By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills
Many of us use social media marketing tools to reach others with powerful messages. A professional writer is constantly evaluating what she’s using to ensure they enhance her career.
We have four things to consider before investing time and money into a marketing and promotion tool:
- Have our tools grown followers and readers?
- Have our tools helped us to reach our goals?
- Have our tools allowed us to maintain an established budget?
- Have we chosen a method to schedule our social media efforts?
Listed below in alphabetical order are my favorite social media aids. These just might help you reach your goals.
- Adobe Spark – This site allows you to select images that are free to use, create memes with countless fonts and enhancements, and resize them. My one-stop meme creation.
- bit.ly Shorten your URLs with a click.
- Buffer or Hootsuite – Schedule your social media posts so you can write! Buffer and Hootsuite are super time savers and give the user analysis information.
- Evernote – Keep track of everything you need for projects.
- HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator – When blog topics escape me, this is a tremendous help to spark new ideas.
- Mail Chimp – Looking for a way to send e-mails and newsletters easily? Look no further.
- Manage Flitter – We all want to follow professionals within the publishing industry. We also want to attract followers. With Manage Flitter, my tweet followers doubled in 6 months.
- Google Online Calendar – There’s no reason to be late on any deadlines or any appointments when using a calendar. Mine alerts me audibly to what’s coming next.
- Pixabay – Looking for a huge assortment of free images? They’re right here.
- Author Marketing Club – I joined this club recently, and I’m amazed at all the aids for writers. The Review Grabber is worth the price of membership.
- Survey Monkey – Better reach your audience and take polls with this great aid.
- Ghostreader – Ghostreader is text to voice software for a Mac. I suggest googling what works best for your personal needs.Text to voice is like having a private critique partner.
- Word Frequency Counter – Eliminate overused words. Submit your manuscript and the tool shows how many times every word has been typed.
Do you have a favorite marketing and promotion tool?
DiAnn Mills is a bestselling author who believes her readers should expect an adventure. Her titles have 
appeared on the CBA and ECPA bestseller lists; won two Christy Awards; and been finalists for the RITA, Daphne Du Maurier, Inspirational Readers’ Choice, and Carol award contests. Firewall, the first book in her Houston: FBI series, was listed by Library Journal as one of the best Christian Fiction books of 2014.
DiAnn is a founding board member of the American Christian Fiction Writers, a member of Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, Suspense Sister, and International Thriller Writers. She is co-director of The Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference with social media specialist Edie Melson. She teaches writing workshops around the country. DiAnn is active online and would love to connect with readers on any of the social media platforms listed at www.diannmills.com.
The Conversation
Great post, DiAnn! Several things here I didn’t know about and plan to look into! Thanks for your sharing!
Hi, Kelly, glad to help!