I have to admit – I’m sort of addicted to jumping in and trying all things “new” and “improved” when it comes to online marketing.

In my role as Content Manager for Sales Renewal, I spend an immense amount of time researching, blogging, writing status updates and posting to a variety of social sites – Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn to name the obvious. I also spend way too much time exploring the latest and greatest tools to manage all this content and to get our clients’ messages out to the right audience. (In my defense, I’ve found that it’s the only way to stay on top of this ever-changing industry.)

Most I quickly abandon, but some become an essential part of my day. Here then, are some of the sites and tools I’ve used this week alone – a mix of new finds and the tried and true.

Our Take on 11 Social Media and Content Marketing Tools

Content Creation

Scoop.it: This Google-alerts type of information gathering site allows for Pinterest-style presentation of relevant information. While we’re still just exploring the site, we believe it holds enormous potential.

The scoop.it folks (who, by the way, offer excellent customer service) talk about the rationale behind the site:

We created Scoop.it because we believe algorithms alone are not enough at organizing the web’s content in a smart, meaningful way and that humans could do a much better job at it if we made it easier and rewarding… By combining a big data semantic technology that helps them quickly find relevant content with an easy-to-use social publishing platform, we help them show their expertise, develop their online visibility, enrich their blogs or web sites, save time managing their social media channels and build their communities of interests.

Our rating: Ease of use: Business potential:

Content Distribution

HootSuite.com: Yes, I know I’m late to the game here, but with so many accounts to manage, I finally broke down and invested time and (relatively minimal) money into this social media management system that allow for posting across multiple social networks from one dashboard. It doesn’t take the place of hand-crafting messages for each social account, it just allows me to do it in one place.

Our rating: Ease of use: Business potential:

Friends+Me: I just discovered this site yesterday. Friends+Me takes your Google+ public posts and allows you to share the messages to other networks.

Our rating: Ease of use: Business potential: Still exploring

Clip Better: allows you to email link previews vs raw URLs. It creates a rich snippet that includes an image, title, summary, and link. There are four ways to install the feature.

Our rating: Ease of use: Business potential: Still exploring

Graphics and Design

Piktochart.com: An easy-to-use site for anyone interested in making an Infographic for their blog or website that I’ve been using for nearly a year. Great, responsive customer service and open to suggestions.

Our rating: Ease of use: Business potential:

Canva.com: I just discovered Canva.com, an onl
ine design platform that allows the user to create designs for the web or print: blog graphics, presentations, flyers, posters, Facebook covers.

Our rating: Ease of use: Business potential:

PicMonkey.com: My go-to graphics site, great for making Facebook covers, collages, editing photos.

Our rating: Ease of use: Business potential:

WebResizer.com: Another go-to site for optimizing images for using online. It’s simple, no frills, and you don’t have to create an account to use!

Our rating: Ease of use: Business potential:

New Finds on the Social Sites

Pinterest Secret Boards: No, secret boards aren’t new, but I love this idea of using them for a business-client purpose. Our florist client mentioned how she wanted to use Pinterest to exchange pictures with brides-to-be so she could help them with their wedding flowers. Since the idea was for the two of them to collaborate and they weren’t interested in other people pinning and sharing, we set up a Secret Pinterest Board for each bride.

Our rating: Ease of use: Business potential:

LinkedIn Showcase Pages: Showcase Pages are like micro-sites – they’re extensions of a Company page to spotlight a brand, business unit, or initiative directly on LinkedIn.

Our rating: Ease of use: Business potential: Large businesses with multiple business units or brands can probably benefit from this; verdict is still out for the smaller businesses as to whether this will detract from or enhance a strong Company page.

Facebook Business Account: An exercise in total frustration. We have been emailing back and forth with Facebook Advertising about advertising (!) for over a month now, and we still haven’t been able to spend our money. No phone support, and each email response is a duplicate of the last one. Just about ready to give up and spend our money somewhere else…

Our rating: Ease of use: Business potential: Still exploring

All Work and No Play?

Try as I might to stay focused on “just” work, not a day goes by that I don’t find some distraction in terms of a new tool I’d like to try personally, a video to watch, article to read, or photos to look at. Today’s major distraction? This Super Bowl commercial.

Now, back to work. For this post alone, I used scoop.it (post idea came about by browsing several topics); PicMonkey.com and Canva.com (the graphic); and HootSuite.com (to distribute and share the post).

What tools do you use and love? Whether you’re a social media professional or a business owner trying to make it in the digital space, let us know your finds in the Comments section – I’d love to test it out!

And jus
t in case you didn’t click through to the commercial but really need a distraction: