Here at Zen Media, we are fortunate enough to be a virtual team. This means more or less that we all work from home, workspaces, cafes, or anywhere with Wi-Fi—and we love it. However, when you work from a remote location and don’t commute to an office, time tends to get away from you and you end up working long days (not on purpose).
Our eyes are always peeled for new tools and apps to help us work more efficiently and of course, free up some time. Recently I did an interview with Media Shower where I shared some of my best advice on creating strategies that result in high engagement and ROI. These tools below won’t only help increase your engagement, but improve the quality of engagement, and your overall day-to-day efficiency.
Buffer
Buffer is a content scheduling and publishing app. Here at Zen Media, we favor Buffer when it comes to managing our personal LinkedIn presence. The tool is helping us grow our footprint on the B2B channel and draw more attention to our content, whether it’s Zen Media blog posts, trending articles, or current events in the marketing world. While most applications which allow you to schedule the publishing of your posts allow you to set a time, Buffer is unique because these time periods are preset; time slots available are designed to allow you to publish at a time of day that will help you optimize your content best. We’ve also encouraged our client’s employees to utilize their LinkedIn accounts and keep them updated. Since usually, these teams have more important things on their plates, Buffer is a very simple and user-friendly way for them to publish content and build their presence – plus for individual users it’s free. You can always upgrade your account to unlock more features and add multiple accounts. Nearly 2.5 million people are using the scheduling app – give it a try!
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a great tool if you’re big on using Twitter (we prefer using it only for Twitter, although it does help you manage various social networks). Like Buffer, Hootsuite allows you to publish your tweets and schedule when you would like them to be released. It is accessible via a web application, as well as a mobile application, so it’s easy to manage on the go. Additionally, you can delegate aspects of your Twitter management to your colleagues. Hootsuite allows for easy collaboration with team members, which is always a plus for growing companies or for companies with remote team members.
BONUS: Hootsuite has an App Directory full of both free and paid apps that are downloadable right to your account. Our favorite is Right Relevance. Just select the account you’d like to add the new stream to and select a topic, for example: “social media tools.” Next, the app searches the social atmosphere to identify and rank topical influencers and uses trust rankings of influencers to show you trending articles, videos, conversations, and events that you may be interested in. To make engaging just a little easier, you can share something straight from the Right Relevance stream with one click. By being able to easily delegate to your team, monitor your progress, schedule your tweets, and search relevant content in the industry, Hootsuite easily gives you back time in your day you forgot you ever had.
ShortStack
Creating and managing a successful Facebook or Instagram campaign isn’t easy—just ask any social media guru. That’s where ShortStack comes in. ShortStack is a tool that helps you create custom apps without requiring a developer’s help. It allows you to create custom forms and widgets to make your campaign more engaging, drive more traffic, and increase ease of use. Maybe you’re wondering if Facebook apps even matter anymore since so many users are on a mobile device. No worries – each ShortStack app comes with a shareable link for mobile visitors so you don’t have to worry about missing out on that audience. BONUS: Not sure how apps could fit into your marketing strategy? Here are a few examples:
- Forms – Increase leads, collect emails, contact us, reservations, testimonials
- Product Promotion
- Landing Page
- Facebook or Instagram contest and sweepstakes, special offers, discounts, or coupons
- Product Gallery
- Polls and Surveys
GroupHigh
GroupHigh has been a favorite for every department in our agency. The platform increases our efficiency when it comes to finding, connecting, and building relationships with influencers (did we mention they index 15 million blogs?!). We’ve seen our fair share of platforms that help teams with outreach and influencer marketing, but GroupHigh is especially helpful because it keeps your social media strategy in mind. Here are a few of their key features that we take advantage of:
- Search for bloggers by industry, topic, location, and audience size
- Search for bloggers by social media outlet
- Collect information on each blogger like traffic, contact information and social media audience
- Manage lists and create new lists of bloggers right on the platform
Not convinced? Take it for a test drive, but be careful because once you start using it you’ll wonder how you managed to get by without it.
Onlypult
B2C audiences are very visual. Instagram allows us to build a community, showcase culture, and increase our engagement and awareness through images – that’s why we love it!
Onlypult has become our new best friend, allowing us to publish photos directly or schedule them for a future date. Through Onlypult, we’re also able to manage multiple accounts without having to log in and out of each one. The best part? You can do it all right from your desktop. It looks like the team is working on an analytics feature, so be sure to stay tuned. Now that we’ve shared some of our favorite social media tools, we want to hear about yours.
Leave us a comment below on the blog or contact us directly!
