The Digital Tools for Social Media training course walks users through the stages of social media management, in a clear, logical, and – most importantly – actionable manner. By the end of this course, learners will be able to create their own social media marketing strategy and develop an effective social media presence.
The first part of the book is about how to use Free Software for Social Media. It also provides links and references for other webpage contents about Free Software for Social Media, but it does not repeat the information here.
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.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite allows you to manage multiple social content streams from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. It is one of the most famous social media tools in the market.
Working across multiple networks with a social team can be difficult, and Hootsuite makes it possible for you and your team.
It will be easier to delegate among replies to fans and followers, eliminating the stress of coordinating answers and potentially neglecting valued fans.
In the past, one of the biggest frustrations with Hootsuite was how it handled social media images. The good news is this issue is now fixed on Twitter so that scheduled posts will show up to four images directly in the feed.
Pricing:
- Free: up to 3 social profiles, 30 scheduled messages, and 1 user;
- Professional: $19/month. 10 social profiles, unlimited scheduling, and 1 user;
- Team: $99/month. 20 social profiles, unlimited scheduling and 3 users;
- Enterprise (custom pricing): unlimited.
Biteable
Creating content for social media is an essential part of the game. Visual content gets three times more engagement on Twitter than plain ol’ text, so good visual content can help you take it to the next level.
With Biteable, you can easily create engaging, entertaining, and informative short videos to share on social media.
With a host of free video templates, footage, music, and animated scenes, Biteable is a godsend for anyone who wants to create studio-quality quickly without needing expensive resources like film or sound recording equipment.
Biteable was created to be super easy to use and one of the cheapest tools of its type on the market. Most features are available even with free accounts (it’s pretty cheap to upgrade to Premium anyway) so why not add a bit more excitement and spark to your social media content by creating some short, super-shareable videos?
Sprout Social
Hey, you can’t blame us for putting ourselves on the top of the list!
That’s because Sprout Social is the ultimate control center for any business looking to translate its social presence into actual results.
As a social media management platform, Sprout helps businesses organize their content calendar and assets in one place. This allows you to publish and schedule your content across multiple platforms, all timed to perfection based on when your followers are most active.
Beyond social media management features, Sprout makes it easy to collaborate with colleagues and customers alike. Our Smart Inbox gives you a bird’s-eye view of all of your social messages so you can respond thoughtfully and in a timely manner.
Oh, and don’t forget about Sprout’s full suite of social analytics.
Optimizing your content’s performance doesn’t have to be a guessing game as Sprout identifies your top-performing posts and the success of your social campaigns. Coupled with robust social listening features, you can uncover trends, hashtags and opportunities to engage with new customers.
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.
MeetEdgar
Posting most updates or sharing a piece of content once just doesn’t cut it these days, which is why MeetEdgar recycles social content for you.
Meet Edgar will schedule and automate re-posts of your content for you, helping get your posts in front of a larger percentage of people. The tool works by enabling you to build a library of social media updates organized into a publishing queue.
Posts can be tagged and separated into different categories to ensure that different content types are evenly spread out in your queue.
Pricing:
- Edgar Lite: $19/mo: connect 3 social accounts, unlimited manually scheduled posts, 10 automatically recurring weekly time slots and 4 content categories (first month for free);
- Edgar: $49/mo: connect 25 social accounts, unlimited manually scheduled posts, 1000 automatically recurring weekly time slots, and unlimited content categories (first month for free).
Agorapulse
Like some other social media tools on this list, AgoraPulse has a robust scheduling tool, which is awesome for a social media guide.
Still, its strength lies in the inbox-like interface it uses to help you manage conversations on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
You can create filters to tag, flag, hide, or make assignments regarding content and followers.
This can be useful to segment (by customers vs. non-customers, for example), and make it easier to find existing conversations so you can build real relationships.
The app also includes a badging system that makes it easier to alert you when an influencer or advocate has posted, as well as clear analytics.
Pricing:
- Medium: $79/month: 2 users, 10 social profiles, plus advanced reporting and user profiling;
- Large: $159/month: 4 users, 25 social profiles, plus other advanced features;
- X-Large: $239/month: 8 users, 40 social profiles, plus other advanced features;
- Enterprise: $399/month: 20 users, 60 social profiles, plus other advanced features.
Conclusion
__Discover the most in-demand social media outlets and how to use them effectively, plus get expert advice on when and where to post your content–and how to tailor it across platforms. __