See it and Sell it First at ASI Show Orlando – January 4-6, 2025.   Register Now.

Awards

4 Social Media Tools To Help Improve Your Marketing

Use these four tools to improve your online outreach and strategy.

1. BuzzSumo (buzzsumo.com) helps you discover what online content related to particular topics – say, “marketing” or “promotional products” – is performing best on social media. You can then use this info to create blog posts and other digital communications that tap into the hot-topic themes. The service also works to identify social media influencers and review and amplify their content. It also provides alerts that notify you when content mentioning your keyword is posted, or when a certain author or competitor publishes new content. Indeed, you can track how your competitors’ content performs. Advice: Take the free seven-day trial for a spin before signing up for a paid plan, which starts at $79 monthly and runs up to more than $500 per month.

2. Buffer (buffer.com) aims to make it easy to schedule social posts, analyze their performance and manage various social media accounts from a single dashboard. You can create posts in advance and then set times for them to go live on different social platforms. Browser extensions and mobile apps enable users to add newly discovered content to their posting queue, and analytics tools empower marketers to track how content is performing across social accounts. Metrics include clicks, likes, reach, shares, comments, retweets, mentions and more. Data reports are exportable. Advice: Buffer can be a valuable tool for any marketer eager to enhance social media presence using real-world data. A starter plan is free, while a “pro” plan is $15 per month. Business plans range from $99 to $399 monthly.

3. Venngage (venngage.com) enables users to make eye-catching infographics that can be shared on social media platforms and elsewhere. Use Venngage’s professionally designed templates to build infographics, and customize the designs by changing fonts and colors. Venngage helps you utilize charts and text, along with icons and images from its library, to enhance the visual appeal. Advice: Infographics do well on social media because they’re concise visual modes of communicating ample information. Marketers should be using them, and Venngage can help you even if you’re not a designer. Monthly plans are $19 for individuals and $49 for organizations/businesses.

4. Backly (back.ly) strives to direct more traffic from social posts to your website, blog, landing pages or other online destinations you want to send prospects to. When you share a piece of content, Backly sees to it that your face appears in a pop-up along with customized text and a link to a web location to which you desire to shepherd visitors. Related help from Backly can include attaching a “like” button to your Facebook messages, which can aid in growing “likes” on your company’s Facebook page. Advice: If you’re getting solid engagement on social platforms but having trouble getting prospects to click through, then consider giving Backly a go. At $9 per month, the “solo” plan is the least expensive option. At the higher end is the $199 per month enterprise package.