Managing Social Media Marketing with your Smartphone

When it comes to social media, being present or responding in a timely manner is key to engaging with customers and prospects. Being able to manage your social media messaging and correspondence from your smartphone offers you greater flexibility and access to the conversations that could lead to a sale.

Think of your smartphone as a gateway to the tasks and tools that can help you be more efficient and effective in your social media marketing activities. Here are some of the mobile apps that can help turn your smartphone into a streamlined social media marketing management system.

Managing Tasks and Assignments: Asana

Some social media dashboards and social network accounts have ways to monitor correspondence-related tasks while you are marketing, but to access them, you have to jump from app to app. Having a single destination for all task- and assignment-related activities helps you stay on top of your editorial calendar, campaign schedule, and other deadlines can be helpful. Asana is a platform that lets you create projects, tasks, and subtasks to track what needs to be done. You can even get reports to show what’s due and how you’re keeping up with the work. Asana is available on the web and for iOS and Android phones.

Creating Beautiful Graphics – Canva

Visuals are one effective way to attract attention on social media. If you’re not a graphic designer, creating attractive images can be challenging. Canva makes it easy. With both web and smartphone apps, you can access Canva tools anywhere. Canva has a wide array of tools that are easy-to-use to do everything from designing slideshows to creating social network headers and post graphics and infographics to building and editing videos. If you have a team, you can invite them into creative projects. Even without a team, you can create beautiful visuals for all the social networks you use. Canva is available on the web and for iOS and Android phones.

Enhancing Photographs – Camera+

You don’t have to have the latest smartphone with a better camera or be a professional photographer to produce attractive photographs for social media. There is an array of photo editing tools from PhotoShop to VSCO to Adobe Lightroom and even Instagram with its easy-to-use filters. A classic iPhone photo editing is Camera+ and the newer version, Camera+ 2. The app includes an image stabilizer, basic and advanced editing tools, and various filters that automatically change the light source of an image.

Sharing Large Files – Google Drive and Dropbox

A common activity when developing multimedia content for social media marketing is passing large graphics back and forth between team members. Organizing and archiving social media images that are easily accessible is helpful, particularly if you’re working with an external or in-house graphic designer. Using a storage and sharing system like Google Drive or Dropbox eliminates the cumbersome task of emailing large images back and forth. Both allow you to store, view, share, and even comment on the images. Once they are ready to use, any team member with access can easily download them as needed. Both Google Drive and Dropbox are available on the web and for iOS and Android phones.

Managing and Monitoring Your Accounts – HootSuite and SproutSocial

Keeping up on what is being said about you, your company, your products and services, or even the topics that are related and relevant to your brand, is key to engaging in social media conversations. You need a listening post to respond in a timely manner to questions and comments. Social media dashboard services like HootSuite and SproutSocial provide you with the tools you need to manage multiple accounts either on your own or with team members. Both provide multiple snapshot views of your accounts and enhances the analytics you get from each social network’s insights. Both HootSuite and SproutSocial are available on the web and for iOS and Android phones.

Pro Tip: In addition to your social media dashboard monitoring feature, add some key words and phrases to Google Alerts to receive regular emails of mentions across multiple social networks and websites.

To choose the right smartphone apps, start with the tasks you need to do to engage with your social media following. Check out several options, then pick the apps that work well for you – and your budget.