What social media tools do you use to improve productivity and deliver better results? Social media is so time consuming that you need to ensure you are working as efficiently as possible. During a recent and very lively #SproutChat that I guest hosted, we talked about tools that can help you in your business. The following is a summary of some of the best insights and tools from our community.
#SproutChat Question 1: What are the features most important to you in a Twitter chat tool?
A Twitter chat is a conversation on Twitter at a specific time around a specific topic using a hashtag (e.g., #SproutChat). Twitter chats can be fast and furious, and it’s difficult at times to keep up with the conversation. Luckily, there are some tools that can help. The features most frequently mentioned with this question included:
- Removing Retweets: Great Tweets are often shared, so your stream can fill up with Retweets quite often.
- Multiple columns to separate host and participants: If you want to track questions, it’s easier if you split out the host.
- Pausing and filtering streams: Chats can be hard to keep up with; move at a pace that’s right for you.
- Nurph also was mentioned as a valuable tool for tracking Tweets during chats.
#SproutChat Question 2: Which tools do you recommend for editing images for social networks?
Do you remember when Twitter was all about text? Now, an increasing number of Tweets have images attached, and that’s the same across most platforms. But we can’t spend all day creating images; we need to some useful tools to help. Here are some of the top tools mentioned by #SproutChat participants:
- Canva was a clear winner. In the last 2 years, Canva has grown to 2.8 million users, providing a simple interface for creating and editing images. Start off with a template, and create your custom image in minutes.
- Wordswag is a great mobile app for adjusting your images (e.g., adding text). It’s so simple to use and available on mobile.
- Picmonkey is an app for editing your images. Add color, text, images and more.
#SproutChat Question 3: What are your favorite tools for editing and sharing videos on mobile?
Have you noticed the massive increase of videos on social? Over 1 billion views every day on Facebook alone! This trend is set to continue, but we need to find ways of easily creating videos while we’re out and about. There are now some great mobile video apps. Here are some that were discussed:
- Videolicious is an enterprise solution with great features for editing videos, adding branding, setting up an approval system before publishing and more.
- Directr gives you direction on creating videos. You follow a template storyboard and slot your video into relevant places to produce a great video. The tool is so good that Google acquired them recently.
- Cameo lets you produce, edit and publish videos, using a series of templates.
#SproutChat Question 4: What collaboration/productivity tools enable your team to work efficiently?
There are so many apps in the productivity space, but our community identified some clear winners:
- Trello is a task management app where you create stacks of cards for your projects. It has a really nice interface and is extremely easy to use.
- Asana is a features-rich task management application with a nice free option.
- Slack is a team communication app available anywhere you go. This hot app is growing fast.
#SproutChat Question 5: Which social metrics best depict the health of your community?
The majority of the conversation centered around engagement. People felt that if you didn’t get engagement, then your community wasn’t healthy. Emily Smith made a particularly good point on that note:
A5 RTs and Faves are easy asks, but Mentions are active engagement. Especially when you see the same handles over and over. #sproutchat
— Emily Smith (@eksmith28) May 13, 2015
As well as engagement, there was talk about attracting the right people. After all, what use is engagement if the wrong people are attracted?
#SproutChat Question 6: What three tools can your organization not live without?
There are many tools you use on a daily basis, but we were asked to pick out our top three:
- Google did well on this question, with Google Analytics, Gmail, Google Hangouts and Google Drive all mentioned.
- Canva again made the list, showing the need for a steady stream of imagery.
- Sprout Social was mentioned a few times as a clear favorite for managing social media activities.
Tell Us What You Think
To be productive, you need the right tools—and the right strategy. What are your favorite tools for helping deliver better results on social? We’d love to hear from you. Leave us a comment below, or Tweet us your thoughts.
The post Social Media Tools to Improve Productivity & Deliver Better Results appeared first on Sprout Social.
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