We also use a bunch of different Chrome extensions to help us with our content-creation process.
Our favorite content-aggregation, curation, and distribution tools include Medium(long-form blogging), Apple News, Feedly, RSS feeds, Flipboard, Pinterest, and any others where we can potentially create additional reach and awareness for a piece of content living someplace else. We love targeting niche communities with cross-shared content. The cost of implementation is low because all we’re doing is reshaping content, so it’s well worth the extra pin, flip, importing, copying and pasting (plus some minor styling), and automation strategy. We also use a number of writing tools that help us create content with user experience and readability in mind.
So, we’ve created some remarkable content that we want everyone to see. Let’s talk social media management.
Content and Social Media–Management Platforms
Choosing the right platform to manage social media communities and content can be a truly daunting task. There are a ton of enterprise models out there (e.g., Sprinklr, Falcon, Contently, and Skyword) priced at thousands of dollars per month, and then there is a tier of more affordable options (e.g., Buffer, Sprout Social, Edgar, and Hootsuite) that range from freemium tiers to hundreds per month, depending on social media accounts and users.
And it seems like every day there’s a new platform with a new differentiator. We’ve looked and looked for an all-powerful tool, a mega tool, if you will, and we have so far been unsuccessful (Percolate comes close, but it’s costly). We’ll continue our vigilant search and let you know if or when we find the one tool to rule them all.
In the meantime, we choose tools based on project needs and client (and API) integrations. Which means we have to be flexible, agile, and ready to adapt. We do have our favorite tools, but we’re fairly tool-agnostic. Oh, and we also use and harness native features of social media channels. Third-party platforms don’t have access to all the features and functionality of most existing social channels, so having a native-feature or -functionality strategy built into your publishing schedule is still an integral part of distributing content on social media channels.
The content has been shared, but how did it perform? Did it resonate with the audience? Was it engaging? In order for us to adhere to our content-marketing philosophies, we have to pay equal attention to assessing and analyzing the content we share.
Reporting and Analytics Tools
Like so many others, we use Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools/Google Search Console to keep tabs on how our owned media is performing. Tracking referral traffic, page-engagement metrics, and audience insights is part of understanding your audience’s needs, and Google gives us access to all these insights so we can craft actionable content. But we also use other tools to ensure that our content is performing.
We track our earned-media efforts through platforms such as Rival IQ, Buffer, Buffer Reply, Sprout Social, and other content and social media platforms with reporting features. We also use other social-listening data tools to automate, find channel opportunities, and help scale our reporting.
There’s always a lot of data to sift through, and a good tool should always have quality data visualization, as well as definitions and descriptions of what the metrics are showing, how the data is measured, and how the data impacts the project.
It’s not that I am tech-averse. I am nostalgic. I am tech-agnostic.
And you know what? We almost always default to using Keynote for our final reports. We love Keynote. We use it for reporting, pitch decks, internal training presentations, case studies, etc. We use it for pretty much everything we do. You need a quick, nice-looking deck? Let’s Keynote it. At least that’s our default traditional deliverable. Using database tools to create landing pages with customized data delivery and visualization is the more scalable approach. But some people still want to hold something in their hands. So we appease them. We aim to appease.
Project-Management Tools
How do we track all these tools and content? How do we communicate and keep the processes moving in the right direction? How do we continue with our integrated approach while staying consistent and efficient? For us, Slack is a lifesaver. It’s the one tool that allows us all to be on the same page. It lets us collaborate and communicate in real time. It allows us to integrate many of the above-mentioned tools to pull data into one spot.
Maybe Slack is the mega tool we’ve been looking for. Maybe. We are also more than familiar with Asana, Trello, Basecamp, Workamajig, Percolate, DivvyHQ, Kapost, HubSpot, and a number of other project-management and content-management tools. We’ve tried them all. Yet as I wrote that, I realize that it was an obsolete statement as soon as it was typed.
Tools and Resources on the Horizon
From ideation to reporting, this has been a rundown of some of the tools we use here at BMDG. I can tell you that we use about a million more as well. And tomorrow we might have a new tool. It’s ever-changing, and you have to be adaptive in today’s agency world.
- I fully expect to do whiteboard sessions on a Google Jamboard while wearing a VR headset.
- I fully expect us to integrate more machine-learning tools to source content (see Quuu).
- I fully expect us to use more AI to help us write better (see Wordsmith).
- I fully expect Watson to help us with audience identification (see IBM’s Watson).
- I fully expect us to use AI to source and share content automatically (see Post Intelligence).
But that day is not today. Today I’ll still default to my notepad. Maybe some Post-its. Maybe a Google Doc. It’s not that I am tech-averse. I am nostalgic. I am tech-agnostic.
And today you have to be.
Photos: Shutterstock