Buffer and Tweetdeck and Tweetadder.
check out the ones I mentioned and if it does not help, email me and I will ask around. I know some tools savvy gents
ashley
Hi,
Im using NeedTagger from last 1 month and this helped me to find lot of potential customers. I recommend all our readers to have a look on this tool!!
hey Avinash
It is indeed a useful filter to have on Twitter and I connected with a few potential customers within a day. It is something companies can use for sure, although many of the bigger ones will have access to this kind of feature in enterprise tools also.
thanks for dropping by
ashley
Ashley, I always run the FREE reports from SimplyMeasured.com. There’s some really powerful information within these reports. Great list… Brandon.
Hey Brandon, I had no idea you were using it. I should use it more. And in face one of my podcast guests put me onto it as his company uses the full blown version internally and love it.
thanks for the comment
ashley
Hi,
After I read your article, I think the most suitable tool for me is MavSocial.
Gonna check the website now.
Thank you
Hey Guntar
It is definitely a great alternative to some of the big guns out there. Feature rich and free for the entry level version. Give it a go
ashley
Thanks for the mention of MavSocial Ashley, its most appreciated and i am glad you like it!
Best
Chris
Hey Chris
You guys have done a great job and definitely deserve to be better known than you are. A social media tool with a focus on images. Love it
ashley
These are great ideas, Ashley, thanks for the post.
The onus is on the poster, however, to ensure they carry through on their posting strategy, not to ‘try it and see’ over and over again. If you are consistently communicating, these tolls will be a great help.
Hi Ashley,
Thanks for sharing these tools with us. I’m going to check these out…especially Twtrland and NeedTagger.
Hope it’s going great for you both!
Thanks for dropping by Corina. Always good to find some new tools to play with!
Ashley
Ashley, great post. I try to stay informed, but these tools got by me. I must check them out.
Twterland sounds interesting.
Its hard to keep up indeed. Hope you have fun with them.
Thanks for the great review, there are hundreds of tools created to increase social marketing efficiency. I seriously do not see the point of such tools yet, social media need to be natural.
Hey jossef. There is a time when tools help for sure. These tools don’t replace interaction but help with monitoring etc. give it a try
Ashley
Hi Ashley,
NeedTagger looks RIGHT up my alley! I’ve been hungry to find a sweet sweet filtering tool for twitter. I dig the network, but see too much noise over there. Even with lists. This tool looks like it works for me.
Let’s face it; most of us – yes, even the seasoned vets who should know better – waste a fair amount of time on social. I’m a social fool at times, spending a bit much time on doing untargeted things. I should know better, right? Right, nods all 😉
So this bad boy finds all the blogging tips chats I need. Or maybe, the “Blogging from Paradise” chats? Is the keyword taking hold? The trending topic, taking off? 😉 Hashtags, here we come!
Thanks so much Ashley!
Ryan
No Worries Ryan, glad you can find something useful in this list. There are always lots of great things to try out
Hello Ashley, you have posted an informative blog. I think that I should check these tools after reading this post. I am not a user of these tools. So,could you please let me know which one is more helpful among all?
Hello Ashley,
Thanks for sharing these tools with us. I think the most suitable tool for me. I like all tools and like most visually facebook insights.I think all bloggers will like this article and these tools are very useful for all blogger for boost our results.
Have a nice day!
Regards,
Mohd Arif
Hi Ashley,
Thanks for the quality tips and guidance you are providing through your articles. facebook and Twtrland actually work great for me.
Thanks Sona, appreciate your comment
Hi ,
Excellent : Thanks for sharing these tools with us. I’m going to check these out…especially Twtrland and Need Tagger.
Hope it’s going great for you both!
Hi Ashley, thanks for the great list.
I just created a free twitter report with simply measured. That’s good stuff. Turns out we are pretty much in line with our objectives in terms of keywords our audience uses. It’s nice to have confirmation about that :).
We’re using pretty basic tools for twitter, mainly to schedule tweets (Hootsuite and Buffer). I also have the chrome add-on “Riffle”, it can be super useful to see which hashtags people are using / how many fav and retweets they get.
Hey Aurelie
Glad you enjoyed the post and the report, they certainly can be powerful and provide some really great insights.
Thanks for sharing your tools and ideas too. I am always up for some new ones to try out. I had not heard of Riffle, so might give it a go.
cheers
ashley
Hi Ileane & Ashley.
After I read your article, I think the most suitable tool for me is MavSocial.
tank you
Hi all,
I have been promoting my offers on social media very actively, but never used any tool(s) to analyse the results. I am glad that I read this post. Now I will try out these tools.
Thanks for sharing fruitful info.
Hello! I have used SimplyMeasured free trial account. It’s great, but it’s too expensive. Looking forward to use other Social media tools mentioned out here.
Thanks for sharing this information.
Hi! Ashley I love the way you blog.There are many social media management tools and I’ve given a try to some of them.MavSocial is one of them and it won my heart.I recommend newbies to use it.