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4 Must-Have Tools to Help You Create Amazing Social Media Content

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4 must have tools to help you create amazing social media content

As a marketer, you generally have a range of different goals that you’re concurrently working towards at any given time. Those could include boosting brand awareness, generating more leads, increasing conversions, etc. 

In a social media context, in order to achieve the best results, you need great content. The digital space is highly competitive, and in order to grab and hold attention, you need to consistently create new and engaging material, likely in a variety of formats. 

And the importance of such efforts can’t be overstated. These days, some 54% of social browsers use social platforms to research brands and products.

With great social media content, you can gain attention, build trust, and increase brand awareness among your ideal audience – and ultimately, with the right strategy and the right content, those efforts will help you boost sales and grow your business. 

It’s your content that’s the first step, and in order to create great content for social media, consistently, you need the right tools. 

Here are four must-have tools that will help in your social content efforts. 

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1. Animoto.com

Video is the most shared, and most engaging content type, on average, across all social media platforms. These days, most platforms incorporate autoplay video, which can help to grab attention as people scroll through their feeds, while it’s much easier, in general, for consumers to take in a short video summary, as opposed to a written blog post.

As such, you need to be considering if and how you can utilize video in your approach – but creating marketing videos can seem daunting at first. 

With Animoto, however, you can start creating professional videos for your social media campaigns, even if you don’t have a big budget or design skills. 

First of all, Animoto provides templates for different needs. Some of the templates available on Animoto include:

  • Behind the scenes videos
  • Explainer videos 
  • Product and service promotion
  • Testimonials
  • Tutorials 

After finding the template you want to customize, Animoto has a simple editor that even a first-time user won’t have problems using. It’s incredibly easy to upload videos, images, and music to create unique videos. 

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And even if you don’t have video clips and imagery to use, Animoto has a library of over a million videos, images and licensed music that you can use to create a unique video. 

When you’re done creating your video, Animoto enables you to share directly to your social media pages. And with options to share on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and 10 other channels, you won’t even have to leave Animoto to share your video. 

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Alternatively, if you’re creating a video for a future campaign, you can download your video content in 360p, 480p, 720p, and 1080p resolutions. 

2. Canva.com

You’ve no doubt heard that an image is worth a thousand words. Well, there’s that – and there’s also the fact that images perform better than text-only updates on most major social networks.  

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A Buffer study found that tweets with images, for example, see 150% more retweets, and 89% more favorites, than those without. 

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Tweets with images beat tweets without images on every engagement metric, and the same is true for pretty much and social network. 

So you need visuals – and fortunately, there are now numerous, easy-to-use tools to help in your image creation process.

Canva is one of the best in the market, and with over 8,000 templates for social media posts, you’re bound to find templates for any occasion.  

Canva’s templates are grouped under different social media channels, enabling you to easily create images which meet the size requirements of each social media platform. You also have the option to upload your own images to edit them.

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Editing your images is easy, even for a non-designer, as Canva’s drag-and-drop editor enables you to customize images and add text. And the best part is that you have access to all these features with a basic, free account

Canva also enables you to add up to 20 teams to a profile, with each team comprising up to 3,000 members. You can also assign roles to each team member. 

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3. Buzzsumo.com

Without data, creating the right social media content for your audience is just guesswork. But with BuzzSumo in your arsenal, you can ensure that you hone in on the exact key topics and content types that resonate most within your target market.​

BuzzSumo enables you to find the best performing content on any topic or website.

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Let’s say you want to create a piece of content about how to start a business – you can enter the topic into BuzzSumo, and the tool will return a listing of posts on the subject that have seen the most social media media shares over the last week, month, year, etc. You can also filter these results based on content type, word count, and even country. 

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As you can see in this example, BuzzSumo also provides a listing of the social media channels where each post has seen the most shares, providing you with insight into where to focus your efforts when promoting your content. 

Apart from searching for topics, you can also, as noted, search for specific websites. By entering your competitor’s website, for example, BuzzSumo can show you their best-performing content, which again gives you more data insights to base your own approach upon. 

BuzzSumo also provides listening tools which can track what people say about your business, industry, or competitors. From these mentions, you can find leads, sales opportunities, customer complaints or buyer’s pain points. 

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You can also set up alerts for key term mentions, so that you’re made aware of them in real-time. 

4. Feedly.com

As a social media marketer, you also need to stay up to date with industry news – while at the same time, it’s worth keeping tabs on what your competitors are publishing, and learning from their approach.

You can, of course, just look up the individual websites for each, every day, but Feedly can save you a heap of time by delivering a stream of the latest updates in one single feed. 

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You can create feeds based on your preferred topics, and after that, you can add sources to your feeds. Using the content from your sources, Feedly will make suggestions of similar sites. 

Consequently, content discovery becomes easier for a particular topic. In addition, Feedly allows you to save articles to Pocket and Evernote. 

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And apart from catching up with industry trends and competitors, Feedly is useful for social media content curation. 

To make content curation easier, you can connect your feeds to Buffer, Hootsuite, Zapier, or IFTTT. This makes it easy to add relevant content to your social update queue. If you work with a team, Feedly also enables you to share your lists with team members. 

Conclusion

To achieve your social media campaign targets, you need to create and share amazing content with your audience. This is the best way to build trust, and ultimately, to drive your audience towards taking further action. 

The tools in this list all help with different aspects of the content creation process. Find the right ones for you and start creating social media content that gets results. 

Socialmediatoday.com

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Snapchat Explores New Messaging Retention Feature: A Game-Changer or Risky Move?

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Snapchat Explores New Messaging Retention Feature: A Game-Changer or Risky Move?

In a recent announcement, Snapchat revealed a groundbreaking update that challenges its traditional design ethos. The platform is experimenting with an option that allows users to defy the 24-hour auto-delete rule, a feature synonymous with Snapchat’s ephemeral messaging model.

The proposed change aims to introduce a “Never delete” option in messaging retention settings, aligning Snapchat more closely with conventional messaging apps. While this move may blur Snapchat’s distinctive selling point, Snap appears convinced of its necessity.

According to Snap, the decision stems from user feedback and a commitment to innovation based on user needs. The company aims to provide greater flexibility and control over conversations, catering to the preferences of its community.

Currently undergoing trials in select markets, the new feature empowers users to adjust retention settings on a conversation-by-conversation basis. Flexibility remains paramount, with participants able to modify settings within chats and receive in-chat notifications to ensure transparency.

Snapchat underscores that the default auto-delete feature will persist, reinforcing its design philosophy centered on ephemerality. However, with the app gaining traction as a primary messaging platform, the option offers users a means to preserve longer chat histories.

The update marks a pivotal moment for Snapchat, renowned for its disappearing message premise, especially popular among younger demographics. Retaining this focus has been pivotal to Snapchat’s identity, but the shift suggests a broader strategy aimed at diversifying its user base.

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This strategy may appeal particularly to older demographics, potentially extending Snapchat’s relevance as users age. By emulating features of conventional messaging platforms, Snapchat seeks to enhance its appeal and broaden its reach.

Yet, the introduction of message retention poses questions about Snapchat’s uniqueness. While addressing user demands, the risk of diluting Snapchat’s distinctiveness looms large.

As Snapchat ventures into uncharted territory, the outcome of this experiment remains uncertain. Will message retention propel Snapchat to new heights, or will it compromise the platform’s uniqueness?

Only time will tell.

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Catering to specific audience boosts your business, says accountant turned coach

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Catering to specific audience boosts your business, says accountant turned coach

While it is tempting to try to appeal to a broad audience, the founder of alcohol-free coaching service Just the Tonic, Sandra Parker, believes the best thing you can do for your business is focus on your niche. Here’s how she did just that.

When running a business, reaching out to as many clients as possible can be tempting. But it also risks making your marketing “too generic,” warns Sandra Parker, the founder of Just The Tonic Coaching.

“From the very start of my business, I knew exactly who I could help and who I couldn’t,” Parker told My Biggest Lessons.

Parker struggled with alcohol dependence as a young professional. Today, her business targets high-achieving individuals who face challenges similar to those she had early in her career.

“I understand their frustrations, I understand their fears, and I understand their coping mechanisms and the stories they’re telling themselves,” Parker said. “Because of that, I’m able to market very effectively, to speak in a language that they understand, and am able to reach them.” 

“I believe that it’s really important that you know exactly who your customer or your client is, and you target them, and you resist the temptation to make your marketing too generic to try and reach everyone,” she explained.

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“If you speak specifically to your target clients, you will reach them, and I believe that’s the way that you’re going to be more successful.

Watch the video for more of Sandra Parker’s biggest lessons.

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Instagram Tests Live-Stream Games to Enhance Engagement

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Instagram Tests Live-Stream Games to Enhance Engagement

Instagram’s testing out some new options to help spice up your live-streams in the app, with some live broadcasters now able to select a game that they can play with viewers in-stream.

As you can see in these example screens, posted by Ahmed Ghanem, some creators now have the option to play either “This or That”, a question and answer prompt that you can share with your viewers, or “Trivia”, to generate more engagement within your IG live-streams.

That could be a simple way to spark more conversation and interaction, which could then lead into further engagement opportunities from your live audience.

Meta’s been exploring more ways to make live-streaming a bigger consideration for IG creators, with a view to live-streams potentially catching on with more users.

That includes the gradual expansion of its “Stars” live-stream donation program, giving more creators in more regions a means to accept donations from live-stream viewers, while back in December, Instagram also added some new options to make it easier to go live using third-party tools via desktop PCs.

Live streaming has been a major shift in China, where shopping live-streams, in particular, have led to massive opportunities for streaming platforms. They haven’t caught on in the same way in Western regions, but as TikTok and YouTube look to push live-stream adoption, there is still a chance that they will become a much bigger element in future.

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Which is why IG is also trying to stay in touch, and add more ways for its creators to engage via streams. Live-stream games is another element within this, which could make this a better community-building, and potentially sales-driving option.

We’ve asked Instagram for more information on this test, and we’ll update this post if/when we hear back.

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