Best Times To Post On Social Media

Ten Great Free Apps For Social Media Managers

Earlier this month, Facebook released its 2013 Q2 earnings report. In the last three months, Facebook earned $1.8 billion, an increase of 53% from last quarter. This boost in revenue is largely thanks to an increase in mobile advertising, which has raised 41% of Facebook’s ad revenue in Q2.

Mobile is becoming an increasingly important platform for social media managers. Every social media network has a number of apps to make managing social media profiles easier. Facebook, for example, has several, including Pages manager and Messenger.

Apart from all the apps owned by the big social media firms, there are dozens of apps that can help a social media manager to organise their day and create content for their pages. Here are ten great apps you might not have heard of and how they can help you manage your social media pages.

1. Drop Box

Drop Box is a secure cloud platform where you can save images, documents, spread sheets and videos, and then access them from any device.
If you take a photo on your phone that you want to edit on your computer, save it to Drop Box so that you can access it later.

The alternatives: Google Docs

2. Pho.to Lab

Pho.to Lab is a great app for social media managers looking for an image editing tool with capabilities beyond those of Instagram. With more than 500 different effects, Pho.to Lab lets you create photo montages, virtual postcards, personalised contact icons and animated photos. If you want to create an eye-catching, unique image to post on your company’s social media pages, Pho.to lab is the one for you.

The alternatives: Aviary, BeFunky

3. Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts is the brilliant video calling service from search giants Google. Unlike Skype, video conferencing on the service comes at no extra cost. Because Hangouts is a Google product, there are also a number of great add-ons to help improve your communication, such as YouTube video sharing. Using Hangouts you can call clients, hold meetings and conduct interviews. You can even store and post the videos on your other social media sites.

The alternatives: ooVoo Video, Skype

4. SoundCloud

SoundCloud is a fantastic site where you can upload all your podcasts and audio files, follow other users and share content – essentially, it’s a social media site for audio. You can even embed SoundCloud files on other websites. With the SoundCloud app, you can manage your audio files easily, just as you would on your desktop device.

The alternatives: there aren’t any, really

5. Feedly

Feedly is a great news aggregator app, with many calling it the natural successor to the recently demised Google Reader. Feedly is available across all platforms, so you can stay abreast of updates relevant to you and your company no matter where you are. If Feedly doesn’t suit your needs, the alternatives below also provide great services.

The alternatives: Pulse, Flipboard, Google Currents

6. Blogger

Maintaining an active blog is simple with the Blogger app. It isn’t very easy to write articles on the go, but if you need to edit a mistake or respond to a comment, the app can be extremely useful.

Of course, the alternative WordPress also has an app, so if you do most of your blogging on WordPress then download it instead.

The alternative: WordPress

7. Yelp

Yelp is the best online business directory out there, with information about hundreds of businesses accessible from any device. Create your own Yelp profile so that people can find your business.

If you need to contact a potential client or find their offices while on the go, I advise that you download Yelp onto your mobile device.

The alternative: Google Places

8. Evernote

Easy to use and absolutely free, Evernote is the best note taking app out there. Like Drop Box, Evernote saves all you work onto a cloud platform so you can access it from any device. If you don’t have a pen and paper handy, then Evernote is the perfect application to note down important information. Evernote can also help you stay abreast of all your tasks and appointments with to-do lists and notifications.

The alternatives: EasilyDo, Weave

9. Dragon Dictation

If you don’t have time to type, then Dragon Dictation is the app for you.

Dragon Dictation is the best of the new generation of speech recognition apps, allowing you to record your speech quickly and accurately.

The alternative: Listnote Speech

10. Vine

Alright, Vine might be a little bit obvious but it’s a great app nonetheless. Personally, I use it instead of Instagram Video, but it really is a matter of preference. With Vine, you can create fun and interesting videos to post onto Twitter, catching the attention of your Twitter audience. The best Vine videos often go viral, so it’s worth experimenting with.

The alternative: Instagram

What apps do you use to manage your social media pages?   

Google Launches iOS App For Blogger

Google has finally launched an iOS app for Blogger, giving the blog network’s millions of users a simple way to write, manage and publish posts from their iPhones.

The app, available for iOS users 3.2 and up, is rather straightforward. It allows users to compose and publish blog posts complete with photos and geotagging. It also lets users view and edit their published and draft blog posts. It mimics the simplicity of the Blogger for Android interface, though. Users can also manage multiple blogs from the interface.

While the app works for the iPad, it only works in compatibility mode. Hopefully an iPad app is in the near future.

This is the first official Blogger app for the iPhone. BlogPress created an unofficial app that Blogger endorsed, but an official app has been long overdue. The blogging service, once the world’s largest blogging service, has been overshadowed by WordPress, Tumblr and more lightweight competition. Google recently started investing in an overhaul of the service in an attempt to make Blogger relevant once again.

What do you think of Blogger and its new iOS app? Let us know in the comments.

6 Ways to Maximize the Use of Your 140 Character

Here are some tips for making the most of those few characters you get to use.

1) Use shorthand codes. BRB, LOL, RT, TY, etc. Some may call it tech speak or leet speak. Acronyms and abbreviations for commonly used words and phrases. Check out this list of popular Twitter shorthands and if you like to use more colorful shorthand there is also a NSFW shorthand list. That’s Not-Safe-For-Work for you shorthand beginners.

2) Be clear and concise. Make sure you are not being redundant. Remove any words that might be irrelevant to what you are trying to convey.

3) Use URL shortening. This one is pretty obvious and is even built in to Twitter. However, there are some URL shortening services that can save you a few more characters than TinyURL. I use IS.GD and another popular one is XR.COM which even allows you to customize the URL.

4) Use special symbol characters. You may not know it, but Twitter accepts more than just normal characters. You can actually create hearts, stars, smilies and other symbols that can represent words or ideas in just 1 character. TheNextWeb has created a great tool called TwitterKeys which allows you to have all these symbols at your fingertips.

5) Use labels. Labeling your tweet has some cool benefits. A label is like a tag at the beginning of your tweet. Your followers will know exactly what you are sharing right away and they may even increase your chances of being re-tweeted. Here are some examples… (Reading:, Stumbling:, Digging:, etc.)

6) Be simple. This is a writing tip from Copyblogger, “…simple words work better than big ones. Write ‘get’ instead of ‘procure.’ Write ‘use’ rather than ‘utilize.’ Use the longer words only if your meaning is so precise there is no simpler word to use.”