5 Social Media Tools That Will Save Your Life

Social media is a black hole for time.

You can spend hours pouring over the same 10 videos and you barely even notice the clock ticking.

When it comes to running your own social media, however, time is a huge factor. Because the more time you spend on social media, the less time you’re spending actually doing what you do (unless you’re a social media maven. You do you.)

Given that most creatives are time poor, so we’ve pulled together a list of 10 social media tools that will save you time and effort. Meaning you don’t have to spend your life flicking between apps. Yippee!

The best bit is… they’re all free!

Buffer

Buffer is an awesome scheduling tool that allows you to post Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts at a later date.

With the free version you can link up to 3 accounts and schedule up to 10 pieces of content.

There’s also a handy content inbox where you can follow your favourite blogs (*cough*) and schedule to share their content online with a simple click. You can also link your own blog and re-share old content as well as broadcasting new content.

Audiense

Audiense figures out when the best time for you to Tweet is. What’s even cooler is that it then links up to Buffer, and gives you a handy schedule.

This means you know all of your planned tweets are getting sent at exactly the best time for people to like, comments and share them.

Not only this, but it lets you search for people to follow (to grow your community) and also tells you who isn’t following you back (meanies.)

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is great if you’ve got loads of different accounts and you want to keep them all in one handy place.

It offers the same service as Buffer but also includes a handy reply function – meaning you can keep track of all your conversations, all in one place!

Hootsuite also allows you to target subsets for channels like your Facebook page.

Social Mention

Ever wondered what people say about you online? Googling is so 2014 – you need Social Mention. It’s a eal-time platform that searches across the whole of the social interweb and organising it into a handy list for you. Influence is measured by Strength, Sentiment, Passion and Reach.

Not only this, it gives you a score for positive vs negative sentiment and your overall influence.

Pretty great if you’re trying to manage your brand or someone else’s.

Iconosquare

You know that 31 people liked the picture of your breakfast. But do you know how many more likes you when you use Mayfair, instead of Nashville?

Iconosquare delves deeper than your ex into your instagram and analyses your posts, measuring the type of post vs the level of engagement.

If you’re monetising Instagram or even just using it to help build brand/personal awareness, this is one for you.

Now you’re fully armed – fly, my social media mavens, fly! (And let us know if you think we’ve missed anything.)

Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact us any time for penguin chats via email: info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com

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5 Mistakes You’re Probably Making on Social Media

Social media. We know the deal here, right? Some tweets. Some likes. A few dozen comments and a gif for good measure.

It’s not a top secret recipe.

And yet – nearly everyone is guilty of the following social media fails. How many do you clock up?

1. Selling on purpose

We all have something we want to sell. Whether it’s tickets to our next show or even just that jumper you bought off Ebay months ago and have never worn, we’re used to seeing sales messages on social media.

If you’re using social to build awareness of yourself and your brand however, you need to try and avoid the hard sell.

Why?

Because people don’t like following accounts where they think they will get sold to all the time. It’s not fun for them (I mean, how passionate can someone be about a 20% discount on lawnmowers? Hmm?

2. Not secret selling

So here’s the secret. You sell. But you do it in a more roundabout way with some personality, fun and intrigue thrown in for good measure. Have a look at these two tweets:

Guys! Please buy tickets and come and support me on stage, www.ticketlink.com, it would be great to see you all.

Vs.

First dress rehearsal today! How’s my makeup looking for [insert production name]? http://www.ticketlink.com *With relevant image attached*

Which of those two tweets would you be more likely to click on?

The second one, right?!

Show us why we should come and see your show rather than ordering us to buy tickets!

3. Information broadcasting

This is a fancy way of saying ‘talking at people all the time on social media and never actually having a conversation with them.’

This happens when you view social media as a checkbox exercise. You log on, post your tweet, log back off and continue with your day/week/year. Wrong! You’ve just put something out into the world. If Sally from Rochester has decided to reply to you with a salsa dance emoji, then you need to engage with Sally (not salsa-ing, well maybe if that’s what you enjoy) and at least say thanks for the interaction.

Remember, you’re here to be social with people, not just yell at them from the safe confines of your laptop.

4. Ignoring the wider conversation

So back to Sally from Rochester, you need to engage in other conversations as well, not just the ones about you.

Get involved in topics you’re interested in (and that are on brand), but also show interest in other people and events in your industry. Being an active member of the wider social community will mean you get exposed (not like that) to new people, who in turn will get to find out about you. Win!

5. Posting natively (ohhh some social media jargon)

This is a mistake people make especially with Twitter.

‘Posting natively’ means logging onto twitter, clicking ‘write tweet’ and then typing it out there and then and clicking ‘tweet’.

“But how else would I post?” I hear you ask! There are a bunch of social media schedulers (watch out for the post on this) and tools that make it a lot faster for you to post online with the added bonus of being able to track all the good clicks and comments you get. Plus you can post on more than one site at the same time and view it all in the same window.

Magical huh?

So those are our top 5 social fails. How many did you get?

 

Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact us any time for penguin chats via email: info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com

Coping with Snap Maps: A Guide to the New Update

A new day, a new app update. Most of them don’t attract quite as much attention as Snapchat’s recent upgrade though.

Snap map allows people to see your location. It’s a bit like “find my friends” except slightly creepier as strangers can pinpoint your location to the metre.

It’s been all over the news in relation to concerns that Snapchat aren’t doing enough to protect under 18’s – their biggest user. Picked up by national and local press, parents are being warned to educate themselves on the privacy issues it might cause for their children.

Age aside however, it’s an update that potentially spells trouble for individuals who use Snapchat as one of their content channels, too. Why? Because you’ve spent however many weeks or months asking strangers on the internet to follow you on snapchat and now they can actually follow you on snapchat.

How to find the Snap Map

I thought I had been immune to this update. I couldn’t see any icon saying “map” and thought – phew! Dodged that one!

Not so.

Turns out you access the snap map by opening your camera and then pinching the camera screen, like you’re trying to zoom out.

Snapchat describes it helpfully as “like this 👌“

BAM. Welcome to Snap Map.

Enabling Ghost Mode

This is actually pretty simple the first time you log into snap map. You tap ‘Only Me’ and your figure will come up like a little ghost. Nice.

If you panicked when you opened it for the first time, you can tap the little cog button and go into your settings to manually slide ghost mode on. Stealthy.

Finding your friends on the Snap Map

You have to be mutual friends to see each other’s location. Snapchat says “by default, only friends you’ve added on Snapchat can contact you directly or view your Story.”

Of course if you’re using Snapchat as a way to grow your followers, chances are you’ll have a lot of friends, so the selection tool will be quite handy.

You can also tap on their chats and it’ll come up with their location (because WhatsApp’s ‘last seen’ wasn’t stalker-y enough for us.)

Cool features of Snap Map

Once you get past the creeped-out stage though, Snap Map is pretty awesome! You can swipe around the map and double tap into hot spots (marked like a heat sensor, the ‘hottest’ regions are red and show the most activity) and then find out what people are posting to their Story in that location.

I mean, the first thing you’ll do is probably check out Snaps in your area (I literally pinpointed my road in London and watched a story about someone complaining about the loudness of their next door neighbour’s dishwasher) but you could also see what’s happening in – I don’t know – Sweden.

Pretty cool, huh?

 

Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact us any time for penguin chats via email: info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com

To GIF or not to GIF?

 

What is it?

No it’s not JIF the cleaning fluid! A GIF is a short video that is repeated again and again. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format.

Why would you use it?

GIFs can brighten up your day and your social media posts and even powerpoint presentations! Want to make people chuckle in your next presentation but struggle with writing suitable jokes? Pop a humorous GIF into your presentation and the work is done for you. You can also add GIFs to twitter and Facebook posts and even blogs like this one to spice up your timeline. You’ve got to admit it does command attention doesn’t it?!

Where can I find them?

Some social media networks now have built in libraries of GIFs with different categories or emotions to select the perfect GIF for your post. Twitter and Facebook for example offer a GIF option when writing your posts. There are also lots of GIF websites such as giphy.com that let you download GIFs or use the embed code to insert them into your posts.

You see a GIF is really a GIFT!

 

Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com