Using New Web Tools to Enhance your Social Media

We predict which social tools will help to maximise your social campaigns in the coming months. 

As everyone knows, social media is a sizeable, thus effective, channel to raise brand awareness and to reach different types of audience as 72% of all internet users are active on social media. Evidently, it is something that cannot be ignored and is continually growing. The giants of these networks are Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google+ but every company has jumped on board these flagships and are trying to make noise in the same ways.

With all this in mind it’s sensible to remain aware and up to date with new social media tools. Stay connected and, if anything, highlight your business’ forward thinking by using accessories that others won’t be. Using these tools will optimise your social media campaign and help create more leads as they will allow you to showcase quality content in innovative new ways that stand out, grabbing the attention of potential clients. What about Canva, StumbleUpon and Storify? These devices may grow in popularity over the next few years, but right now they are little known, yet could do wonders for your PR when used on social media.

Here are our top 6 things for you to give a go:

Canva – a graphic design tool

Canva is a graphic design site that anyone can sign up to and use easily. It has a drag-and-drop design tool with a library of more than 1 million stock photographs, graphic elements and fonts which can refresh anything from a logo to a full social media campaign. It also allows you to design Pinterest and Facebook profiles.

Tip: This would be the perfect tool to use to create a logo, poster or presentation that can be used both online and offline, as it looks professional and is not very time consuming. This will create a consistent theme in your content that will allow for brand recognition.

Storify – create your own stories using social media

Storify is a site where you can create your own ‘stories’ by gathering media from across the web and publishing it online before sharing it on other sites.

Tip: Why not create a Twitter campaign and use Storify to publish the most popular or interesting tweets. This can be a way to fashion interest in the campaign and also entice people to get involved as they could be part of your publish ‘story’.

Slideshare – a place to share PowerPoints

This is incredibly straight forward; this site allows users to upload and share PowerPoint presentations among each other. Businesses like Hubspot already use this effective platform with their presentations about inbound marketing.

Tip: A great way to use social media and to attract  attention to your business is to appear helpful, by providing useful content, why not use this system to create useful PowerPoints, maybe taking a controversial or ingenious viewpoint that will get users talking and sharing.

StumbleUpon – users share interesting websites, pictures and articles

StumbleUpon is a discovery engine which recommends web content to its users. Users can discover and rate web pages, photos, and videos that are personalised to their tastes as well as share interesting web pages on other systems like Facebook.

Tip: StumbleUpon is a great way to highlight a certain campaign or promotion, just take the html link and post it with a brief comment to generate traffic to that webpage before sharing your StumbleUpon post on other social media.

Paper.li – allows you to publish your own newspaper

Another unique and effective tool you can utilise for your social campaign is Paper.li. This allows you to publish any interesting articles you find as your own newspaper.

Tip: To create a buzz around a campaign you could devise a newspaper detailing the positive feedback about the services your company provided. This is a fun and innovative way to reach out to businesses that will get you noticed when uploaded onto social media.

Medium – an invitation only social network

Last of all is Medium,  a social media channel rather than tool,  which emphasises longer, more meaningful posts that take more thought than those on Facebook or Twitter. While there is a limit to creators of content, anyone can read and comment on posts.

Tip: This form would be a good way to get across a lot of quality information to people that only want to read well thought out posts. This would be more likely to create leads than Facebook as it is growing in the business world, for this reason.

Utilizing these tools well will set you apart from many other business’ on social media, but there are  more networks out there that could equally be as useful. Conversations, Chirp and Foursquare to name a few more you could get involved with.

Find out why social listening is crucial to your real time marketing. Download your free eGuide: Listening in: How to Use Social Tools to Create Content Which Converts.