By Susan Guillory
I’m all about easy. The whole “reinventing the wheel thing?” Not for me. That’s why I’m always on the lookout for tools and apps that can make my day-to-day tasks easier.
Take marketing. Managing it for your business could easily keep a team of marketers busy 40 hours a week. But you probably don’t have a team of marketers. So you’ve got to find tips and tools that will help you make the most of the time you do spend on marketing.
Here are a few of my favorite marketing tools.
1. SproutSocial
I’ve been a Hootsuite fan for years, but recently, SproutSocial has turned my head as a fantastic social media dashboard. In addition to being able to schedule content to go live across your social media platforms, you can also schedule the same update to be published multiple times (great if you want to get extra play for a promotion or link). You also get great analytics that provide insight into how far your social efforts are going.
2. Revive Old Post Plugin
I was amazed when I started seeing how many visits to my website came as a result of using this WordPress plugin. It simply shares old posts from your blog on social media, giving people access to your great but older content.
3. Sumo’s List Builder
Getting email signups is always a challenge, and so many people ignore your subscription box. But List Builder is smarter: you can set it to send a pop-up box with your subscription details after a set amount of time (once visitors have spent a few seconds on your site), and you can customize it to capture signups via mobile as well.
4. Tweet Jukebox
This is another great social media automation tool. Tweet Jukebox allows you to set up multiple tweets and create a schedule for when you want them to automatically publish. If you have a promotion or campaign, it’s great because you can keep people seeing your shares on the campaign without manually writing tweets every day.
5. Twitterfeed
Don’t be thrown off by the name; with this tool, which automatically publishes your new blog posts across all social media channels, you can make sure your content is out there for people to click and share as soon as it’s live. But don’t just rely on the automated social share of your content; follow up with hand-crafted shares, pulling different points and highlights from your article and then scheduling them (in SproutSocial!).
So many tools, so little time. The great news is we will continue to see awesome tools that facilitate marketing and give you back your time.