5 Great Online & Social Media Tools For Everyday Use!

This post featured on Social Samosa and We Speak News .


You have (or are looking for) a good presence on social media. But, you also have a social life. You’re looking to balance both. Also, you’re looking to share good content with your friends and followers; you don’t want to pepper your social media contacts with stuff like you’re spamming them; you’re looking to reduce manual work on Facebook and Twitter, etc.

These two sites (and others) are great ways to direct traffic to your blog and ensuring the right content is posted at the right time. Using appropriate social media tools is key to achieve that goal.

I haven’t spent too long researching social media, but have come across 5 great tools which make life much easier for you in the online world. Some people already know about these, but those who don’t can experiment and see which one works best for them.

1.     Instapaper:  We’re all familiar with the concept of bookmarks in our browsers. Sometimes, however, we have bookmarks stored in different browsers (home computer, office laptop, mobile browser, etc.) and it’s hard to access them from different places. That’s what Instapaper fixes. All you have to do is create an account, install the ‘Read Later’ option on your most used browsers and you’re all set. Read anything interesting online? Simply click on the ‘Read Later’ option in your browser and it automatically gets saved into your account. You can log into Instapaper from anywhere and access the link. You can even share it on Twitter, FB, Pinstorm, Tumblr or Evernote at your convenience. Robert Clay introduced me to this tool, and it works like a dream.

Some tools to make you a Social Media Rockstar

2.    TweetDeck: There are many similar apps, but TweetDeck seems to be the most popular one. It allows you to post an update on both Twitter and FB. True, Twitter itself gives you the option of posting your updated on FB. TweetDeck though, allows you to choose the site which you want post the update on. So you can toggle between FB & Twitter, or update both. Access your FB & Twitter accounts from a singular location. Plus, TweetDeck allows you to post a tweet with more than 140 characters. It becomes an extended bit.ly link instead of you having to type (contd...) and posting another tweet to complete your point.

3.   Buffer App: So you don’t want to bombard your Tweeple (Twitter people) with ten tweets at once. Buffer allows you to time when your tweets are posted on Twitter. Create an account, install the Buffer extension, set the timings when you want your tweets to be posted and you’re set. Your browser now has a Buffer option at the bottom. If you want to tweet the link with a message, simply click on the Buffer button and it’s ready to be tweeted at your stipulated time. You can also select just 1 line from the article and click on Buffer. As a result, that one selected line and the link become the tweet. You have many more options like editing tweets, arranging the order of your stored tweets, deleting some, adding some, etc. So it won’t look like you’re peppering people with tweets; neither will it look like you aren’t tweeting if you’re busy.

4.   SocialBro: Your ultimate Twitter profile analysis tool! Download the software and let it analyse your profile. The free version calculates the best time to tweet, the time when you get maximum RTs, replies and interactions based on your top 100 followers. SocialBro provides a wide range of features: You can see which users are online, monitor a specific group of users via a Twitter list, monitor search terms… in short, find out more about who is tweeting right now. A SocialBro algorithm determines when most of your followers are online to see your tweets; a couple clicks later and you can set those times within Buffer.

5.   HootSuite: Rather than being on one social network, HootSuite allows you to connect to multiple social networks from one website. HootSuite helps you use the social web to identify and grow your audience, and distribute targeted messages across multiple channels. Using HootSuite’s unique social media dashboard, teams can collaboratively schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Wordpress and other social networks via web, desktop or mobile platforms plus track campaign results and industry trends to rapidly adjust tactics.

Using these tools wisely and to their full potential can make you an online superstar. You can command how your social media works for you, while mere mortals will be left wondering how you’re doing it. Share links of your articles using these tools and you will receive a lot of international exposure, along with the potential to connect with interesting and like minded people.

So which social media tools do you use?