5 Time-Saving Tools for Social Media Marketing

If you are anything like me, you’re consistently looking for new ways to become more efficient and effective and, most importantly, to save time.

While I stopped chasing new and shiny tools some time ago, occasionally I do come across a social media tool that is so useful, time-saving and easy to use that I incorporate it into my processes.

I don’t have time to waste with shiny new objects for social media.

A social media tool needs to unequivocally prove its worth in time-saving measures for me to add it to my very short and elite list.

In this article, I share five of these awesome time-saving tools for social media. I hope you will find them as useful as I have.

5 Social Media Tools to Save You Time

1. Buffer

Buffer is a great tool if you want to create and schedule social media posts in advance. This is extremely helpful as you can set aside a block of time each week to create and schedule your social media posts for the week, for all of your social channels.

With over 75,000 customers, Buffer has plans that allow you to publish, reply or analyze your social media results. You can choose the plan you need so you are not paying for the features you don’t need. This also makes this social media tool more affordable.

Publish: Buffer’s Publish plans allow you to plan, collaborate and publish content to build your audience and grow your brand on social media channels, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

Within the Publish umbrella, Buffer offers three paid plan sizes as well as a free plan.

Reply: These plans help you provide amazing customer service on social media by responding to social conversations and resolving customer support requests.

Within the Reply umbrella, there are two paid plan sizes available.

Analyze: You are also able to gain in-depth insights to grow your brand on social media by measuring social media performance, creating reports and getting recommendations.

Within the Analyze umbrella, there are two paid plan sizes available with the ability to add additional social accounts.

2. AgoraPulse

AgoraPulse is a complete social media management tool. It allows you to schedule your content, generate reports and engage your followers, helping you or your team to save a significant amount of time.

According to the company, it currently has over 17,000 social media managers who use the tool on a daily basis.

The AgoraPulse tool includes the following features:

flexible scheduling options that allow you to schedule, reschedule, queue or bulk upload your posts to fill your content calendar
a Social Inbox to catch every conversation, making it easier to find, filter, and manage your comments, mentions, ad comments and other important messages
unlimited one-click reports that calculate the ROI of your engagement and content strategy, available as online and downloadable CSV and PPT reports
real-time team collaboration so you can assign draft posts, comments and messages to those team members best equipped to take them on
built-in CRM to track your followers, which allows you to quickly label and group your audience into segments; you can also add internal notes for each user and view the conversation history for each user.

Although there is no free plan and it is more expensive than some other social media management tools, this comprehensive tool eliminates the need for multiple tools and makes it easier for teams to manage their accounts easily and effectively.

AgoraPulse does, on the other hand, offer five free tools businesses can make use of:

According to the company, it currently has over 17,000 social media managers who use the tool on a daily basis.

The AgoraPulse tool includes the following features:

flexible scheduling options that allow you to schedule, reschedule, queue or bulk upload your posts to fill your content calendar
a Social Inbox to catch every conversation, making it easier to find, filter, and manage your comments, mentions, ad comments and other important messages
unlimited one-click reports that calculate the ROI of your engagement and content strategy, available as online and downloadable CSV and PPT reports
real-time team collaboration so you can assign draft posts, comments and messages to those team members best equipped to take them on
built-in CRM to track your followers, which allows you to quickly label and group your audience into segments; you can also add internal notes for each user and view the conversation history for each user.

AgoraPulse does, on the other hand, offer five free tools businesses can make use of:

AdsReport: This tool allows you to analyze your Facebook ad account and campaigns. Quickly and easily see your ad spend, conversations, reach and impressions, the cost per action for your post reactions, post shares, link clicks and post engagement.

Easy Employee Advocacy: This tool lets you rapidly launch an employee advocacy campaign by giving you a platform to quickly upload all the content you would like your employees to share. It’s easy for them to spread it via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest or email. You can immediately see which campaigns (and people) are getting the most clicks and visitors with a visible leaderboard that encourages employees to engage.

Facebook Barometer: This tool allows you to compare how well your Facebook pages are doing against more than 51,000 (and growing) other pages added to the Barometer. You can see how you compare to similar size pages in terms of fan reach, engagement, number of people talking about you, negative feedback, viral reach, organic reach, click through rate and paid reach.

Twitter Report Card: This tool allows you to compare your tweets to those of your competition. Quickly see how you compare in terms of audience followers and quality, publishing activity, quality, and following and conversation activity.

Timeline Contest: This tool allows you to easily run, organize and manage your Facebook contests. With this tool, you can run sweepstakes, quizzes and photo contests directly on your Facebook timeline.

AgoraPulse offers a generous 28-day free trial for its paid plans on their website but if you click here, you can get two free months instead!

This makes it easy for to get a good feel for the tool and decide whether it will meet all your needs before you commit to it. It also offers a variety of plans, depending on your needs and budget, including plans for larger companies and agencies.

3. Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is a fantastic tool to transform your ideas into stunning visual stories. Create impactful social graphics, web pages and short videos to reach your audience.

These tools are user-friendly, allowing even those with no graphic design skills to create beautiful graphics and videos quickly and easily. The platform includes numerous templates and an inspiration gallery to help inspire your storytelling.

Once you create your content on your desktop or mobile device, you can instantly share it on your social platforms.

Spark Post: With this tool, you can pick a theme, insert a photo, add text, and apply design filters or animations to create stunning graphics instantly. Create graphics such as:

posters
flyers
promo cards
business cards
print ads
Facebook & Twitter ads, graphics and headers
Instagram stories and ads

Spark Video: With this tool, you can create compelling video stories by easily combining photos, video clips, icons or your own voice with professional-quality soundtracks and cinematic motion. Create videos such as:

slideshows
teaser videos
explanation videos
campaign videos
promo videos
recap videos
intro videos

Spark Page: With this tool, you can turn words and images into beautiful, magazine-style web stories that will impress readers on any device. Create one-page websites such as:

photo journals
newsletters
presentations
reports
cases studies
portfolios
info pages

Depending on your size and budget, Adobe Spark is available as an individual or team plan. If you are an Adobe Creative Cloud Subscriber, you get Spark as part of the plan. There is also a free version if you are just getting started.

4. Loom

Loom is a useful video recording tool when working with teammates or customers out of office.

Used by over 1.5 million people and 40,000 organizations in more than 170 countries, this video-recording platform provides you with a new kind of work communication tool that helps you get your message across through instantly shareable video.

The platform allows you to capture your screen, record your front-facing camera and narrate the visuals all at once, without having to switch to or upload files from another app. When you are done, you can instantly share your creation with a simple link.

This is a fantastic tool for sales, customer service and team collaboration as you can create many types of helpful videos, such as:

prospect introductions
product demos
personal follow-ups
onboarding and training
feedback
project updates
how to’s
introductions to new features or processes
troubleshooting
workflows

You can also use Loom to create short videos to upload to social media. Capture your screen only or you plus your screen.

Loom offers individual, team and enterprise plans as well as a basic free plan, depending on your needs and budget.

5. Otter.ai

Otter.ai is a powerful audio recording and transcribing tool that can eliminate the need for you to take meeting notes or remember your discussion during your last phone meeting.

This handy tool provides you with the ability to search, play, edit, organize and share your conversations from any device. You can also generate sharable smart notes that sync audio, text and images.

Simply record conversations using Otter on your phone or web browser. Or import or sync recordings from other services. The tool will even integrate directly with Zoom.

The tool will then provide you with real-time streaming transcripts. Within minutes, it’ll generate rich, searchable notes with text, audio, images, speaker ID and key phrases. It also lets you share or export those voice notes.

Otter has a free and premium individual plan as well as a team plan.

One of the ways I have been encouraging my clients to use this tool is to record themselves sharing a story and then turn that into a social media post. Often, the way we tell a story differs from the way we write a story, and the best posts tend to be those written as a story told to a friend.

Pick the right social media tools to save time and be more efficient

An endless number of social media tools are available today, and it’s hard to decide which ones fit your needs the best. I hope you will find those I mentioned here useful to you. They key is to choose the tools that will meet your goals and objectives, save you time and increase your efficiency and effectiveness.

What are your favorite social media tools? Let me know in the comments.

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