Social media is a great place to  waste time, and many of us do. However, there are also some great tools and apps  that can help to actually save time and help users to be more productive and  successful.

The good news is that these 6 tools  are actually fun to use, and most importantly, they motivate you and your  employees to keep moving forward and increasing your value.

A motivated and productive person is  someone we all admire. Here are 6 social media productivity tools to help you  manage your social media marketing activities.

#1. Buffer

Scheduling tools are great ways to do more than you normally ever could. This  is because they allow you to post on many different sites, at all times of the  day, even if you’re not connected to the internet. They do just what it sounds  like, apps like Buffer will post at a  specified time in the future.

There are many scheduling tools available today, but they are not all created  equal. Buffer is one of the easiest to use because it is simply a scheduling  tool with a few features that are very helpful:

• Integration with browsers- extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and  Safari, which allows you to access Buffer from your social media profiles
• Scheduling- Buffer allows you to add content that you find  interesting throughout the day, and it then post it at certain times to keep  your posts spaced out and online during prime social media hours.
• Variety of Sources- Buffer can take post from Facebook and Twitter  easily, but it can also take posts from apps such as Pulse News, Tweetdeck and  many more popular apps
• Simplicity- Other apps require you to pick a date and time to  schedule when your post will be posted, Buffer already has time slots to make  posts, and so it is much simpler and saves time

Buffer is a simple, and did I mention  FREE way of gathering a larger  and more engaged audience online. Buffer allows you to do more work than you  normally would because it is always online and knows when the peak posting hours  are. Buffer is a very helpful tool to simply take whatever interesting story you  find online, send it to the Buffer list, and not have to worry about it.

It is a great way to save time while adding to your social media presence and  keeping you motivated by watching how much attention your posts can actually  receive. Once I started feeling the success of having more popular posts, it got  me thinking a lot more about how to craft the perfect post and made me start to  become more creative.

It is interesting how success can start building on itself that  way.

#2. Glyder

Glyder has come a long way and fills  a need that seems daunting to many people without very much business knowledge.  This tool and app allow small businesses, such as startups, to bump up their  marketing game. When starting out online, you hear about social media marketing,  the importance of a good design, and many problems and costs associated with  them.

You know that it takes more than an entertaining message to succeed but may  not have the resources to devote to this, this is why Glyder exists.

Glyder helps with all of these things through its many features, such as:

• Visual Messaging- create messages for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest  but also SalesForce contacts, Mailchimps contacts and other connections
• Templates- keep your messages entertaining with pre-set  templates that can be customized for your audience
• Weekly Updates- connect regularly with customers by using new  templates, customizable content, and photos that are updated every week.
• Automatic Formatting- Glyder formats all of your messages for you so  they look great everywhere

The founders Allan Wells and Eddy Ayling worked at Zynga and Globant  respectively and saw the need for small business owners to have better marketing  and design, but these business owners couldn’t afford to hire services. They  created Glyder to solve this problem and consistently add more to the app’s  capabilities.

Soon there will be a dashboard so that users can access the metrics from  social networking sites and better craft their message to their customers.

Glyder can really solve a lot of time and especially money without having to  worry about bad results. I think this is the main benefit of Glyder, because  with a small business there are so many headaches and reasons to worry. This  option can free up a lot of time in your day for tasks that only you can do, and  keeps you motivated by knowing that you are doing what is right for your  business and not skimping on areas that others do.

The confidence and motivation that Glyder can bring to a business is  something that adds value in ways that are often hard to calculate, but easy to  recognize.

#3. LikeHack

We all have many sources of social media news coming at us from all  directions. There are Facebook feeds, Twitter feeds, RSS feeds and so many  others. It is easy to get overwhelmed and let important information slip through  the cracks and waste hours sifting through all of the junk until you find what  you need.

This app allows you to consolidate all of your news on one app, from a really  diverse selection of sources.

LikeHack has a lot of  features that sets it apart from similar services:

• One central location– it gathers your news into one place
• Importance ratings– it organizes your news into levels of importance  and interest
• Intelligent ratings-the app learns as you read news to find what is  most interesting to you
• Access to history– it saves all stories you have liked and shared  with full text searching
• Offline capability – it allows you to sync your device with your news  for offline access

The app is also quick to figure out because of a nice user interface which is  something we’ve come to expect from the new generation of user friendly apps. It  allows you to quickly get started gathering and organizing your news, and it  does this in an interface that is nice to look at.

The layout and design of an app is something that is often underestimated,  but is very important because no one wants to use and look at an ugly app…like  many other things in life.

The nice thing about apps like this is you don’t realize how much time you  are actually saving. It is interesting to be conscious of how much time you  actually waste looking for important pieces of information each day, and then  you will realize why apps like LikeHack are worth it. It is akin to a Netflix  binge watching your favorite new show, and seeing how much time you actually  saved by not having constant commercial breaks.

You are going to read your news anyways, so you might as well make it easier  and stay motivated that you read more articles and got more news than anyone  else in the office. This leads to a feeling of accomplishment and also a feeling  of confidence because you will know what your coworkers are talking about and  also have something important to add to the conversation and your work

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/10/04/6-amazing-social-media-productivity-tools/#dJGtq24CxKuYl5Yr.99