4 Social Media Tools to Get Small Business Owners off the Treadmill

I know you understand…

Content marketing is effective and social media is a great way to interact with your customers.

But we all only get 24 hours in a day, and if you run a small business, you probably have two things scheduled for every single one of those hours already.

So how are you supposed to do content marketing on top of that?

Finding time and content to Tweet, blog and share your opinion on Facebook takes up time and energy you might just not have.

And even if you do have the time, wouldn’t you like to know how to do it faster and easier?

Here are the top tools you need to get off the social media treadmill and start making real progress.

1. Feedly

The first hurdle in social media marketing is what to Tweet or post. We know from studies that it makes sense to blog three times a week, Tweet three times a day, Facebook at least twice, and so on.

But that’s a lot of talking.

You’ll need news to comment on and cool ideas to pass on if your content marketing efforts are to reap the rewards and meet these crazy standards. That’s where Feedly comes in.

What does it do?

Feedly helps you build a news feed of content that interests you or fits with your space. It lets you collate blogs, news articles from papers and magazines, YouTube videos and more, so you never have to go looking for something to post about again!

It also monitors the web for news about your business – a crucial aspect of reputation management. The service claims over 15 million users and offers integrations with Chrome and Google Apps.

Get off the treadmill with Feedly

Start your content marketing session with your Feedly news feeds. Split them by categories according to the interests of different customer groups and you are away – a quick intro, a link, and you’re Twittering like a boss (you are a boss; you know what I mean).

One more thing…

The Shared Collections feature lets you discover, read and distribute content collaboratively.

Pricing

Feedly is free: Feedly Pro, with Evernote and Pocket integration and more features in the pipe, is $5/month.

2. Tweet Jukebox

While writing Tweets isn’t the most time-consuming process you’ll do in a working day, it’s a grind if you’re trying to Tweet multiple times – six or eight isn’t uncommon – throughout the day.

You could write your Tweets into a spreadsheet, then copy and paste them throughout the day, but that’s still a drag and besides, this isn’t 2001. And dumping a dozen Tweets on your audience all at once is a surefire way to make sure none of them are read.

Enter Tweet Jukebox, which lets you schedule multiple Tweets throughout the day or week, solving the problem of getting content out there.

What does it do?

Tweet Jukebox is based on the concept of a jukebox. For you whippersnappers, a jukebox used to mount a stack of short-playing records and then play them one after another, or at least that’s what Wikipedia says.

Tweet Jukebox does the same with Tweets. You preload it, and then leave it to Tweet for you at specified times and days of the week.

On Friday, Tweet Jukebox will automatically thank the people who mentioned you on Twitter during the week. Unlike the majority of Twitter scheduling services, Tweet Jukebox allows you to construct multiple ‘jukeboxes,’ alternate or switch between them and run big ones on repeat, so when they reach the end they start at the beginning again.

Get off the treadmill with Tweet Jukebox

Log in and start assembling Tweets to fire off at preset times and days. Use jukeboxes to tweet your blog posts several times – the best way to get more engagement with your blog!

One more thing…

Tweet Jukebox’s creators, Tim Fargo and Len Sixt, built the app for Tim’s business. It wasn’t designed to be marketed, but once they saw what they had, they had to let us have it too!

There’s a bonus too. For a small business owner the Tweet Jukebox library is a huge time saver. You can grab some quotes or photos for free and instantly spice up your Twitter feed.

Pricing

Tweet Jukebox is free, but there’s a pro version in the works for $9.99/month.

3. Buffer

You’re browsing the web in your (legendary) free time, and you come across a piece of content you’d really like to share with your fans. If only there was a way to shoot it out to all your social networks really easily, without opening half a dozen windows, copying the link and wearing out the CTRL + V keys on your laptop.

Enter Buffer.

What does it do?

Buffer began life as a scheduler, but there’s way more to the service than that.

Unlike Tweet Jukebox, you can’t schedule evergreen content to repeat and have to reenter it manually and there’s also a less granular level of control. But what it does allow you to do is pick up any piece of content and effortlessly disseminate it across your social networks via the Buffer instant sharing button, which you’ve probably seen – it’s on plenty of blogs!

Get off the treadmill with Buffer

When you find a piece of content you like, instantly share it, staying on trend efficiently and without disrupting your content strategy.

One more thing…

Buffer integrates well with Feedly, as well as other content management apps.

Pricing

Buffer has a range of plans, from Individual, which is free, through Awesome at $10/month to Large Business Plan at $250/month.

4. Raven Tools

So you’ve got your content management tools up and running, you’re pulling relevant content from Feedly and the web and dropping great posts into your Twitter feed and Google+ (don’t neglect it; Google still loves it) and Facebook pages.

What’s the result?

As Peter Drucker famously said, ‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.’

So a content management strategy that takes you off the treadmill of guesswork and hoping should include measuring outcomes as well as controlling output.

That’s why you need Raven.

What does it do?

Raven Internet Marketing Tools includes everything you’d expect from a standard social media marketing analytics suite.

But it made this list, so there’s more, right? Right.

Raven also gives you CRM-like functionality, like the ability to manage and schedule responses to Tweets and Facebook posts in the dashboard. You can assign tasks, control access within your organization and – well, you can do anything you can do with a CRM, because Raven includes one.

It also includes some scheduling functionality, a customized reporting system and some SEO and advertising tools.

Get off the treadmill with Raven

Use Raven to plan multi-channel campaigns that use AdWords and social channels together. Light a fire under your content marketing!

One more thing…

Raven integrates with Google AdWords, so you can create AdWords campaigns directly from the Raven dashboard.

Pricing

Pro plan is $99/month; Agency plan is $249/month.

Summing up

In all probability, you’re already using Buffer or Feedly. However, if you aren’t and you’re a small business, you’d do well to use all of these tools in conjunction with each other.

These will solve all the main problems of social media posting; curation, targeting, scheduling and analytics. You can finally get off that treadmill!

Guest Author: Pratik Dholakiya is the Co-Founder and VP of Marketing of E2M, a digital marketing agency and MoveoApps, a mobile apps development company. Pratik has contributed on sites like Huffington Post, Fast Company, Entrepreneur Magazine, Moz, Search Engine Watch and Social Media Examiner to name a few. He’s a ‘must follow’ SEO expert according to Search Engine Watch and has been named one of the top content marketing influencers by Onalytica two years in a row. He’s passionate about fitness, entrepreneurship, startups and all things digital marketing. Hit him up on Twitter @DholakiyaPratik for a quick chat on any of these topics.

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