Don’t judge a book by its cover, and don’t judge a social media marketing tool by its most popular feature. Digging a little deeper into some of my favorite platforms has often revealed valuable features not evident at first glance.
For most of us there isn’t time to test and compare the hundreds of tools that are available to marketers. That’s why I’m going to talk about three awesome social media marketing tools that you’ve heard of; but you may not know about their hidden superpowers that can help elevate your business.
1. Canva
At first glance Canva seems very straight forward; it’s a free online photo editor. Most businesses use Canva to create unique photos for their social needs including blogs and social media marketing posts to Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
However, you may not know that Canva provides a library of more than one million icons, stickers, buttons, grids and other images and layouts to choose from. Long live the days of needing a graphic designer or professional design tools to create beautiful images.
Canva recently announced the Design with Canva button which allows businesses to integrate with Canva to offer their customers an easy way to build images right within their platform. Some of the early adopters include Post Planner, Go Daddy, AgoraPulse and TabSite.
2. Post Planner
The guys over at Post Planner have created a time-saving product that does a whole lot more than just schedule posts to your Facebook Page. Once you dive into their product, you’ll notice that they make the hardest part about posting to Facebook (coming up with ideas!) a lot easier. Post Planner can generate Status Update ideas, suggest photos and even show you trending content to help you look like an expert with every post.
Post Planner has also compiled a generous list of popular Facebook Pages into folders that users can scan for viral photos and content. Is there a page you like that isn’t listed? No problem, you can add it to your feed.
3. ShortStack
Many businesses use ShortStack to build contests, sweepstakes and promotions for Facebook. Naturally I’m a little biased, but there is a lot more to ShortStack than just Facebook.
For businesses looking to increase their reach everywhere, including Facebook, ShortStack can be a huge time-saver. With ShortStack, marketers don’t have to create a separate campaign for each marketing channel (website, Facebook, Twitter etc). Instead, you can create one campaign and promote it anywhere on the web.
ShortStack is also great for building landing pages, creating web forms and collecting user-generated feedback from a voting or essay contest.
These are just a few examples of the hidden power found in a few of my favorite tools, but I’m sure there are many more waiting to be discovered. One of my favorite things about building a product is seeing the unexpected and interesting ways people use it. What are your favorite social media marketing tools that have secret powers?
Jim Belosic is the CEO of ShortStack, a software used to create contests, sweepstakes, data-collection forms and more for social, mobile and the Web.
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