If you want to be a mover and a shaker in just about any field these days, you need to be up to date on your social media tools.
Of course, it’s still fine if you go ahead using all of the standards of the game — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. all have their uses — but that’s really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you could be using for promotion, scheduling and creative experimentation.
Here are a few different apps and social media tools that I’ve recently found to be pretty useful for my own purposes:
— Tailwind
Only the most avid Instagram users might know this, but there are peak hours for when traffic on the site is busiest.
Rather than relying on a lot of guesswork, Tailwind helps you figure out exactly when to post your next photo or image for maximum visibility by the broadest possible audience.
Not only does the app say exactly when you should be posting with a nearly scientific level of accuracy, it can give you a hand in organizing your photos, managing multiple accounts and, if you happen to have a Business Profile, it can even automatically post to your feed so that you can do other things with your time.
I’ve also found its hashtag generator, which both organizes your already-developed tags and recommends new ones based on your account, to be pretty handy.
— Buffer
On a somewhat similar note, Buffer is a fantastic app that helps social media users schedule their posts across platforms.
When you’re managing a handful of different accounts, this can reduce any time-consuming hassle and make the whole process a pretty seamless experience.
Buffer works for five of the most popular platforms — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram — and lets you line up posts in a queue, giving you full control in advance over multiple pieces of content in a single sitting.
That way, you can write your posts or upload your photos, schedule when you want them to go live, then go on with your day as usual.
— Display Purposes
Using social media to have fun with your friends is one thing, but everyone who uses it for business knows that expanding your reach means everything.
One of the best, and by far the easiest, ways to do this is by simply adding a string of hashtags to your post, which can help draw new people outside of your social circle into your account.
There’s a great web tool called Display Purposes that I use to quickly generate a list of relevant hashtags that I probably never would have come up with on my own.
The way it works is pretty basic: you type in a single possible hashtag you might want to use into a searchbar and the site gives you a pretty broad list of other closely related tags.
For example, I typed in “#horrormovie” and it immediately gave me 30 new ones, from “#horrorjunkie” to “#slasher” to “#chucky”. Pretty cool, right?
— Hypno Cam
These days, there are a whole range of apps aimed at budding filmmakers.
One of the easiest, and probably the most fun, of these is Hypno Cam.
The app is fairly simple: you shoot a video of any length and Hypno Cam lets you apply a range of fun filters or effects, all of them pretty psychedelic, then syncs that footage with your choice music from their list of hot pop songs.
It may not be designed for aspiring Spielbergs but it’s a fantastic way to upload a vibrant video to your social media feeds that is sure to catch a lot of eyes.
Have you tried any of these apps?
What do you think?
Are there any others that I should know about? Let me know!