Last Thursday of the month is my favorite Thursday because I get to hang out with cool social media people at #SMBDallas.
Social Media Breakfast Dallas is a free monthly meeting in Dallas with speakers, panels, and roundtables discussing Social Media Marketing.
The last #SMBDallas event was about social media tools and here are some of the tools we talked about during the event.
1 – Adobe Spark (For simple visual stories)
This seems to be the most popular tool for marketers.
Adobe Spark is a free online and mobile graphic design app. This tool helps you easily create visual content such as beautiful images, videos, and web pages to tell your own story in a compelling way. Since it’s a cloud-based tool, your progress is saved and synced automatically. This means you can continue your work on mobile or desktop whenever you feel inspired.
Here is a short and fun demo by our own Tim Vasquez.
PS – I recently wrote an article on Forbes about video tools for camera shy entrepreneurs and Adobe Spark was one of the tools I mentioned.
2 – Book Like A Boss (Create your booking page)
Create your own personal booking page with everything you need to sell your digital products, services, take appointments, & get paid.
If you provide consulting services, this could be a great tool for you.
3 – PromoRepublic (Handmade visuals and scheduling for social media)
This is my favorite tool these days. (Yes I am an affiliate but, I do love this tool)
With PromoRepublic, you get 6000+ of content ideas & visual templates to create amazing posts in just a few clicks!
Save your precious time with their automated posting feature. Your content will be automatically posted to the right social channel, at the right time and with the right frequency. Here is another way to look at this tool.
Canva + Buffer = PromoRepublic
Here is a short demo of PromoRepublic. You have to try this tool!
4 – IFTTT (Social media automation)
According to wikipedia, IFTTT is a free web-based service that people use to create chains of simple conditional statements, called applets. An applet is triggered by changes that occur within other web services such as Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. So imagine this
If you post on Instagram, IFTTT can automatically share on Twitter.
If you post on Twitter, IFTTT can automatically save in a google sheet.
There is so much that you can do with this tool.
5 – Stories Ads (Create sexy Instagram stories)
A simple web tool to make Instagram Stories for your brand. Using this tool you can create stunning Stories in less than 2 minutes.
According to their website, it’s free for a limited time. I will be sad when they make this a paid tool.
6 – Snapseed (Stand out on Instagram)
It’s a complete and professional photo editor developed by Google.
If you are into mobile photography, this could be your secret weapon.
7 – Filmora (Video editing simplified)
Filmora is a simple and easy to use video editing software geared toward beginner, novice, and casual users.
Anyone can learn to use this software, regardless of their skill level, and the end results look and sound fantastic.
8 – Hootsuite and Buffer
You can not talk about social media tools without mentioning Hootsuite and Buffer. Right?
Here is how I look at these tools.
The easiest way to share on social media = Buffer
A tool that allows you to do everything (posting, scheduling, and listening) = Hootsuite
9 – Grum (Easy Instagram scheduling)
Upload images from your computer and they will be published to your Instagram account on the scheduled day and time.
Also, you can post your photos to as many accounts as you need at the same time.
10 – ImageOptim (Resize images on MAC)
Use this tool to reduces image file sizes on your MAC — so they take up less disk space and download faster. They apply some kind of “advanced compression” that preserves quality.
11 – Emphatic (Custom social media content)
Don’t have time to write your social media posts? Give Emphatic a try!
According to their website, “We analyze your digital footprint, industry and competitors before creating your content. You can also tell us your preferences. Nothing gets published without your say-so!”
12 – Pixabay (Free images for social media)
Pixabay is one of the biggest sites for Free stock images.
All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0.
13 – Canva (Design awesome images)
Canva is a simple graphic design tool. It has an easy to use drag-and-drop interface and provides access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts.
Over 2 million people use Canva to create images for social media, ebooks, blog posts, and practically any other use you can imagine.
14 – Viddyoze ( Awesome animations in 3 clicks)
It’s a fully-automated video animation maker for marketers and businesses. You can also customize animations to match your brand in seconds.
14.5 – Meetups & Networking
I know it’s not really a tool and that’s why it’s only “0.5 points” hehe.
IMO no tool can replace the in-person relationships. So use sites like Meetup and Eventbrite to find awesome events and people in your city.
Now over to you. What other tools would you add to this list?