Written by ContentPowered.com
Facebook, and Facebook marketing, have been around for a while. You might say they’ve gotten fairly popular, as well. With anything that gets somewhat popular, people start making tools and add-ons that make it easier to use, give it more features or otherwise expand their capabilities.
If you were ever curious what tools might be popular among Facebook power users, look no further. This list isn’t exactly exhaustive, but it will get you the best and most popular tools.
1. Power Editor
The Facebook Power Editor is part and parcel to any well-maintained ad campaign on Facebook. If you’re actually crafting ads by hand, you’re wasting a lot of time and missing out on a lot of nice features. The power editor is a browser plugin that only works with Google Chrome, so you’re going to need to use that specific browser to make it work for you. When you do, though, you’re going to be amazed at the sheer amount of power it feels like you have at your fingertips.
2. Pages Manager
The Facebook Pages Manager is an app designed for both Apple and Android devices. You can find it in the iTunes store or the Google Play store. What does it do? It gives you enhanced ability to run your business page from any mobile device. Sure, you could use the standard Facebook app, but you’re limited yourself and the features you have available when you do so. Rather than hobble yourself, use the Pages Manager.
3. Facebook Debugger
The Facebook Debugger is a tool you can use to plug in a URL you want to link to. You’re given a readout of useful information to make sure that it will work properly when you link to it. Facebook will tell you if it has an error code, what the URL is, how long ago it was scraped, if there are redirects and a host of other attributes it learns through Open Graph. If you ever link to a broken page or the preview doesn’t show up properly, run it through the debugger to find out why.
4. View As
The Facebook interface grows cluttered as you add pages and ad controls, not to mention plugins. It can be difficult to see what your page looks like without all of that clutter. More importantly, you never know if your posts are really as restricted or private as you want them to be. Go to your private page, press the … button and click “view as…” to see what your page looks like from a public perspective, or from the perspective of a specific person.
5. Ad Reports
Marketers can’t live without analytics; it’s basically one of the prime food groups to us. The Ad Reports tool, if you’ve ever used it before, is way better than it used to be. Just trust me on this. It has improved dramatically over the last few months, and it can help you in a single swoop double your ROI from your advertising. You’ll be surprised at the sheer volume of useful information you can find in this simple readout.
6. Shortstack
There are dozens of tools available to create ad campaigns that sync between desktop and mobile, but few do it as well as Shortstack. Contests, promotions, voting widgets, cross-site promotions; if you can come up with an idea, Shortstack can help you bring them to life. They’re also always kept up to date; no advertising “like gates” here.
7. Post Planner
Again, there are dozens of apps available for planning and scheduling posts. Post Planner is among the best by far. Not only can you plan your posts in advance, schedule them through the app and go viral. There are two keys to Post Planner’s success; the ability to upload scheduled posts in bulk through a CSV file, and the ability to reach a massive number of people with a small, easy tool.
8. LibSyn
As easy as it is to create video these days, chances are you’re going to YouTube to host it. YouTube can’t exactly be classified as a tool to help you with Facebook, now, can it? What about that lesser-used form of multimedia, the podcast? Podcasts are more accessible than videos, though they have a lower adoption due to their lack of fancy graphics. LibSyn allows you to host your podcast professionally, and syndicate it with major podcast distributors.
9. AWeber
AWeber is one of the best tools available for harvesting emails and creating a mailing list. MailChimp can do the heavy lifting of managing your newsletters later, but when it comes to creating templates or opt-in forms, you’re not going to go wrong with this particular tool.
10. Dropbox
Really, there’s nothing that sets Dropbox apart from competitors like Box, Microsoft’s OneDrive or Google Drive. Consider this a placeholder for any system that syncs your data with the cloud, so you always have access to your information when and where you need it.
11. Mention
If you’ve ever fought with Google Alerts to get some form of social listening set up, you’ve experienced the pain and frustration of its limitations. Mention is a better social listening platform that collates and analyzes your social presence in many ways. Plus it lets you dig into responses directly.
12. Swayy
Swayy – with two Y’s – is a social discovery tool that allows you to set your interests and gives you the most interesting, relevant content available in a timely manner. More importantly, it allows you to quickly and easily share that content with Facebook in a manner of your choosing. It links with several other social networks as well.
13. Canva
Canva is a simple, easy to use editor creating graphics for, well, basically anything. It has templates for everything from social media posts and Facebook cover photos to podcast covers and greeting cards. You can access their large library of graphics, though each one costs a bit to rent for use in your image. It’s surprisingly robust and, for a year or so at least, cheaper than investing in Photoshop and graphic design training.
14. Tagboard
Tagboard is a tool that scans and generates reports for you based on hashtags used on multiple social media platforms. While this isn’t directly relevant to Facebook – Facebook’s hashtags are garbage – it’s great for finding trending topics on Twitter and YouTube for use on Facebook.
15. Komfo Analytics
Facebook Insights and a host of other third party apps give you really detailed information into your audience, your EdgeRank and your reach. Komfo strives for the other end of the road with simplicity and easy to read reports. It’s intuitive and it’s great to see the key metrics you need to see, without needing to take a stats refresher course.
