Are you struggling to get the best out of social media?
If yes, you’re not alone. Most brands and marketers are just confused when it comes to social media marketing.
But I’m confident that if you have the right social media app or tool, you can achieve tremendous results that you would ordinarily wish for.
It’s one thing to select the right social media application, but an entirely different ball game when you understand how to use it.
The truth is that understanding how social media works, and leveraging the right social apps can help you achieve dramatic results.
For example, the “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” was one of the most successful social media fundraising and awareness effort we’ve seen in a long time. The ALS challenge helped the Association raise $115 million.
Towards the end of 2014, the campaign had resulted in 1.2 million videos on Facebook and 2.2 million references on Twitter.
Also, the President of Smirk New Media Mike Koehler said that, “Ice Bucket Challenge” awareness campaign is the most successful social media campaign effort he has ever seen.
If this success story appeals to you, the question you should be asking yourself is, “How will I make my social media campaign work?”
You’ve got to understand the process, not the end result.
Regrettably, a lot of small businesses are not leveraging on the potentials that lie in social media to its fullest. Although, the target audience can’t do without these apps.
According to Statista, 74% of respondents use mobile apps during break to keep busy. This shows how desperate users need apps to socialize.
What Are Social Media Apps?
Social media apps are basically small and unique programs that handle various needs of customers, such as chatting, watching videos, filming, playing games, online payments, and documenting traveling expenses.
The growth of Messaging and Social apps actually exploded in 2013 by 203% – and till date, it’s been on the increase.
Before I share the 17 apps with you, remember to select the social apps that will help understand your customers better, collect essential data, and make smart decisions.
In summary, here are the benefits of using social media apps:
Reach your customers far and wide. You’ll keep in touch and build strong customer relationship, no matter where your customers live.
Generate traffic and create brand awareness: By showcasing your brand to the right audience, you can create gain much traction that will in turn send qualified traffic to your website.
Build customer loyalty and engagement: There are several ways to engage your customers and make them stay. For one, when users pay online without stress, it brings them satisfaction that generates unflinching loyalty to your brand.
Gathering user contacts, locations, and buying habits: These information will help you to understand customer behavior perfectly.
Social media is the most viable channel for achieving these stated results. Yes, you may try to get all of these through search, email, or PR, but with social media your results will stand out.
If you’ll leverage on any of the social media apps below, then get ready to experience a boom in your business.
Social media apps are too numerous to mention.
This is where most brands and marketers fall into a ditch, since they don’t know how to choose the app that fits their business.
I hope this extensive list helps you. Let’s begin with my favorite:
1. Audiense.com
Audiense.com (formally socialbro.com) is a smart social intelligence app that helps you uncover and connect with the right audience.
You’ll find everything you need to understand people, connect with them, get into the conversation so that you can think and talk like them – and finally, influencing them to say “Let’s do it.”
And for you to maximize this powerful tool, you need to set a clear business goal? It may sound common, but it’s a fact. Funny enough, even graduates don’t set goals.
Here’s an excerpt by Mark McCormack:
“In the book What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School, Mark McCormack tells a study conducted on students in the 1979 Harvard MBA program. In that year, the students were asked, “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” Only three percent of the graduates had written goals and plans; 13 percent had goals, but they were not in writing; and a whopping 84 percent had no specific goals at all.”
Make no mistakes about it, as it’s with graduates and students, so it is with small businesses all around the world.
They forget that without a goal, the destination is “nowhere.”
Do you’ve long-term goals for your business?
Where do you want your business to be in the next 3, 5, or 10 years?
Without a doubt, I know that you’re involved with content marketing.
With the integration of social media into your content marketing strategy, which seems to be a better way of engaging your customers, you can trounce your competition and grow your business.
When it comes to social media networks, Twitter stands tall. In fact, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are the top 3 social media sites used by marketers. Why?
Because, if you get serious with these three networks, you can reach tens of thousands of qualified leads, and convert them into customers easily.
Audiense is a versatile social media app that allows you to find the tweet your audience responds to.
DHL Africa launched a Twitter campaign “HaveYouHeard” and use the use of Audiense’s powerful Twitter analytics tools, the brand found over 65,000 Twitter influencers in 45 African countries. [source]
The campaign hashtag #AfricaAsOne reached over 1,200,750,000, with an advertising value equivalent of £12,112,867.
Since your product sales depends heavily on your customers, it’s very important to know what your customers/audience are saying about your brand.
With Audiense, this information like full name, location, level of education and nature of job are made available to you.
It also helps to segment old and new customers, and identify influencers whom you can leverage on to further amplify your reach. With this social media app reaching out to new customers is never a tedious task.
It supports organic and paid search. It monitors the effect of your ad placement, and gives you insights to optimize ads performance.
2. Trendspottr.com
Often times, I see digital marketers who lament bitterly that they’re not getting feedback from their audience on social media.
Truth is, you need this feedback, no matter how ego-boosting or an outright social backlash it is.
People are often weighed down with thoughts on how best to engage their audience, in order acquire new customers and retain existing ones.
Truth is, it’s difficult to get people’s feedback on social media, especially when you’re not an influencer. You need to listen more (popularly referred to as social listening).
According to Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins, from the Harvard Business Review, “As your role grows in scale and influence, so too must your ability to listen. But listening is one of the toughest skills to master — and requires uncovering deeper barriers within oneself.”
However, there is good news – Trendspottr.
Trendspottr is a predictive trend intelligence platform, globally recognized and used by brands, marketers and digital and PR agencies. Use the social media app to find key influencers for any topic and identify viral content.
Trendspottr app has a technology that identifies upcoming trends, with the potential to go viral in a short time.
It helps you monitor your campaign on Twitter and other social sites, even hours or days after they have gone viral.
With the app, you can easily determine the most relevant content to share with your audience at the appropriate time. Because, the right timing to an extent is more important than the content you share with your audience.
Trendspotter shows you possible threats to your business. If I were you, this is a powerful feature to grab with both arms.
Come on, the benefits of using Trendspottr to monitor trends and predict what the future holds for your industry are enormous. Isn’t it time you begin to optimize audience experience, track emerging trends, and consumer sentiments?
Leading companies such as Marketwired, Edelman, Ogilvy, Dynamic Signal, Deloitte, State Farm and Ipsos use Trendspottr to get the best of their content marketing efforts.
3. LeadSift.com
There are so many reasons why people use social media, and Twitter in particular. With LeadSift, you can mine your social data for over 70 types of commercial intents.
You need to understand user intents. Otherwise, you’ll be hitting your feet on the rock – and your competitors might gain the upper hand.
With LeadSift, you get notified whenever a prospect engages with your competition. Successful businesses are always at the forefront.
Do you know that when your ideal customers are engaging with your competitors more, that your brand is suffering?
The consequence is that you may end up generating traffic to your website, but these people will likely not respond to your offers. Because, until they convert, you don’t get the sale. This is why lead nurturing is so vital.
With this social media app, you’ll find and follows up potential traffic that are likely to become customers.
It’s not as difficult as it seems. You can do it, provided that you focus on nurturing your audience.
LeadShift is designed in a smart way to detect the exact language spoken using powerful natural language filters – which integrates with your keywords to categorize your customers based on their specific behaviors.
As a powerful social media monitoring tool, you can integrate it into your lead generation, content marketing, and customer support systems to further boost your bottom line.
4. Zuumsocial.com
Can I be honest with you?
Okay, with your permission, I can boldly say that I haven’t seen a more powerful social media app like Zuum. The app helps you generate accurate insights about your ideal customers quickly.
Truly, Zuum has no rival. Because the data it gives you is reliable. The new perspective that it brings to your analytics is something you can’t ignore.
This perspective cuts across content performance analysis, full competitive analysis, social media reporting system, Facebook analytics, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram analytics.
You can’t afford to ignore Zuum. You should integrate it into your content marketing strategy.
[source]
If you’ve been looking for ways to determine your content performance across several verticals, this might just be the tool you need.
Do you know why it’s important to know the content that your audience mostly engages with?
Well, it’s obvious. You’ll get better results. According to a recent ecommerce statistics, engaged customers demonstrate over 90% purchase frequency.
So if you can identify the exact content that your audience are more engaged with, you can consistently deliver great customer experience and solve their specific problems.
5. Nimble.com
Are you ready to grow your business faster?
First, I want to bring to your consciousness that social media marketing isn’t limited to desktop computers and users, but also to mobile users. If you focus on desktop users alone, you may not get the meat of your audience.
It doesn’t matter whether you have a plan to build customer loyalty, or get quick sales, you need to reach your audience where they are.
Nimble is one of the best social app that’s suitable for engaging customers on social media networks, irrespective of the device (e.g., iPhone, iPad, Tablets, Laptops) they’re logged on. The tool equally acts as a social sales and marketing CRM software.
Nimble is an intelligent app that gathers your relevant contacts and provides you with relevant content ideas you need to establish a deeper relationship with your prospects and customers.
The Smart Contacts App provides the context you need to connect intelligently, and take action from any social site or business app. So you’re more likely to attend to customers at any given time, and eventually build up your customer’s trust.
Nimble has an automatic self-updating feature, which combines relevant data about your visitors and lead from variety of sources.
It provides you with important data like customer’s place of work, school attended and location, where they’re from and what you share in common with them.
In turn, this information will help you in segmenting your email list for best performance.
Nimble is also great for keeping in touch with your team. Of course, when there’s effective communication, staff interaction and productivity are the byproducts.
Use this social media app to collect and store your team’s contacts, manage calendars, set up your email and social interactions with social profile details, and access all of these information at any time.
Nimble’s powerful relationship intelligence makes it easy for you to spot your major contacts, and build up a relationship by engaging them with relevant content – which you’ll eventually turn into proceeds.
6. Contentgems.com
Worried that your next content may not go viral or build trust with your target audience?
If so, then bother no more. Because Contentgems has the features that will handle that for you.
Even successful digital marketing companies run from pillar to post when it comes to creating the right content. Both B2B and B2C are finding it hard to crack the nut.
In particular, Content Marketing Institute conducted a study and found that 50% of B2C marketers are faced with the challenge of creating engaging content, and 44% struggle with creating this type of content consistently.
Contentgems app is a discovery engine that crawls hundreds of thousands of authority sites to find relevant and timely content that you can plug into your next campaign.
If you think that the app is difficult to use, think again. It’s actually the simplest and easiest you can think of. Just fill in the blank spaces and you’re good to go.
It has database sources which are automatically selected. And you can edit, add or remove and set your own preferences.
You can enter your keywords, and set the social social signals and advanced filter settings to specify the exact type of content you want as shown below.
Based on your input and settings, the app will deliver the most relevant content you need on a daily basis.
7. Buffer.com
Buffer is the #1 social media app that I know. It may not be your ideal app, because every business has its objectives and goals.
If you don’t want to waste time managing all your social media activities on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more, you need Buffer. Period.
Are you a full time or part-time blogger? One thing is certain, you want your content to reach the right audience when they’re ready to consume it.
In case you’re still skeptical about blogging, start today. Because, according to HubSpot, companies that blog generate 88% more leads per month than those who do not.
HubSpot’s study further revealed that you’re likely to generate more traffic when you blog consistently.
That being said, you’ve got to know that creating and posting articles regularly is never an easy task. It’s easier said than done.
Sadly, it gets more difficult when you’re not getting results from the content you’ve put out there.
But the good news is that with Buffer you can fall in love with content creation and marketing.
Getting the best out of each of your post depends heavily on how well you distribute it. Buffer helps you post your content at the most convenient time in the day and during the week.
Buffer shares your content at the best possible times throughout the day, so that your followers and fans see your updates more often – and take action.
Posting at the right time is critical to your success. This is one core reason why you should leverage Buffer – because it gives you insights on the best time to send out your social posts.
Buffer has a user-friendly dashboard that allows you arrange your scheduled posts accordingly. You get to see your analytics in plain text, without the need to sieve through complex data.
After the recent upgrading of buffer app, new features were also added to it for better user experience.
Using the Buffer mobile app with the web browser extension is now easier than it used to be. And you can rapidly add web page links, titles and images to your Buffer schedule.
8. Hootsuite.com
Hootsuite is a globally recognized app for social media management. It offers a range of settings and features that support lots of social platforms.
It enables you to post and monitor your content on different social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc.
Hootsuite has an in-built analytics system, which makes it possible to monitor selected keywords, schedule a post to be sent out at the right time and track everything.
Hootsuite sets the bar high among the top competing social media management tools.
Several top brands have found their marks by using it. For example, Orange delivers personalized service for more than 230 million mobile customers.
What do people say about your product? You can’t guess correctly.
However, with Hootsuite rich features, you can gain deep insights about the customer. Better yet, you can monitor reviews, since positive and negative reviews affect customer’s opinion of a local business.
According to Search Engine Land, 88% of online buyers trust customers review. As you can see, what customers says about your product/service has an effect on your brand.
The analytics feature gives you an in-depth idea about your brand’s activity on social media and how effective it is.
You can use Hootsuite for free, but you also have the option to upgrade to a paid plan if you want to enjoy advanced features, like the premium app access, multiple users, real-time analytics, and priority support.
9. Sproutsocial.com
Do you want to see a social media app that’s trusted by agencies, and relied on by businesses?
Well, look no further. Sprout Social is the answer. Use the app to Schedule. Publish. Analyze.
Sprout Social allows you to create and maintain your network in 3 simple steps:
Starting a conversion.
Monitoring a conversation.
Joining a conversation.
I manage a handful of web properties, and Sprout Social has enabled me achieve tremendous results – in terms of gaining social influence quickly.
I’ve also been able to acquire new customers by posting engaging content. But what I’ve come to realize is that customer retention is more important.
Truly, when customers are engaged, up to 55% of them will stay on your website longer, and take the right actions. Overall, posting relevant and compelling content is a step towards delivering a memorable experience for users.
The most interesting fact about this app, is that it allows you respond to your audience’s feedback as quickly as possible. And this is what 53% of customers expect from your brand, according to Receiptful.
Irrespective of the social media platform, speed is critical to your success.
If for example a potential customer leaves a comment on your Facebook post, and wants to purchase your product the moment you reply – but you’re not there, you’ve lost money and an inspired customer.
A real business doesn’t hide or neglect its customers. Listen more than you talk. This is priceless.
10. Trello.com
“Individuals play the game, but teams beat the odds” – The Magistrate
How do you work efficiently with your team when it’s hard to predict someone’s behavior?
Truth is, it’s difficult.
You can only get ahead by having a system, which is what Trello provides. Trello uses Boards, Lists, and Cards to simplify your complex daily activities and achieve dramatic results.
Trello is a simple app with a user friendly interface. With Trello, you can collaborate with others and achieve great results. If you’re looking to boost your productivity, you can’t ignore Trello, seriously.
Adam Steele, founder of The Magistrate achieved a 200% increase in productivity level through the help of Trello and Scrum.
Trello board is made up of cards to be used by you or your team. With the card you can accomplish a lot.
You can post on these boards and list and get instant feedback from your team members.
Of course, you can upload files from your computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Onedrive, and share with everyone you’re collaborating with. This makes it easily accessible from anywhere at any time.
It has a notification system that calls for your attention whenever there’s a new update. As expected, you can get this notification while using the app, via email, desktop, browser, or mobile push notifications.
This notification can be synced with your mobile devices. That way, you can invite as many people as you deem fit to your board and start off a discussion.
11. The Roll
Are you looking for a social media app that’ll boost your brand through visual marketing?
Search no more, “The Roll” is all you need.
The Roll is a social media app that’s popularly referred to as “a magic image maker.”
It organizes your camera roll and finds your best photos – so that you can share them with your ideal customers and build strong rapport.
The Roll uses image recognition technology to highlight best photo content. It automatically categorizes image content, tags it for easy search, and sends it without clutter.
As you already know, social media is all about images. According to Buffer, 74% of users can retweet because of images.
Therefore, integrating image content app like “The Roll” into your marketing campaign is a sure way to get massive social shares, acquire new leads and grow your business.
With the help of “EyeEM Vision,” The Roll incorporates in its image content physical objects like emotions and moods. Trust me, this is a 21st century smart innovation.
Introduce this app in your customer relationship management and social media marketing today. I bet you: The feedback will overwhelm you.
12. Tuurnt
Social media platforms were designed primarily for people to connect, share, and communicate with other people, as well as discuss topics that are relevant to them.
If you approach Facebook for example, with the mindset of making quick money, you’ll fail. The same applies to every other social media site out there.
Focus on “socializing” with people and every other benefits will follow.
The Tuurnt social media app is special. It gives you the opportunity to turn up with friends, share fun videos with your groups.
Social media is all about socialization. Don’t think otherwise. The days of watching videos all by yourself in your little hut are long gone.
The beauty of Tuurnt is that it allows friends to connect 24 hours and participate in a project; share video content, comments, and create video sequence with family members.
Videos are popular on social media. Data from Global Web Index shows that 82% of users visits social media to watch videos on “YouTube”.
Here, you don’t just leave a comment or like a picture. No, you’ve got to participate. You’ve got to get into the conversation and relate with people like a human being that you are.
That’s the rule of Tuurnt.
It irritates to watch pictures and videos alone anyway!
But with friends from various cities, countries, or continents, it’s a fun filled experience.
13. Super.me
Storytelling. Is there an app for it?
Absolutely.
Although there are several of them, but Super.me is one of my favorite.
Super.me is a social media slash storytelling app that helps you tell your story by putting words on a picture.
It capitalizes on the fact the the human mind responds 60,000x faster to visual content than plain text.
Are you ready to show the world how you really feel?
With this social media app, you can tell awesome stories with multiple pictures. Better yet, you can use one picture and a few words. This is ideal for marketers developing the skill of storytelling by saying a lot with few words.
The truth be told: Any marketing content devoid of visuals is likely going to fail.
Super has brought together “storytelling” and “images” for online users. Armed with these two elements, you can dazzle your target audience.
With this app, you can take a shot from your Flickr, Dropbox, Instagram, and phone camera roll and tie a good story to it.
It has an interesting presentation style and features a visual editing interface that you’ll love. Super has rich features to make your storytelling phenomenal.
14. Rex.is
Share what you love. Perhaps, your audience will love it too.
Sharing of content with your friends has been simplified with Rex.
Yes, you can share videos, books, TV shows, music, movies, travel adventures, restaurants and other causes and subjects that interest you. With a single click, you can make it happen.
Rex is an open door to view what is making waves in your social network.
Chris Smith, an American Movie Maker developed Rex. Why did he develop it? Well, he wants to know what his friends are watching, restaurants they visited, and music they’re listening to.
Rex is called a recommendation app. This means that you can recommend and share what you’re reading, watching and listening to with friends on social media.
When recommendation is coming from a friend to watch a particular movie he’s watching, to you, the movie must be interesting.
Wouldn’t you want to know the movies digital marketing experts like Pat Flynn, Brian Clark, Neil Patel and others are watching, books they’re reading, and music they’re listening to?
I bet you would.
Because, through this medium, you could understand and glean from their experience, and follow the same path to achieve your own success.
Rex also has apps map that gathers together all the recommendations made by your friends to you.
A lot of travellers out there are actually looking for information on how to get to their destination and which hotel will best suit them. Recommendation with Rex will draw customer’s satisfaction.
When recommendations are posted with Rex, it furnishes friends with desired information to make better decisions.
Levinson of Manhattan-Based Service said it all that “Everything posted is actionable.” That’s the idea.
You can watch it, eat it, or go there.
Rex is just an app that will create an online presence for you and bring to a STOP your marketing struggle if you consider it today.
15. Firef.ly
With Firef.ly, you can plan your most important moments in one simple and elegantly designed app.
When people tour the world, they like to take pictures, learn new languages and cultures and document them. Sometimes, other people reference this documented experiences for insights.
That’s what Firef.ly represents.
The tools to capture events along the way as you travel. It acts as a guide. More so, a comprehensive documentation is made for reference purposes.
When you want to travel, the big question is “where?”
However, Firef.ly will furnish you with the insights that you need to choose the city, country or continent to go.
It’ll guide you on the best place to eat, shop, play, drink and lots more. It has editorial teams that write on awesome places to visit and what to expect when you get there.
This is impressive if you ask me.
When you tick some of the places displayed, it highlights in summary what you need to know about the destination, hotels, bars, and restaurants that are available.
Indeed, it’s a perfect app for travellers!
It details the weather you should be expecting if you eventually travel. Some of the passive moment you’re not careful to document will be covered for you.
According to E-Strategy Blog, 70% of users prefer using mobile app while alone. Therefore, traveling alone inside train or by air will not be boring again. The Firef.ly social mobile app will keep you company.
At the end of your travel adventure, there’s a comprehensive documentation of your trip, experience, and shots. Interestingly, an infographic poster of the trip is outputted and framed.
This infographics and documentations can be shared with friends and family members as a postcard.
How about sitting down with your family in your living room to watch the infographic of your last trip? It’ll be a great experience. Don’t you think so?
16. Venmo.com
Often times, when you’re running a social media campaign, your loyal customers might be interested in making a donation or purchasing some of your products.
If you have always wanted to process payment easily, Venmo is what you need.
Venmo is powerful. Forbes has called Venmo “the crown jewel of all finance apps,” so if you’re still skeptical about this app, it might be time to get rid of that cheque book and see the Venmo light.
Are you still using cheque book for your customers, maybe I should laugh? Come on, you’ve got to flow with the trends.
Here are a few benefits of using Venmo:
Pay anyone anywhere through Venmo instantly using a link to your bank or debit card.
Do your online shopping with Venmo from your mobile. One click is all you need and the product is yours.
You can transfer funds through this app to your account directly. The only step you need to be “ON” is to create your account. That’s all.
Online transactions are popular these days. According to Tatango, 87% of users are actually shopping and making payments online. That’s what is trending now.
Conclusion
There are a host of metrics to look at when you’re running a social media campaign. Most brands make the mistake of looking for social shares, tweets, pins, comments, and ratings online.
However, these metrics aren’t as important as user behavior data. In fact, it’s the effect of customer behavior that often leads to social shares, and more.
In all, you can’t possibly use all of these 17 social media apps to power your campaigns. You should choose one or two, and use it to build your online presence faster.