30 Social Media Tools for You to Try

By Janet Barclay.

I recently participated in the Social Media Success Summit, a four-week online conference featuring 45 sessions by top social media experts. As you can imagine, I learned about a lot of different strategies and tactics, but one thing that really stood out was the many tools that are available to support us in our social media marketing endeavours – and not just the well-known ones like HootSuite and Buffer.

This is by no means a complete list, but I’m sure you’ll find a few here that you can use. All of the tools listed here are either free or offer a free trial or demo so you can try them before you buy them.

Blogging

Click to Tweet – make it easy for readers to share your content on Twitter

CoSchedule – editorial calendar plugin for WordPress that allows you to schedule your social media messages while you write your blog posts

Digg Digg – social sharing plugin for WordPress that allows you to float your buttons at the side of the page, instead of (or as well as) at the top and/or bottom of your posts

Easy AdSense plugin for WordPress – generate passive income from your blog

Podcasting

iTunes Store, Soundboard or Stitcher – list your podcast

Visual Content Creation

Canva, PicMonkey, or Word Swag for creating eye-catching branded images to use on any platform

New Old Stock, Photo Pin, or Unsplash – photos you can use in visual content, free of known copyright restrictions

Content Curation

Buzzsumo – research tool for finding the most shared content, influences and mentions of a particular brand or topic

ContentGems – receive daily content suggestions on the topics that you choose

Social Media Engagement

LinkedIn Advanced Search – find people who would be valuable to add to your network

Pay with a Tweet – give people an incentive to share your content

RiteTag – choose the best hashtags for your tweets

Spider – a social listening tool by oneQube to help you actively engage

Twitonomy – monitor your followers, lists, keywords, and much more

Twitter Advanced Search – find conversations that relate to what you want to be known for

Twitter Cards – make your tweets more engaging and encourage click-throughs to your website or blog

Analytics

Ahrefs – detailed backlinks reports for your own website and your competitors’

Curalate – visual marketing analytics

Google Analytics – set goals and track results

Iconosquare or TOTEMS – analytics for Instagram

Have you used any of these? Which ones do you like? What others do you recommend?

Janet Barclay is a web designer who provides technical and marketing support to Career Professionals of Canada.