By Aris Jerahian
Social media is an effective way to market your credit union or business. But to actually be effective, you have to do it right and be consistent. That can translate into a lot of work and take a lot of time. Luckily, you can cut down on that effort and time with social media marketing tools like these.
- Compfight. People love images. It’s the first thing they look at when on a website and it captures their attention in a newsfeed. To make it easier to use Creative Commons images, use Compfight. It’s one of the best search engines for Flickr photos. Simply input keywords, and the results will show you all images that have a Creative Commons license for Commercial Use.
- Tagboard. Hashtags are a valuable tool, so you should be paying attention to them. With Tagboard, you will be able to identify the hashtags your audience is using. When you know those keywords, you can start using them to draw people to you. The best thing about this tool is that it works with all major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
- Socialbakers. This tool is great for keeping an eye on your competition. You can see engagement rates for your brand and those of your competitors. The tool also has the ability to show you who is the most active on social networks. Connecting with these people can help you improve brand awareness.
- Post Planner. Unless you’re available all day every day, you probably need a way to schedule your social media posts. Post Planner is perfect for that. You can schedule posts when they will be most visible to your audience. Other features include searching for content that’s trending, and retweeting or sharing popular content. The real-time analytics are great because you can adjust what you’re doing on social media depending on what’s trending.
- Commun.it. This tool will help you build relationships with potential members and influencers. It tracks who these people are, and who you need to reach out to each day. One of the most valuable features is the ability to track how many conversations you have a month, so you can increase interactions from month to month, which will help you improve your brand awareness.
- Bottlenose. If you’re not sure what type of content to post on your social networks, you should start using Bottlenose. This search engine will find the most popular content on social media in real time. It will then list all of its findings ranked by what you should post first, second, third, etc.
Make Social Media Marketing Easier
There are many tools you can use, and you can’t use all of them. They are meant to make your social media marketing easier, not more complicated. Choose a couple of them that you believe will help you the most, and then if you want to add another one later on, go right ahead. That way you’ll never feel overwhelmed with all the tools you have.
Aris Jerahian is Principal and Managing Director with Social Link Endeavor. For info: www.slendeavor.com.