The 17 Best Social Media Management Tools

Social media can be pretty overwhelming sometimes.

Especially if you’re running an agency or managing the social media accounts of other businesses.

How do you juggle and manage the many hats you need to wear as a social media manager?

Creating content, scheduling shares, engaging with followers, repurposing content, sharing others’ content, community management… This list could go on forever.

The only way to effectively manage social media at scale is with the use of social media management tools that can improve your efficiency, and over time get you better results.

The tools we discuss below help you do that. Many of them have similar features, however they are all different in terms of the BEST way to use them. Choose the ones that fit your your needs and give them a whirl.

Here are 17 of the best social media management tools available;

1. EveryPost

EveryPost lets you curate visual content, schedule customized posts, and share content to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Tumblr. This is useful for posting from your Android and iPhone devices.

2. Bit.ly

Bit.ly is a url shortener and click reporting tool all in one. It’s great for Twitter with short posts, and also tracking the clicks to help you understand how well your content converts traffic to your website.

3. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an enterprise level social media management tool used by over 10 million professionals. They can help you schedule and analyze your social media marketing campaigns.

Furthermore, Hootsuite has a number of team tools to help your team create content for social networks.

4. Agora Pulse

Agora Pulse lets you schedule content for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all in one place. Plus, Agora Pulse has dynamic reports for all three social networks. You can run contents and promotions from Agora as well.

5. Social Oomph

SocialOomph helps you schedule content on Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, you can create welcome messages on Twitter. Socialoomph has a number of premium options that allow you to schedule photos, use Facebook, and LinkedIn.

6. Sprout Social

Sprout Social is the complete social media management tool for social media agencies because you can use this premium social media management tool for multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts.

7. Crowd Booster

Crowd Booster is a social media analytics tool to help you optimize your social media marketing decisions. Instead of doing the analytics manually, get it automatically updated on a consistent basis. You can even create custom reports that can be useful for clients. Finally, use the reporting information to schedule Tweets for optimal times.

8. Edgerank Checker

Edgerank Checker, from Social Bakers, helps you understand the best ways to optimize your Facebook content. You can create custom content that increases engagement and optimizes your newsfeed response.

9. SocialBro

SocialBro is a Twitter marketing tool. SocialBro helps you with all of your Twitter needs from scheduling content, to reports, to creating ads on Twitter.

10. Tailwind

Tailwind is a comprehensive tool to help you with your Pinterest marketing efforts. This is the official partner for Pinterest marketing.

Tailwind helps you create multi-board pins, bulk uploads, and calendar scheduling. They can also help you optimize the best times to send your pins to get the highest engagement.

Finally, Tailwind was designed to help teams manage multiple accounts. This makes it an ideal tool for agencies providing social media services.

11. Buffer

Buffer is a great tool to schedule social media posts from links you share across the web. You can share posts to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest.

12. Oktopost

Oktopost is a social media management tool focused on generating leads for businesses. This is in comparison to what they believe is lacking with Hootsuite – Hootsuite helps businesses schedule content, whereas Oktopost helps businesses gain money.

13. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar recycles your posts, so you can reach a larger percentage of traffic from recycled content later.

14. IFTT

IFTTT is an automation tool that is simple and easy to use. You just select the recipe you want in order to market your business on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.

15. Tweepi

Tweepi will help you find targeted users on Twitter, and then stay connected to them by interacting on a regular basis.

16. Socedo

Socedo is an automated social media lead generation tool that works with Twitter and LinkedIn to help you find the right leads from social media. Find qualified leads and then add them to your sales funnel.

17. SocialFlow

SocialFlow helps you manage paid, owned, and earned social media campaigns in one place. Social Flow recommends specific posts, pins, or tweets for you to promote. Then you can use keywords and segmentation to analyze these campaigns.

Final thoughts

Choosing the right social media management tools for your business requires you to have a good understanding of what your needs are. While a lot of the programs here seem very cool, you might not need all the widgets and doo-dads to succeed.

Instead, your business needs to focus on which tools can improve what you are already doing on social media currently. When you do that, you have a much better chance of using the right social media management tool for your business.

Guest Author: As Founder and Director of Shout Web Strategy, Michael Jenkins is at the forefront of social media marketing. Since it’s inception in 2010, Shout has built a strong reputation as Australia’s leading social media agency.

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13 Ridiculously Clever Lead Generation Tactics

When it comes to lead generation, you hear the same things over and over again….

You have to drive people to landing pages on your site and have them register with an email address, in order to receive your gated content. You hear it all the time because it works.

Once you get an email address, then you can begin to “court” those leads, and you keep in touch.

But what if there were other ways to get leads – ways that you may not have thought about yet?

Well, there are.

Here are 13 clever lead generation tactics for you to consider, so you don’t leave any leads on the table.

1. Use your email signature space

Turn cold leads into warm and even hot ones, by using that empty space below your signature.

You can actually change the message in that signature space to do all sorts of things, and make sure that your team members are using the same one, depending upon what type of lead generation you want at the moment.

• Insert a message about an amazing new post with a link to your blog. On that content page, there can be an optin to receive all future posts. Now your lead is getting emails and posts (Note: the post needs to be amazing, you have to make your blog rock!)
• Double up on CTA’s in your email. Your email may be an offer of some sort. You can have another CTA in your signature space that will take a lead to another landing page. The British Red Cross does a great job of this, and you can read the case study here. But to give you a quick example, here is an email it sent out with an offer for readers to make a will. Note in the signature area, there is a CTA to join their network as well, along with sharing options.

• Another way to use your email signature space is to place an offer right there. It could turn a lead into a buyer on the spot.

2. Create a poll/quiz

Of course, you see these on Facebook all the time.

And admit it, you do take those quizzes and you participate in polls. You, like everyone else, like to see which “Frozen” character you are or have your opinion count somewhere.

But if you are going to use one of these “hooks,” create one that relates to your niche. Why? Because people who participate are likely to be much warmer leads – they have an interest in your product or service already.

Here is an example of Z Gallerie’s quiz on interior design preferences. The company sells products to interior designers. The quiz was gated, and the company was then able to follow-up with the quiz taker and make recommendations for products based upon their personal style preferences.

You have two options to turn the quiz and poll takers into leads.

• You can “gate” the quiz or poll, once readers have linked to it.
• You can promise to send the results via email, once the polling event has ended.

3. Use the byline on every post

You already have share buttons on your posts. And that’s a good thing. But unless you are doing something more that will actually generate leads, you are leaving some on the table.

Your post may be shared, and a new reader may find it fun or interesting. But you want that reader to do more than just share it with others. You want that reader to optin. So, under your byline, offer a “free updates” link, so the reader can optin to all of your future posts. Now you have another email address to add to your database.

4. Use white space on your rails

There are a couple of things you can and should do here;

• Install sticky widgets that follow the content as the reader scrolls down. You want a constant reminder to click to a landing page for a free e-guide or trial offer, so that you can capture an email address.
• On the right side rail, place a small box about you, with perhaps a small photo. Have offers on that rail side too. Neil Patel does a great job of this on “Quick Sprout.” Here is an example of some things that are on the right rail of all of his posts.

5. Give bonus information

Here are the 4 steps of this tactic:

• Use Buzzsumo to find the most popular articles on a topic related to your niche
• Review the article and then write a better one
• Offer the reader even more information on the topic in exchange for an email address

Warning: Don’t Bait and Switch. If you are offering bonus information on a specific topic, no fair switching topics – you’ll just make readers angry.

6. Hold a contest

The entry fee, of course, is an email address. Here, you must be certain that the winner will receive something of real value – a free product is the best reward.

ModCloth does a great job of this. On any given day, you can access their Facebook page and find great stuff. They feature their own customers modeling their clothing, and conversations abound. But they also run contests to “name” a clothing item that they have just acquired. (They do name each piece they carry). The winner receives that item, but, with each contest they generate new leads.

7. Find groups and engage

Locate online groups where your target customers hang out, and join a few.

• Hang out for 10-15 minutes a day. Scan the recent posts and comment on them
• Start posting 1-2 times a week. Get some kind of theme for your posts – perhaps something humorous or inspirational – jokes, quotes, etc.
• Post at the same time and same day and build a following
• Eventually drive them to a landing page with an offer

This is just one of many lead generation tactics offered by Noah Kagan of okdork.com.

8. Use product videos on landing pages

The majority of internet users are now visual learners even if they were not before. Use a video to explain your product or service, using good tools such as Animoto.

Keep that video short but put a CTA at the end. Many marketers are not aware that they can actually embed CTA’s in videos, but it is really effective. People may not read a post to the end, but they will watch a video to the end.

9. Get rid of the word “Spam”

Mike Aagard, author for ContentVerve.com did some A/B testing on conversion forms.

Here’s what he found: When the phrase, “We will not spam you” was removed from the form there was an increase in conversion rates. Using that phrase reduced conversion rates by 18%. There is just something psychological about the word “spam” that readers do not like (for obvious reasons)

10. Experiment with CTA buttons

There is a lot of research out there about those CTA buttons and what appeals and attracts.

Here are just a couple of pointers:

• Have rounded corners – it drives eyes inward rather than out and away
• Put an engaging phrase on the button or right around it – keep it short
• Orange and Green colors do best

To get a full explanation of the power of CTA buttons check out this Wordstream post.

11. Use segmented storytelling

Telling stories is always a great way to capture readers, especially if the stories are compelling in some way.

Jack Daniels does a great job of this with their reader-submitted weird bar stories. Readers continue to access their landing page with these stories. You can use stories, if you are creative enough (boring stories will have a reverse effect). And, if you publish your stories in segments, and the reader has to optin – you’ll get those conversions.

12. Use Quora

Quora now has a search feature. You can search for topic keywords, and get into feeds that relate to your niche. Start answering questions and create a profile with backlinks.

Eventbrite has used this tactic quite well to link back to its specific events. You can use it to link back to your landing pages.

13. Use SlideShare

There are now over 60 million visitors to SlideShare every month. Think of the potential leads that can come when visitors search for keywords that relate directly to your slide presentation. But you can go further than that:

• You can add a link to a landing page on every slide
• You can sign up for the pro plan that lets you collect leads from those who have viewed your slides.

Here are only 13 options you have for lead generation. There are many more, of course.

Just begin with 3-4 of these tactics – those that you find easiest to implement right now. Test their effectiveness, keep those that work, dump those that don’t, and move onto the next few tactics. Eventually, you will have a great repertoire of lead generating tactics that work.

Guest Author: Ethan Dunwill is an entrepreneur, blogger and contributing writer for several websites. He also provides master-classes about business and marketing. You can connect with Ethan via Twitter or his personal blog.

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8 Things To Know When Diving Into SEO In 2016

SEO is a three letter word that everyone wished they dominated… but very few do.

After hearing about the success of others who have used SEO, millions of users flood the online world to get a piece of the Search Engine pie. They figure they can write a few blogs, sit back, and watch the traffic roll in.

The dream is to throw a few affiliate links in an article and fly out to  the bahamas. That’s the hope of most bloggers, and the promise from wannabe experts online.

You see these scam artists, within a blog post, hold a wad of cash in their hand promising you the world, and traffic, if you buy their course of how to get rich. After watching this you go crazy and start banging on the keyboard hoping to strike gold. It’s what I call, “blogging fever”.

A year rolls by, and you notice something. 10 visitors saw your site yesterday, and your PayPal account is as dry as the Sahara desert. You’re losing steam, and a hopeless feeling is taking over. What if the old days of SEO is dead? What if SEO doesn’t roll in like it use to?

Reality is kicking in.

The old way of SEO is dead. You can’t just write and expect the world to flood in tomorrow, next week, or even next year. You must work for it. Why? Google is flooded with articles to choose from, just as they planned. They can now offer the best to their users and dominate the world with the greatest results in the knowledge realm.

Good for them. Bad for you.

Or is it?

SEO is still a thing of the present and you can still get it. Only thing is, you’ve got to get the get rich stuff out of your head. It doesn’t exist. The greatest things come slowly, and that’s okay, because you’re a man/woman of valor and patience.

The next step is to understand the 11 truths about SEO. These 11 factors will help shape you into becoming an SEO machine. Let it help shape your attitude when you write your next article.

Don’t forget to download my SEO checklist that is based on the truths of this article. Download that here.

Here are 8 things to know when diving into SEO in 2016;

1. The SEO world is saturated

The heroes of 2008 won’t be the same as in 2016. We’re going to push a little harder and fight a little stronger for our traffic.

As SEO in 2016 becomes more saturated, it will be harder to find that free swift traffic. However, there is still some niches out there waiting to be unlocked.

In 2016 though, I would pretend as if SEO did not exist and simply write for people. I mean yes, optimize for SEO and have everything there for possible SEO triggering. After this though, don’t sweat if Google doesn’t pick you up, you can’t help what they decide to do. Depend more on your outreach and your personal efforts.

Writers have become famous before Google and they’ll become famous after Google (with or without it’s help). Never wish for success. Work for success. So if it comes, great! If SEO doesn’t come like you want it to, that’s okay too. That doesn’t determine where you’re going.

Over 1.5 million articles are published daily on WordPress alone. That’s very saturated and “hoping” for success won’t get you to the top.

2. Backlinks are harder to get as Google becomes stricter

Guest posting was the way of the future in 2008, but now it is the way of the past (for links at least).

Guest posting is not the best way to get links. It’s still good for traffic and relationship building, but Matt Cutts stated that guest posting was dead as far as he was concerned.

Blog comments isn’t the place to build links and neither is the bio section of a post. Google wants you to get links from places that is nearly impossible. Why so strict? They know if Huffington Post, Forbes, or even Jeff Bullas is linking to you, you have something of value to share.

The best kind of links are the hardest to get. However, if your friends are bloggers who love you like no tomorrow, then they’ll be more than glad to link to you. No blackhat SEO has to get involved in order to crush SEO successfully.

Connections dominate and always will dominate Google.

3. Design is everything in 2016

After reading the 160 page document Google released, it’s clear that design means more than ever before. They plan to have a “rater” come by and check out sites based on design.

If it looks spammy, you get a low score. If it looks professional, you get a high score.

Friendly user navigation is huge along with long amazing content. Every rater must read the 160 page document before becoming an official part of the team. Based on collected data among the raters, they will combine their ratings and calculate it with the algorithm already placed within Google’s system.

How will they scan every website out there? No idea. I assume they’ll focus on the top 3 results of major keywords and work down the list of keywords. They haven’t really stated though how’ll they do this. We’ll have to wait and see.

4. Longer is always better when full of actionable content

Content is huge as you know, and Google sees the word count within every post. They use this as a factor when ranking your site’s position.

Since Google can’t read, yet, they compare word count among others as one of the factors to determine expertise. Also readers love this, they see this as major effort on your part and see you as an expert when you do this. It definitely looks impressive when your content is long and full of actionable, fact based, and creative content.

As for the length of content, your 1000+ articles do best. The closer you get to 2,000-5,000 words the better. I understand that’s not possible at times, but those article that do reach this length end up doing well.

Buffer recommends 1,600 words based on a study performed on Medium.

Hubspot wrote about this very topic, and they’re recommendation? Write until you’re done. Write until you feel like the article is complete.

I agree with that, but always have a goal. If your goal is 2,000 words, you really need to search yourself to make sure that there is absolutely nothing left to say. I agree the best blog posts are written with passion and burning knowledge. However, Google can’t read like we do, yet, and with that being said, they do go by content length.

I’ve seen within my personal studies, longer content almost always wins. Other things play a factor such as age, backlinks, bounce rate, load time etc. However, Google does see long content as a good thing. So just keep this mind.

5. Add lots of images within posts

It’s already proven that images say a lot of about the writer. Credibility many times is perceived by the look of the images. Investing in great artwork is worth the money and can set you apart when trying to gain trust from the reader. Every little thing counts when trying to get the reader to become an email subscriber.

Some great places to get images you can find here:

• 99Designs
• Creative Commons
• Dribble

Here is me making blog titles look even better!

Great images affect many things also when it comes to SEO such as bounce rate.

Bounce rate tells Google if the average user likes your content. If the bounce rate is high, you’re a poor writer, according to Google.

Images however can help with this due to our love for images. It keeps us intrigue and fascinated. Since the beginning of time we have loved images as they are a thousand words to us.

Our minds “download” images as soon as we see them at speeds much faster than we read words. Within seconds we can determine how we feel about a blogger based on images alone.

Based on this we may stay or click on something else. So be choosy when selecting images.

Also, sprinkle them throughout the article, it shows Google you care for your users and want to help them with the subject you’re discussing.

To take this to the next level, try infographics.

Infographics work amazing

I had an SEO project I perform to test my skills. It was a niche site in the bug world. I wanted to see how hard it would be to rank a website with less competition. Not easy either!

No real blogs that I could partner with and these people are somewhat introverts! I was still able to gather some major links including Lifehacker! You can see here:

My goal was to crush the insect identification world with my niche website. To help identify a bug within minutes. It could bring security to a young mother or a woman with spider-phobia.

So how did I get linked by Lifehacker and some bug blogs? It was easy.

An infographic. By creating an infographic even better than my “competition” I was able to land a powerhouse of a blog and gain a very valuable backlink. It brought credibility and I’m still bragging about it (like now!).

Here’s how I went about doing this:

• Find an infographic that did well
• Search the sites that used it
• Make a better one
• Reach out to the same blogs

That was my method and it worked. Once I landed on Lifehacker, I’ve been using that as my pride badge and people are featuring me on their site with my infographic.

6. Writing more than you promote doesn’t work anymore

The idea that Google is going to catch you and send you loads of traffic, just for writing another article, isn’t here anymore. It’s better to write 1 article and tell 100 people about it than to write a 100 articles and tell 1 person about it. That’s becoming the method of the latest success stories. Every piece of content is like a book to them, and their promoting each blog post like the pros.

If you really believe in your article, wouldn’t you be advertising it? The real reason most don’t do this is because all they see is sites like Mashable or Huffington Post publishing faster than we read them. That may work for them because they have promotion teams that do nothing but market their site. They can do that, but you can’t.

The only way to get serious SEO traffic today is by promoting and working for your links. Ask to replace dead links with a live link such as yours. Get involved within roundup post. Give lots of testimonials. Connect with bloggers who will talk about you.

If you’re not looking to promote like a boss, guest posting may be your thing. If you simply love to write, and not really dig into promotion, consider guest posting full speed. For every blog post you write for your site, you should consider writing 3-5 guest posts. This way you can be assured that new people are seeing your blog post every day.

The goal is to gain email subscribers.

7. The email list is huge for SEO

What if you had 50,000 readers waiting to see the moment you released an article. To read it, to talk about it, and to write about it. That’s like a dream come true.

That’s what an email list can do. So by building that email list, you’re increasing the chances of backlinks. Also mind you, this is THE best way in growing profits. You ask 50,000 people to buy something, and that product is a good one, you’re going to make money.

The email list helps your SEO, and SEO builds your email list. It’s an ongoing cycle that keeps growing, however, the end goal is to gain subscribers. That’s where the majority of energy should go, and that’s within the email list.

8. Keyword research is still huge

In the old days, you could keyword stuff your article and by repeating the word lots of times, you could very well rank. Well, those days are over, and I’m glad to see it too.

That definitely looked spammy when people did it. Some say keyword research is over also because of it. I understand we can’t take out keywords like we use to and rank as easily, but it doesn’t mean we should throw all of that away. Keyword research only reveals the demand of a topic and whose trying to tackle it. It can display where our energy should be, and how much time we should put in when trying to tackle each topic.

All of this is very useful and you should always let keyword research be a part of your blogging. If you’re looking to gain SEO traffic, you must find a gap you can fill. There is still weak articles out there that you can replace and completely dominate, it’s just going to take more energy.

Great tools to use to do this are Keyword Planner or Market Samurai.

Sum up

By reading this article, and letting this set the stage, you can create each blog post that has potential for SEO success. You’ve just got to have a realistic mindset and put on your strategy thinking cap. To write an article without a strategy plan is already a blog post waiting to fall flat. You’ve got to take this to the next level.

Guest Author: Luke Guy is THE SEO guy who isn’t your average dude who focuses on backlinks. Instead he focuses on connections and uses this ability to rank well among search engines while using his strategies. Luke loves getting emails from his fans and looks forward to them everyday. Consider contacting him anytime.

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