Must-Have Tech Tools for All Social Media Marketers

Guest blog by Michelle Smith

Your parents think you work for the “Internet.” Your grandparents think you’re some kind of computer genius because you know how to upload photos to Facebook. Your boss knows you’re a necessary component of the marketing team, but still has troubling figuring out what you do.

You’re a social media marketer and your more tech-savvy friends are extremely jealous of your job. Their envy is completely understandable, even if they aren’t aware that a social media marketer’s job is never really done.

Social Media Keyboard

Before work, during work and after hours, you’re busy posting, Tweeting, sharing and engaging with customers on behalf of your company or client. It can be difficult to manage sometimes, but you’re a pro at what you do. To become even more incredible at your job, incorporate a few tools to help keep your marketing efforts effective.

You’re probably aware of the basics: keep your tablet handy at all times. Use HootSuite or Buffer to bring your company’s social media accounts together. And connect with high-speed Internet – or even better, fiber-optic Internet – so you’ll never have to worry about a timely post missing a deadline due to a shoddy Internet connection.

Here are a few other must-have tools every social media marketer should consider using:

  1. YouTube’s Audience Retention Report
    YouTube marketing isn’t just about the number of views for your company’s videos or channel. According to Social Media Examiner, “Audience retention is the new view count.” Use YouTube’s new Audience Retention Report to track “what kind of retention you’re getting from your videos and how it compares to everyone else’s.”Get accurate measures of both “absolute audience retention” and “relative audience retention.” It’s a great way to see how viewers respond to your video marketing efforts.
  2. GaggleAMP
    Get the whole company involved in social media marketing with this handy tool. B2B companies with a large sales force and a smaller marketing force, especially, could benefit from GaggleAMP. With this tool, you could turn your agents into “a potential army of internal brand advocates who can help make a company’s social media marketing efforts much more effective.”Create a “Gaggle” and have willing employees join. They can pick company content they want to share, and even be rewarded for sharing.
  3. Reachli
    Pinterest may be newer to the social media marketing world, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an important aspect of social media marketing. Reachli, which used to be called “Pinerly,” is a new Pinterest analytics tool. Reachli gives you constantly updated information and analytics and even best practices data. It “helps you optimize your Pinterest content based on the analysis of click-through rates and repin feedback.”
  4. Scoop.it
    Scoop.it is a great “click and share” tool. It works as a browser button, much like List.ly and Pinterest. Scoop.it helps you manage the content you “scoop”; it organizes it into categories or “topics.” Create topics for others to follow and re-share posts on other social media platforms.Scoop.it will even suggest content to add to a topic. Manage suggestions “based on keywords or the feeds of particular users. Those feeds can include their blogs, Twitter feeds, Twitter lists, hashtags and Facebook.”
  5. PostAcumen
    If you utilize Facebook as a social media marketing tool a lot or a little, you would benefit from using PostAcumen. This tool allows marketers to “perform extensive competitive analysis on Facebook posts.” You’ll be able to keep tabs on how your content measures up against your competitors’ for Likes, Comments, Shares and more.Like most of these tools, PostAcumen is reasonably priced, so even small businesses could take advantage of this data without feeling like they’ve spent too much.

Do you have a favorite social media tool and don’t see it on the list? We’d like to hear it…share it in the comment box below!