Voxer: Record your messages for playback later

1Voxer is a free walkie-talkie style phone app that lets you talk to anyone in the world using live text and voice. It also lets you send photos. Voxer really does works just like a walkie-talkie — only better, because it records all your messages for playback later. It’s especially great for international organizations that can use it to communicate with staff abroad in real time. I use this app for quick check-ins with clients working in East Africa and Asia. This is also a great tool for organizations running events throughout the year. Your event team can communicate with each other with this app versus renting pricier walkie-talkie kits for galas, fundraisers, etc.

HipChat: Private chat built for teams

2HipChat is a private chat service built for teams to share ideas and files in group chat rooms. HipChat allows for real-time project management and collaboration and lightens the load on you and your team’s email inbox. It also organizes your chats by project and saves your chats so you can review and pick up where you left off. No need to settle for AIM or to fire up a Google Hangout.

Asana: Free project management

3Move over Basecamp, Asana has entered the project management playing field and created a free tool that does most of what the best project management tools do, plus it integrates nicely with Google Drive. Asana allows you to view all your projects at once with a three column view that includes features like work spaces, projects, tasks, tags, notes, comments and an inbox that organizes and updates information in real time. It’s free for teams of up to 15 users.

Sprout Social: Manage all your social media in one place

4While Hootsuite is great and rightfully popular, Sprout Social has come along as another social media management tool that provides a deeper, more intuitive dive into your analytics and reporting. Their excellent design suits analytics very well. Outside of the reports tab, each page showcases info in a concise, clear, and visually engaging format, which helps a lot when you just want to go in and review your stats quickly. Very handy for overwhelmed nonprofit communications folks looking to do a better job of their social media analysis and reporting.

PicMonkey: Photo editing made easy

5PicMonkey is a free online photo editor that’s super easy to use and great for busy communications staffers who have no time to learn or to spend time on complicated photo editing software. Whether you want to touch up a photo, try a new effect, make a collage or add text to a photo, PicMonkey is an awesome tool and time saver.

Scoop.it: Discover & share great content

6Scoop.it is a content curation site that lets you discover and share relevant content with your audiences. It’s excellent for staying on top of content relevant to your cause and for promoting organizational thought leadership. By curating content in your nonprofit’s niche, you can gain new followers and potentially supporters./div>

NetworkedBlogs: Syndicate your blog to Facebook

1I tried NetworkedBlogs — one of many auto-posting services that syndicate your blog to Facebook — early on and then, for some reason, stopped. But recently, Ken Mueller wrote about nearly tripling his blog traffic by using, among others, NetworkedBlogs, and that made me decide to try it again.

Since coming back to NetworkedBlogs, I noticed that you can also syndicate to Twitter (though I’m not using that option).

How I’ve been using it: I had set up both my blogs to syndicate to my Facebook Page (that’s where Waxing UnLyrical goes) and my personal profile (that’s where my food blog goes). In addition, Waxing UnLyrical goes through to a secret Facebook group that I’ve set up for all the regular guest bloggers. I’m also testing this for a client blog — syndicating to the Page as well as a supporting Group.

Hiccup: Since I’m also testing Livefyre’s new SocialSync feature, I ran into problems with comments that I got on my Facebook posts not being pulled into the comment stream on Waxing UnLyrical (that’s what SocialSync does, it pulls in comments from Facebook and Twitter). Jenna Langer at Livefyre told me this was because when syndicating via NetworkedBlogs, NetworkedBlogs’ URL masks the actual blog URL and loads the site in an iFrame. (Sorry for that geek interruption.) Because Livefyre can’t see that that’s part of the conversation, those specific comments don’t show up in my Waxing Unlyrical comment stream.

But if you’re not using Livefyre as your comment system, you should be fine, and it’s worth a try because it does make the posts show up nicely in Facebook.

Triberr: Get your Twitter updates shared

2Much has been written about Triberr — whether automated tweets being shared by a “tribe” are a good thing, whether it can be gamed, and so on. When Gini Dietrich invited me into my first tribe, I had absolutely no hesitation in accepting.

I think Triberr is a great way to share posts – and get your posts shared – by a select group of people you trust. While there is a setting in Triberr that allows you to go in and check what’s due to be posted to Twitter via your account, I rarely check it.

Why? Because I’ve seen consistently good content being produced by fellow tribe members, and I trust them. So trust is key.

How I use it: I keep my Triberr settings on “auto” mode. This helps me because I don’t have to worry about going to Tribe members’ blogs (or to my Reader) to find the posts and tweet them out (though I still try to do that so that I can comment as often as possible).

I’m also growing my own tribes very selectively by only inviting people whose content I’m completely comfortable with. And thanks to Triberr, I rarely share my own posts on Twitter, because I know my tribe will do it for me (thank you, tribe!).

Hint: It’s certainly a good feeling to be invited into a tribe, but it will only be useful to you if you publish regularly. So don’t take your Triberr invitation (if you get one) lightly.

3HootSuite was the first Twitter service to introduce scheduled tweets, and that’s one of the main reasons I switched over from TweetDeck (now I’m so used to it, I can’t switch back). Recently they introduced a “publisher” tab, where you can see all your scheduled tweets in calendar view, and it’s pretty cool.

How I use it: Just as with the Facebook posts, I look for interesting posts and news items, either in my Twitter feed or RSS Reader and then I schedule no more than three a day (I’m much more active on Twitter than Facebook and hope you are, too).

I always try to mention the author or source by their Twitter handle, and include a question or a bit of commentary rather than just the typical “RT.” This way it shows up in their Twitter @ stream, and who doesn’t like knowing someone just shared their post?

Tip: I think it’s perfectly OK to share a post from a while back, or one that’s not hot off the press. So whenever I find something I think will be useful to people, I might schedule it to publish twice over four days, and at different times of the day, for example. That way, it’s likely to be seen by more people over different time zones.

4Post Planner is a nifty Facebook app that lets you schedule Facebook updates. I know you can do this through HootSuite, for example, and several other platforms, but the advantage I think Post Planner has over them is:

• You can schedule an update or link to post to your personal profile, any Page you manage, or any Group you’re a part of.
• Just like you do when you’re sharing a blog post (for example) manually, with Post Planner you can customize your update by selecting the image you’d like to appear in the post, make your own comment, etc. (this doesn’t always work from HootSuite, for example).

I’ve been using this for a few weeks now and really like it, and their customer service team is very responsive (whether you ping them on Facebook or Twitter).

However, you can’t tag people the way you’d be able to if you were posting directly to Facebook (they may introduce this feature at some point, which I think would be huge). And if you don’t like 3rd party Facebook apps, then this isn’t for you.

How I use it: I never schedule more than one to two updates per day, and I always try to share other blog posts or news items I think my community would be interested in. I try to vary the kind of updates that precede the actual link by adding a bit of commentary, or maybe asking a question. And I never schedule my own posts through Post Planner.

Hint: If you optimize your blog posts by properly filling out the excerpt, then this will work even better.