4 Tools to take your social media marketing efforts to the next level

Guest Post: by Mike Scott, Head Story Teller @storytellermedia

Using social media as a marketing tool can be so overwhelming. But when we start talking about all the different tools you have at your fingertips… I don’t know about you, but I feel like my head is spinning!

I know when I first starting using Social Media for marketing purposes, this was one of my biggest obstacles to overcome because there are a million blog posts (I guess like this one haha) that tell you to use this tool or that tool, but how do you decide?

Unfortunately, I was one of those who tried them all and wasted a lot of time while I learned a lot along the way. At the time I wished there was a list of tools that I knew worked… well here you go! This is the list of the 4 tools I now use on a daily basis to grow my social media audience, generate leads and ultimately drive the business.

Enjoy!

1. Buffer

While you have probably heard of Buffer, I can say it has been the one tool that I’ve used from the beginning and have not found a tool in the last 2 years that can replace it.

Buffer gives you the ability to create a posting schedule for each of your social media accounts, all in one place! You can connect your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest accounts through buffer to save time by posting in one place.

Once you have created a post, you are then able to put them in your “queue”. Based based on your time settings, you’re able to automatically share the posts from your queue to all your social media accounts you have chosen all at once.

It also has a cool feature that allows you to look up and re-use content that your audience has enjoyed. This allows you to re-post what you have already prepared without having to start from scratch again, all in an instant.

The last huge feature that I use every day is the “Content Inbox” which allows you to find content that is relevant to your target audience and automatically schedule these posts into your queue or share them instantly.

2. OSP System

This has been a game changer for me! Since the beginning of my time on social media it’s always been a challenge to manage sales funnels, email campaigns, auto responders and find a good CRM that manages my leads effectively until I found the OSP System (Online Sales Pro).

The OSP system is a complete system that’s intuitive, clean and loaded with features that helps you get leads that turn into sales through a lead management system. It’s an inbound marketing system and has an app available for both iOS and android.

The two of many features I use daily are the pre-built landing pages and lead management system.

If you know anything about landing pages and sales funnels, you will know that they can be time consuming to design not to mention the time it takes to find what works and what doesn’t. The best thing about this tool is they already have pre-built options that you can easily modify to your business in minutes and start using.

The 2nd thing in the OSP System and the one I use most is the lead management system. You can access it online by logging into the back end or they have an awesome app (that’s what I use daily) that notifies you in real-time when you have a lead come in, and lets you follow up directly from the app, take notes, organize and track your prospects 24/7.

A MUST have in any business!

3. IFTTT

IFTTT is a tool that I cannot live without as it gives you the ability to automate a lot of tasks that I was doing manually before I found it. One of the great parts about it, is it’s FREE.

You are probably thinking how do you pronounce that? haha

Well if you don’t IFTTT stands for:

If This… Then That

The cool thing is you can define “this” and “that” and create a “recipe”… for example:

The great thing about IFTTT is that not only can you create your own recipes, but you there are thousands of other ones created by other uses. They have recipes for almost any platform you can think:

• Facebook
• Buffer
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• LinkedIn

….. and like 1,000 more!

This is an amazing tool that has a plethora of options that can help you automate your on-line marketing efforts and also give you an insight into what is working and not working.

4. Crowdfire

Now if you have read my blog post I did for The Creation Agency #11: Twitter is NOT Dead… How I Generated Over $30,000 in 3 Months with Twitter! – you will know I have talked a lot about Crowdfire. I used it specifically for building my Twitter audience however it can also be used for building an Instagram audience as well. It is by far one of the best tools that I not only use on a daily basis, I use it over 20 times a day.

Once I started sharing content on social media, I knew I had to grow my target audience. When I Googled “How to grow your target audience on Twitter” I found that one of the best ways to grow your target audience was with an app called Crowdfire. 

Although there are other great apps out there as well, Crowdfire was the one that worked best for me. It allows you to “copy followers” or influencers with the same target audience you want to focus on.

Crowdfire also has a lot of different features besides copying your audience, like:

• Unfollow people who are not following you
• Unfollow inactive followers
• Copy followers
• Who your recent followers are

The couple that I focus on the most would be to unfollow people who are not following me. I also focus on inactive followers, it’s important to unfollow people that are not active as they will not be able to contribute to your community.

In conclusion, I know there are a lot of different tools out there but I’ve given you 4 tools that you can use to:

• Gain more followers
• Lead management system to track and follow up with prospects
• Schedule and find content your audience wants to see
• Automation tools to make your life easier 
• AND the ability to manage all your social media marketing efforts with ease!