I’m always on the lookout for useful new tools to make my digital marketing life easier. This week, I’ve rounded up three of my current favorites and explained how you can begin using them today.

Buzzsumo
Hopefully, you know by now that social media isn’t all about me, me, me. You should be pushing out plenty of interesting content you’ve hand-picked for your audience in addition to your own promotional materials. So how do you find interesting, third-party content? Enter Buzzsumo.

Buzzsumo is like a search engine for social content, allowing you to track down the most popular articles on any topic under the sun. As an example, let’s say you’re a caterer looking for something fun to share on Facebook today. You type ‘catering’ into Buzzsumo. It returns a list of the most highly shared articles on ‘catering’ across all platforms, including this feel-good story about how Meals on Wheels is now delivering to pets. This particular story has been shared more than 29,000 times on Facebook, meaning people find it interesting and engage with it—exactly what you’re looking for.

You can filter Buzzsumo’s results by date, social network, language and even location, so you’re guaranteed to find some interesting material to pass onto your fans.

Snip.ly
I know some people take issue with sharing third-party content on social media. They argue that they’re sending traffic to someone else’s site rather than their own (apparently they didn’t read our earlier point about not being selfish…). For those people, and for savvy digital marketers, there’s Snip.ly.
Snip.ly allows you to take any third-party website and add your own custom blurb to it. You can include your logo, product name and even a call to action of your own.

As an example, let’s use the same caterer scenario. Maybe you’re sharing an article listing the top 10 summer BBQ recipes. Using Snip.ly, you can craft a custom message that will appear in the lower corner of the viewer’s browser when they click on the recipe link. That’s right—they’ll be viewing the BBQ recipes, but they’ll also see your message offering 25% off BBQ catering this month. This is a priceless tool for capturing highly targeted conversions, and lucky for you, the service is free (you can also upgrade to a paid plan for additional features).

Popular Pays
Instagram is arguably one of the trickiest platforms for small businesses to break into. Not only do you have to come up with visual content on a regular basis, you’re competing with skilled professionals who can produce beautiful, high resolution photos. Popular Pays hopes to solve this problem.

Popular Pays allows brands to connect with Instagram influencers who will share their product—for a price. You set the price and decide how many followers you’d like to reach. Then, influencers respond to be considered for your campaign. If selected, they produce high quality photos in line with your brand they share on their platform and that you can share on yours. Pretty nice deal, if you’re willing to spend a little money on it.

What are your favorite digital marketing tools? Leave a comment below or join the conversation on my Facebook page.