The best 10 social media tools content marketers swear by

Are you finding yourself spending way too long on your social media? It’s so easy to do. You think I’ll just pop on and post something, answer my fans and have a quick flick through.

An hour easily passes before you realise that you’d better get back to your other work.

As a content marketer, I find most clients come to me as they find social media is taking them way too long and they don’t have the passion.

But with so many great social media tools around these days, it’s easier than you think to conquer the social media beast. There are tools for content creation, scheduling, publishing and even analysing so you can make sure your efforts are working.

What’s the point of using social media tools?

Besides the obvious time factor, social media tools are the best thing to ensure you’re remaining consistent with your posting. Everyone knows consistent content is the new king.

Yes, your content must still be super relevant to your audience, but there’s no point posting once in a blue moon. Not only will you fall off all those important algorithms, but your audience will stop seeing your posts, and you’ll lose interaction.

Think about it – scroll through Facebook or Instagram if you need too – who are filling your newsfeed? You’ll notice the pages with consistent posts will fill your feed. Sure, some of them are big business with their own social media person, but there’s no reason smaller businesses can’t achieve the same results.

This is where social media tools come into play. Let’s check them out.

The best 10 social media tools to enhance your social feeds

1. Buffer

This is a tool that helps you post and analyse your performance for all your social media platforms. You can create one post and use it across the various platforms. You can then monitor the results (interactions, likes, comments etc.) to see what types of posts are performing well for you. If you’re working with a content manager or a team, you can assign the post to them for approval or input (which saves bucket loads of time on emails back and forth).

2. Facebook scheduling tool

You can use Facebook directly to create your post and schedule it to post at a time that suits you. All you need to do is create your post on your page’s timeline, click the little arrow next to publish and select schedule. Below publication, select the date and time when you want to post and click schedule. If you’ve decided you want to replace your post with another (i.e. you’ve found something amazing you must share), you can always reschedule your post for another time.

3. Canva

If you haven’t discovered Canva yet, get onto it. It’s the best tool to create beautiful social media images without needing to be a full-blown graphic designer. You can create infographics, header images, blog titles, and sharable images without too much effort. Canva gives you ready-made templates, icons and images to make all your posts look super professional.

4. Planagram

As the name suggests, this is a tool designed for Instagram posts. This tool helps you post during Insta Prime Time, the time of the day where you’re likely to get the most engagement. You can schedule your images, galleries and stories and this tool posts them at the exact time you’ve asked them to be shared. You’ll save time by scheduling and posting up to 10 images at once, and it posts through Instagram’s API, so it’s secure.

5. Linktree

This tool helps you optimise your Instagram traffic. It creates a custom link that when clicked, reveals a page with up to 5 links you want to share. These can be links to things such as your email signup, products, blog posts etc. You’ll need to write a standout Instagram bio and add your Linktree link here to get people to connect with your further and see your other content.

6. Unsplash

If you’re looking for professional photos that you can use for free (yes, free!), you can find them at Unsplash. You’ll find a massive library of photos that will help give your social media posts the edge they need – and in this visual world, you need to make sure you’re using the best images possible. You’ll find many creators, and if you find someone whose work you like, you can follow them so you can easily access all their images.

7. Answer the public

This is a cool search query tool that helps you to map keyword suggestions/predictions that you’d see when you perform a Google search. You enter a keyword into the tool, and it comes up with questions people are asking Google or Bing. You can then use these questions to create a headline that will get clicked and come up in search results. For example, type in ‘small business’ and you’ll get results like – ‘Why small businesses need a website’. Write a similar headline and voila – instant top level results.

8. Buzzsumo

There’s a lot of buzz around this tool! It helps you find the most shared content online and see who’s being an ‘influencer’. You’ll discover what content is performing best for any topic which helps you create smarter content strategies, with the added benefit of seeing the articles performing well online. You’ll also see what pages of your own are engaged with the most so you can create similar content.

9. Bit.ly

There’s nothing worse than long, chunky links in posts. This handy tool was created in 2008, and Twitter lovers jumped on it – loving how long links were shortened to under 20 characters. Still hugely popular (with over 600 million links being created every month!), people love creating shorter links as they’re more easily shared, and you can track the clicks you’re getting on your link.

10. Ripl

This amazing tool is one of the easiest ways to make videos for your social media channels. There are 100s of designs you can customise with your own photos, music, logo and brand message. With video being highly recommended by SEO experts, it’s worth a shot – you don’t have to be a video expert to play! Once done, you can post them straight away or schedule them to go live when you choose. You can then track their success.

Get onto these social media tools and start playing

Like all technology, the best way to learn how to use it is by having a play with them. Most are super user-friendly these days and designed with the small business owner in mind. Give them a go! I guarantee you’ll save heaps of time and up your social media game.