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Tech Tools for Authors #4: Social Media

Authors have to juggle a lot of balls in today’s book industry. Not only do they have to write that next book, they also have to market it, balance the ledgers, woo their fans on social media, do background research on their next project, and make dinner.

In the first couple tech tools for authors posts, I gathered multiple unrelated tools and explained how each one could be useful. Now I focus on just one niche, and covers tools that fill specific needs.

Today’s topic is social media. I touched on this a little last time when I mentioned tools like Zapier, dlvr.it, and IFTTT as useful automation tools. All three work with social networks, but I won’t rehash those tools in this post, which is why you should check out that older post.

Let’s start with Leonard.

Leonard

When it comes to making sales and landing clients through social networks, most people think of Facebook and Twitter. And that is strange because LinkedIn is still the social network for business. While you may hang out with your colleagues on Twitter, LinkedIn is where you post your CV and where you build a network of business contacts.

Leonard can help you with the latter. This Chrome extension helps you automate your LinkedIn experience by helping you connect with second-degree connections. You can use it to visit profiles en masse, send connection requests, or send private messages.  Leonard even has a CRM that you can use to manage your relationship with customers you land through LinkedIn.

Quuuu

Having trouble coming up with things to say to your audience? Quuuu is a service that recommends updates you can share on social networks. It integrated with other services like Buffer, and can suggest  ideas based on the topics you specify. It can post updates based on the schedule you set, and best of all Quuu boasts that every update has been reviewed by a human being.

Legend

There are two types of people in the world: those who post gifs with text, and those who do not. Many in the first group use tools like Legend. This Android and iOS app lets you animate text in a gif or video clip and then share it online. It doesn’t appear to let you add text over someone else’s clip, just your own.

Legend is cool, but I am more of a static image type of person. That’s why I like Pablo over Legend.

Nuzzel

No one can spend all their time on social media, but we still want to know what everyone is talking about. Nuzzel can help with that. Give Nuzzel access to your social media accounts and it will generate a daily email for you that summarizes the most widely-shared stories from the previous day. This is a great way to stay on top of the news without investing a huge amount of time.

Pablo

This free tool was invented by Buffer and is designed to make it easier to make and share banner images on social networks. The featured image on this post is one example of what you can make with Pablo (although I actually made it with Canva).

Simply choose one of the many free background images, choose your orientation, and add your text. Once you are done you can either share the banner immediately or download it for later use.

Pablo is not as capable as Canva or Photoshop, but if all you need is a simple social media banner then it is perfect for the job.

OverVideo

OverVideo is a free iOS app that picks up where Legend leaves off. You can use it to add text subtitles and background music to clips before sharing them on Twitter and Facebook.

This looks like a great idea, but it’s hard to find any sign that people are using it. If you make a video with OverVideo, let me know so I can take a look.

Edgar

Some social media tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite require you to refill them with fresh posts, all the time. They won’t even let you have the same message in a queue more than once at any given time, but Edgar is different.

This $49 a month service lets you fill a rotating queue of social media updates which Edgar will then post according to the schedule you set. It will cycle through the queue until you tell it otherwise, and it can shuffle updates to keep things from going stale. You can also set expiration dates on things like your promo offers.

BuzzSumo

Buzzsumo is basically a search engine that you can use to find out what content is popular right now. You can search by topic on social media or on any website. It can tell you what topics are popular, who is getting the most attention on social media, and Buzzsumo allows you to set up keyword alerts so you are updated when content is posted or updated.

OneShot

Ever struggled with trying to share large quotes from articles on a social Network? Then try OneShot. This iOS app lets you easily take and share screensnaps of that fascinating article you just read.  You can use it to clip just the most important part and highlight parts of the text, and it will automatically attach the source link to any screensnap you share.

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Comments


Sonia Lombardo April 12, 2018 um 12:51 pm

Where is the #4th post?
🙂

Nate Hoffelder April 12, 2018 um 1:09 pm

I realized last week that a post from last year fit into this series, so I retconned it as the fourth post.
https://the-digital-reader.com/2017/04/06/8-apps-help-make-ebooks/


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