5 Must Have Digital and Social Media Marketing Tools 

By Dexter Patterson

For many years, I did things the hard way when it came to my digital and social media marketing.  I felt I was doing everything right, but I was working without a strategy.  I was spending hours on my social media platforms but producing minimal results.  For this reason, I almost gave up on social media marketing until I began to work smarter.

The Revelation

After taking a few communications courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I knew I had to focus more on the science of my marketing.  I had to go back to the drawing board and start drafting an actual digital marketing strategy.  Yes, it was time for Dexter to get back in the laboratory.

I knew I had to abandon my old attitude toward social media, so I started to learn from some of the best thought leaders in the industry.  I began reading as much as I could in my niche and I made learning a priority.  I stopped selling my brand so much online and started to focus on solving problems for my audience.

5 Helpful Tools

1. Buffer-This social media management tool has allowed me to be much more flexible with my time on my social media platforms.  I’m able to buffer posts for my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts with ease.  I create a weekly content calendar and use Buffer to deliver that content across all my platforms at strategic times.  Furthermore, Buffer also provides a list of suggested posts catered to keywords I choose which is great for my inbound marketing efforts.  The free version is perfect for anyone just starting out, but you can upgrade to their “Awesome” plan to take your digital marketing strategy to the next level.  Buffer is extremely easy to use and will free up a lot of time for you to do other things for your business such as research or professional networking.
2. PicMonkey-These days having good visuals in your social media strategy is a must.  PicMonkey is a free tool I use to help with my visual presence online.  PicMonkey is user-friendly, and it allows you to lay text over images with little to no effort.  They have a ton of cool fonts and the images come out looking clean and professional.
3. We Follow– This tool helped point me in the right direction of the people who were doing digital and social media marketing well.  We Follow allows you to see who the Top 100 people are in your field of interest, and you can stay up to date on the trends in your industry.
4. Feedly– I love this tool for multiple reasons.  First of all, it allows me to read all my favorite blogs in one place.  I am then able to connect those feeds to my Buffer account which allows me to curate incredible content for my audience.
5. Market Samurai– This tool is great for doing market research on keywords in your niche.  Market Samurai also helps you analyze the competition, and you can see who’s ranking high in the search engines.

Wrap Up

I hope you try out these five tools, and I’d love to hear about your experiences with them.  If you have any questions about them or need some help on how to get started using one of these tools, I’d be more than willing to help you out.