Some time ago I published the social media toolkit for adventurers, [Spanish link] a selection of tools and platforms that are an essential part of the social web and others which are specifically related to social media. This post is an update and enlargement on that post, with some tools I consider to be very relevant in carrying out important work in social media, the social web and online projects in a professional, productive, efficient way that yields results.
Some of the tools or platforms below aren't necessarily part of the social media, but the way they are implemented and used can have direct or indirect results in them. Even if they don't have a direct effect, they can still be useful. That's what really matters: that they have a role to play and that they can help you get where you want to go.
I use most of these tools, not only for me but also for the projects we work on with partners and friends. I recommend them to everyone around me.
Social Media Tools and Online Platforms
- Scoop it!: content curator platform organised by topics. This is the opposite of traditional models where people "curate contents". In this case, Scoop It! does it for you. It is ideal to build a community of "content curators" sharing ideas that matter to you.
- Timely: created by flowtown, which has been acquired by Demandforce. Have you ever wondered whether your tweets are ever read? Is a certain time of day better to publish them? Timely analyses your latest 199 tweets and discovers the best moments for publishing. You can use this information to programme your tweets and to become smarter as your number of followers grows. The more you use it, the more perfect it becomes. However, a few months ago, they announced that the service wouldn't be accepting new subscriptions, here.
- Storify: ideal for storytelling. Storify will help you create stories through "content curators". It categorises, classifies and groups all types of contents into stories you can create. Tweets, links, videos, pictures, text. Simply drag & drop to create a story, organise and share it.
- Buffer: an efficient tool that automatically publishes tweets (and posts on Facebook and LinkedIn) at the best time of day to reach as many people as possible. They also have an App for smartphones and tablets and a plug-in for your browser, which makes it simpler and faster to use.
- Mention: tool to monitor communications and the social media. It sets up alerts and informs you about any new mention of your brand in real time. It even includes a translator to overcome any language gaps, which is a common source of problems when you hire a professional monitoring tool.
- Infogr.am: it creates amazing graphs and charts in a matter of minutes. A useful tool to prepare an analysis, presentation, report or study. An excellent way to present information.
- Twylah: carry out marketing with Twitter and build personalised pages for companies, agencies, SMEs, celebrities or charity organisations. It will help you get more followers and mentions, increase engagement, improve your results and the actions carried out by your public. Twylah transforms your tweets into a fanpage. You can show your tweets with different themes and in different categories. This service also works alongside Buffer for better results.
- Workflowy: an organisational productivity tool that makes your life easier and much simpler, faster and direct to organise, group and classify tasks, processes and procedures. This is an incredibly useful way of taking notes, making lists, collaborating, brainstorming, planning and structuring in general.
- Rescue Time: this is one of my favourites and one which gives me the best results. A personal analysis service that shows you how you use your time from the moment you start up your PC or laptop and provides tools to help you be more productive. It helps you establish productivity comparisons on how, how much and where you use your time and conclusions to improve it.
- Mindnode: an adaptable tool focusing on brainstorming and designing mind maps. Its minimalist interface makes it easy for anyone to focus on generating and connecting ideas. If your ideas expand, so does Mindnode. It may even reorganise the mind maps you create as different ideas arise.
- Omnigraffle: Mac software to create diagrams, graphs and visual representations. It can be considered the Mac counterpart to Project or Visio in Windows. Quite resourceful, most of the concepts I've created were born using this tool.
- Evernote: What's left to be said about this tool! I work in it, 90% of what I produce is within this platform. Presentations, books, ideas for posts, projects, travel details, accommodation and calendar, shared folders, collaborative work, shared files, business information, press kits, audio notes, pictures, documents, reports, training plans, tasks, studies, graphs, resources. All of this and more is what you can manage within Evernote. Add to this how easy it is to transfer and store information and synchronisation between my iPad, iPhone and Mac!
- Prezi: a revolution in the world of presentations. Much has happened since I first used it in September 2010. I still remember people's faces at my second conference as speaker. Prezi is a visual solution for presentations based on zoom effects and cloud storage. This tool has evolved considerably and now offers many other options. The only handicap is you'll no longer be original if you use Prezi as everyone is using it now. In my case, I combine Prezi (15%), SlideRocket (15%) and Keynote (60%) for my presentations, but Prezi is a sure shot because it offers something different, fresh and dynamic to any presentation.
What other tools would you recommend or include in this list? Any other application I should be using? Why?
Photo credit: entrepreneur.