15 Marketing Tools You Need to Dominate Your Social Strategy

And videos like these should absolutely be part of your social marketing strategy. Content marketers make it a point to regularly share content. According to Curata, 83 percent of marketers curate or share content with their customers from 3rd-party sources. Post to Twitter automatically after making a post to Instagram. Facebook posts with images see more than twice the engagement of posts without images. Creating a great visual experience is part of growing your audience, keeping them engaged, and getting them to share your content. Pull from those ideas, schedule content, and give your social profiles a serious boost in engagement. And there are a lot of tactics for boosting engagement on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other channels. Unfortunately, 89 percent of social media messages to brands are ignored. What social media tools do you find most useful for sharing and boosting your posts?

Social media has become a regular part of our daily lives.

Marketers know the best way to connect with their audiences is to go where they go. Often, that means meeting them on the social channels they use.

As the use of social continues to climb, so does the number of brands that use social platforms to get their messages in front of customers.

Today, more than 80 percent of people in the U.S. have a social profile.

But we’re not all packed into a single social network.

Your audience is spread across a number of platforms.

Because of that, businesses are splitting their attention across an ocean of social networks to keep in touch with fans and prospects.

Companies have been developing 3rd-party apps and tools for years to help marketers keep up with the challenge of engagement.

This graphic shows a collection of specialized tools that aid in managing social marketing.

That’s a lot.

And that’s a dated image going all the way back to 2012!

Imagine now!

Rest easy. You don’t have to use them all.

While the best social media management tools are always changing based on the social landscape, there are some that are a must-have to dominate your social strategy.

Here’s my list of can’t-live-without favorites.

1. Animoto

Standing out in social media isn’t easy.

The popularity of social platforms that rely on visual media (Instagram and Snapchat) should give you some indication of how your audience may prefer to digest content.

Video is a great way to capture the attention of your audience, and Animoto can help with that.

This tool provides access to a large volume of attractive templates, themes, and even a collection of stock music to add depth to video.

While Facebook just made the switch recently to auto-play sound in news feeds when videos start, not all platforms have this feature.

So, it’s an added bonus that Animoto lets you add text overlays throughout your video. With 85 percent of video ads viewed without sound, this can be a life-saving marketing tool to get those thumbs to stop scrolling.

And videos like these should absolutely be part of your social marketing strategy.

Native video uploaded to Facebook has 10x the reach of video links that are shared on outside sites like YouTube.

Michael Patterson shared details from Sprout Social’s own Facebook Insights, revealing the vast difference in reach between native and shared video.

A tool like Animoto can help you capture a larger segment of your audience.

And with social video generating 1,200 percent more shares than any other type of content, you’ll greatly expand your reach with native videos and animation.

2. Grum

I love the marketing potential and unique engagement that you can achieve with Instagram. One thing that is a hindrance is being required to post only from your mobile device.

Grum offers up the perfect solution.

From a single dashboard on your PC you can:

Post on Instagram from your PC
Prep posts and schedule them to be posted at a later time
Swap between Instagram accounts on the fly without signing out and signing back in again
Process and edit photos, including cropping images

Posting from your PC is convenient, but it’s the scheduling functionality that’s the key benefit.

With Instagram changing from chronological feeds to the use of an algorithm, posting content at the right time is even more important.

Based on a number of studies, CoSchedule has determined the ideal times to post to Instagram in order to gain maximum reach and visibility.

And it can be difficult to consistently post at those times manually. Scheduling content eliminates missed posts.

With Grum, you can drop your videos at any time, like 9 p.m., when they’re likely to get more interactions.

Or you can post at off-work peak times like 2 a.m. when you’re otherwise sleeping.

We’re all swamped on Mondays, and scheduling content makes it easy to hit those peak times when you can’t get away to make a post.

3. Venngage

Creating quality, engaging content can be time-consuming. This is especially true of infographics.

Not only do you have to source your data, but you need to compile it into an eye-catching design, have that graphic designed, and write a great post to go along with the graphic.

Venngage is a popular tool for streamlining a portion of that process.

This tool provides a wealth of templates to help you put together the perfect infographic or presentation slides.

You have complete customization options to add your brand’s style, but you also get access to a suite of charts and other visual enhancements that make building your graphic easy.

Should visual content like this be part of your marketing strategy?

Absolutely.

When your audience reads information, they’re likely to remember only about 10 percent of what they see.

Pair that with relevant images, and people retain as much as 65 percent of the data three days later.

Your competitors are likely using this kind of visual marketing, as well.

According to the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, creating visual content is one of the top priorities for marketers. Over 50 percent of marketers surveyed intend to add it to their future marketing efforts.

What’s more, infographics and similar visual elements are among the most-preferred visual media among marketers.

According to data gathered by Venngage, over 40% of marketers say that infographics were among the most engaging forms of visual media.

4. Quuu

Part of mastering social media is recognizing that your audience wants to hear from you.

But they don’t always want to hear about you.

Your followers are looking for value. They want information and tips to pass along, entertainment, ideas, education, humor, and more.

Rather than trying to force-feed them a stream of your own content, you should curate quality content from around the web.

Quuu is an excellent tool for doing just that.

Marketers and influencers submit their content to Quuu for strict individual review and approval by its editorial team. Once it’s approved, that content is sorted by topic or industry and available for curation.

You select the topics most relevant to your industry and audience, and Quuu creates an automated queue of content that’s ready to be dispersed to your social accounts.

It’s a great tool for padding your editorial calendar with curated content.

It’s also a promotional tool to help you grow the reach and shares of your own blogs and articles.

And you should absolutely be doing both.

Curating content establishes thought leadership, which is a target goal of some 85 percent of marketers.

And it only takes a few steps, as illustrated in this graphic.

Content marketers make it a point to regularly share content. According to Curata, 83 percent of marketers curate or share content with their customers from 3rd-party sources.

That includes: