My Must-Have Tools for Social Media

A response to #projectiterate challenge to share!

The fun and talented Elizabeth Fein wrote a short piece about her favorite tools for social media management this week and she challenged Brian Fanzo and me to follow suit.

Note: Being mentioned in the same sentence with Brian is a tremendous honor. I will blow up and print out that sentence and plaster it on my office wall…..

(I’m not kidding).

Anyway, I share Elizabeth’s appreciation for Evernote, Swayy and the good, old fashioned notebook. Additionally, I can’t live without:

Buffer.
Talk to me online 5 times and you’ll see some Buffer love at least once. I use Buffer for all post scheduling across social networks and on multiple accounts. I find their iOS apps (both the Buffer app and the Daily app) tremendously helpful and I use the Chrome extension daily. Their recently added “Feeds” feature is incredibly user friendly and helpful for curating content.

Twitter App.
I do more than 50% of my Twitter searches, replies and interaction straight from the good old Twitter app on my iPhone. I do have other Twitter apps for various purposes but I use Twitter’s own the most by far.

Tip: Get into people’s lists! I find gold among lists I’ve been added to and lists others have compiled for people with similar interests.

SumAll.
I absolutely love SumAll for analytics and tracking. They provide a beautiful interface that lets me see how things are going on several networks. The data is downloadable and very useful. I also use Twitter and Facebook’s organic analytics but SumAll is high on my list of tools.

IFTTT.
Their slogan really nails it: “Put the internet to work for you.” I’ve set up some “If This, Then That” recipes that do smart things for me without me even having to think about them. Plug and play!

Canva.
What’s not to love about Canva? They have a beautifully simple interface along with gobs (yes, gobs!) of free graphics and fonts to use for anything from a Facebook timeline photo to a flyer for a local event. You can literally make an eye catching graphic in seconds.

Tip: Tap into the “custom dimensions” option for making a graphic that isn’t for social media. Have it your way! Also, if you create a flyer, save it both as an image and as a PDF. Use the image online and the PDF for email.

Note: Another dead simple yet unique place to create beautiful images is Chisel. These are great for originality. Also, I’m hooked up on Twitter with the creator, Joe Anderson, and he’s a smart and fun guy to talk to!

PhotoShop Express App.
This one I use mostly for my personal Social Media needs but it’s an absolute go-to for me on my iPhone. It’s FREE and it easily and quickly transforms my dark, poorly filtered, downright amateur iPhone photos into lovely images for sharing. Everyone should have it!

I could go on (and on, and on, and on) with listing my favorite tools but these are my top dogs.

What are YOUR favorite, can’t-live-without tools of the trade?

Following suit, I tag Carolyn Portanova and Kara Rajchel. What do you say, ladies? ☺ Perhaps a good topic for your blogs?