Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Employ someone and you have to consider salary, workspace, and equipment; not to mention benefits like medical care and paid vacation time.

Conversely, freelancers are only paid for the work they do.

This is generally (though not always) more cost-effective than taking on someone in-house, and allows you to increase or decrease their workload as needed.

This makes outsourcing extremely flexible, which is a huge win for small businesses.

But don’t get too excited just yet… there’s a hard part: actually finding great freelancers and managing them effectively.

Thankfully there’s plenty of tools designed to help you do just that (and many more being released all the time).

Let’s take a look at some of the more recent additions to the market that can help you to outsource and manage your content creation in 2016...

Compelling content will attract the right people to you, allowing you to build an audience of current and potential customers. More than that, posting great content on social is the the first step to higher engagement rates and a larger audience.

The question is, how do you find amazing content to share? Well your own awesome stuff is a great start, but if you live by the 80/20 rule, you might need to look at other sources as well. And for this, you’ll need a system that is time saving and easy to include to your daily routine.

Let’s take a look at some of the top tools that guarantee to save you time in curating the right content for social....

But I’m going to assume that you have at least a decent grasp of how to manage your team and content strategy.

Instead, I want to focus on the second main point – tools.

I’m going to share with you 15 tools that can help you create better content as a team, while minimizing the chance of mistakes.

You definitely won’t need all of them, but you’ll probably want to use at least one from each of the four main classes of tools. 

Wisdom of the Crowd – I’ve published lists of content marketing tools here in the past but these sorts of resources warrant regular updates. In addition to the near-daily pitches I receive and my own research, I reached out to my network on Facebook for new content marketing tool suggestions.

The result? An A to Z list (and then some, 45 tools in all) of new and many not so new but highly useful content marketing tools to help you solve content planning, creation, promotion and measurement challenges.  This is by no means a comprehensive list but it is a collection of the content marketing software companies that are top of mind amongst my own social network....

The best tool for getting more social shares isn’t a tool at all. Instead, it all comes down to producing high quality, in-depth content.

When you create better content than your competitors, it won’t be long before social shares begin to pick up.

But, of course, there is always help to be had. Once you create a killer piece of content, you need to do your part in getting it shared across all major platforms, including, but not limited to, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

If you need a little help getting more social shares, the following nine tools could be just what you’re looking for. It’s not likely that you will use each one every day, but you should definitely learn more about all of them....

In the past, I’ve discussed a variety of ways for businesses to improve their reach through social media. From step-by-step marketing guides to advertising-based posts, I have done it all.

This time around, I want to discuss 13 tools that can make or break your social media marketing strategy. With the right tools on your side, the sky’s the limit. Without these, however, you will be facing an uphill battle.

Here are 13 tools you need to learn before going “all in” with your social media strategy...

In today’s EdTech Charts series, we are sharing with you a collection of some of the best web tools and mobile apps to use with your students to design creative comics. As is the case with previous charts, the titles we include have aunleash their imaginative potential and experiment with a number of various multimodal creative activities.

Check out the chart belowll been reviewed here in previous posts. Our purpose is to provide you with a handy resource where you can access teacher-tested tools to use in your classroom. And as we have argued elsewhere, using comics in your instruction can be a great way to engage students in learning activities and boost their motivation. Students can use them to  and share with your colleagues. Enjoy...

Value your time online?

Of course you do!

And getting your time back is more important than ever.

If you’re on social media (and you are because you’re reading this) -- you know that keeping up can be exhausting.

The good news? Having the right tools can make your life easier.

Fortunately, there are dozens of cool tools, and most are aimed at earning time back in your day.

Here’s 21 of my favorite social media tools that every marketer needs in alphabetical order....

Beyond the big six networks—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest—there are dozens more that are quickly rising in usage or are super valuable for particular audiences and niches. It’s a ton to keep track of. It can be a mystery to know where to spend your time.

I pulled up some numbers on these fringe networks to maybe help you decide where it’s best to spend your time. Here are the explanations, demographics, numbers, and details on 11 fringe social networks....