As leaders, we have to be very intentional about how we use our time to get the most out of our busy days. It’s easy to get so caught up doing the big things that we gloss over the little things that can make a huge dent in building brand awareness for our organizations.
Luckily for us, we live in an information age. The beauty of working in today’s digital world is that there seems to be an app for everything. Here are seven simple, time-saving apps you can use to grow your audience and increase brand awareness.
1. Mention
It is a fact: You can’t manage what you do not measure. Mention is a tool you can use to manage and measure your growth as a brand. It evaluates what people are saying about your brand and how they are interacting with it. With this online tool, you can monitor and improve your social-media performance. It is a great resource for tracking the most significant conversations surrounding your brand. This allows you to become a lot more approachable as an organization because you are able to find customer feedback and be responsive in a timely manner. Try the free trial for this tool.
2. Later
I have always been a firm believer in batching your work as part of creating a system for you and your team (remember this piece I did on systems?). Perhaps you are already overwhelmed by the many social media options available to you. Choosing the one that works best for you can be daunting. Later gives you the opportunity to spend about 20 minutes scheduling content on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for one week. Later will post directly to your Instagram account (without push notifications if you have a business account). This is a plus because not many scheduling tools are able to do this with Instagram, and there are few apps that do it as well as Later. You can find out what’s working and what isn’t so you can grow your account faster. You can find the best time to post and analyze your content performance. Later is free, but there are also paid plans available.
IFTTT provides you with a way to create conditional statements—called applets—on which precise actions will be taken. It communicates between different apps for an action to be initiated. To start, you simply select the apps you use frequently. For example, if you select Facebook from the IFTTT platform, you may choose to select, “Tweet your Facebook status updates.” This will allow you to set this action once and have it replicated for as long as you desire. Each time you make a status update to your Facebook account, it will automatically update to Twitter. This eliminates the need for you to post to Twitter, yet you get the benefit of being on the platform. The myriad of combinations of applets that can be created is endless. The app is free to sign up.
Going back to the principle of measuring and managing, Google Analytics is a tool within the Google Marketing Platform brand that allows you to track and report web traffic. Get a clear understanding of where your web traffic is coming from, how long they are staying on your page, what device they are visiting from the most, what pages they are visiting the most, among other pertinent information. Google Analytics is by far one of the most comprehensive tools available to track the performance of your brand. It gives you enough data for you to track, make changes where necessary and continue what is working in order for you to grow. Google Analytics is free, but a premium service is also available.
5. Agorapulse
Agorapulse is a social media management tool that works with Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. With this tool, you are able to post content according to your schedule, reply to all your conversations from one place, monitor all relevant social conversations, report using analytics and collaborate with team members. There is a free 28-day trial that I tried and actually loved. After the trial period, prices range from under $100 to close to $500 per month. The best thing about this app is that you can manage all your social accounts from one platform with ease.
6. BuildFire
For a while, I have been thinking about developing an app for The Entrepreneurial You podcast. When I came across BuildFire, I became curious as it may just be the answer to my app challenge. It says that it is 100 percent free to make your app, fully customizable, simple and intuitive. I haven’t tried it yet but am looking forward to exploring how it might help me grow my podcast.
There are many benefits to having a brand app including marketing more directly, providing more value to your customers, building brand recognition, increasing customer engagement and standing out from the crowd.
7. Pablo
We can’t think of growing our brands without considering social-media engagement. Pablo allows you to create beautiful images to make your posts stand out. You can customize your posts with quotes, fonts and brand logos, and share to varying profiles such as Pinterest and Facebook. The app allows you to upload your own image or use preloaded images on the platform. I like that is simple, easy to use and free of charge.
What app are you using to grow your brand? We’d love to hear from you on Twitter.
