Marketing is a vital part of promoting a brand. You have to think about what you’re offering and find ways to communicate that to the public. In this day and age where most businesses are making the shift to being online, digital marketing is all the rage. My first job was as a digital marketer. I spent days on end coming up with strategies to keep the audience engaged and interested in the brand I was promoting.
This was no easy task especially when Kenya Power put a hole in my plans and we had a black out. It meant I couldn’t use my compouter to go online and monitor the conversation and be kept upto date with demands. This would normally result in me leaving the house(I used to work from home) and go to a restaurant or to visit family and friends just so I could plug in my laptop and be connected.
All this was done before it dawned on me that my smartphone could do what I needed to do when ,y laptop was off. All I needed was a few apps. It’s always good to have such apps on you device be it your phone or tablet. Here are a few social media apps I think marketers need to have.
Buffer
Buffer is probably my favorite social media sharing application. You can get it both on computer and mobile. It helps you schedule posts you want sent out depending on your sharing frequency. You can have multiple accounts on it and you also get analytics to see how each post did.
Facebook Pages Manager
Anyone who runs facebooka ccounts will profess love for this application. It gives you all the services you would get if you needed to control your pages. With this app on your phone, responding to messages and comments does not require you to be sitting infront of a computer.
Dropbox
Dropbox has been a lifesaver for me. I save most of my documents and work related images on it. I would definitely advise marketers to get this app. You can sync it and have the same files on the app on your computer as well. It makes it easier if you run an account that needs you to post images as you have the files on your phone as well as your computer.
Evernote
This app is good for marketers especially when you have strategy meetings. I would also recommend it for bloggers. It helps you in note taking. You no longer have to carry a notebook to meetings or your laptop. Just grab your phone or tablet and you’re set. It will help you keep a to-do-list and avoid missing those important deadlines. It’s also great as you can download it on your phone.
Social Media marketing is allabout knowing what’s going on around you. As such, you will need to read a lot. Flipboard is the app to help you do this. It picks content form RSS feeds, twitter lists or the categories you select and you read that in a flappable magazine layout. It will help you keep-up to date with news around the world and share it to your audience in timely manner.
Google Drive
Google Drive is a lifesaver. It will help you save all your work and be able to access or share that information regardless of where you are. If you constantly need to check and confirm some details of something you were sent on email, it’s always advisable to have it saved on Google Drive for easy access.
Hangouts
I know many people will say WhatsApp is a better alternative. That may be true for chats. But not everyone has WhatsApp installed on their devices (hard to believe but it’s true) in such scenarios, hangouts is what you need. It will help you chat easily with all your email contacts at all times.
These are just a few of the apps I found useful in my stint as a digital marketer. They helped me out of a few sticky situations. They are all easy downloadable and easy to use. If you re a marketer or thinking of taking up marketing, these social media apps and tools should be on your list of things to get.
What other social media apps do you think marketers need? Share with us in the comments section.