Social media is a beautiful channel, a great way to promote your brand and build a following.

That’s if  you actually have time to use it effectively.

Most brands would love to share more content with their followers and have ongoing conversations, but that’s not always possible due to shortage of time.

With people checking social media 17 times a day (once every waking hour), the only way social media marketers keep their head above the expectations water line is by squeezing every last drop of energy out from within.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Essentially, there are no shortcuts in social media marketing, because the entire premise is that you are frequently publishing content and engaging with customers. Doing this of course consumes more time than using paid advertisements to reach thousands of people. How could it not be more time-consuming?

Fortunately, you can increase your productivity and reduce the effort required on all social media platforms by armoring your web browser with great extensions.

According to the latest statistics available on web browser growth and usage, Google Chrome is the most popular web browser, while Internet Explorer and Firefox continue to dip in usage and popularity.

That’s why I’m going to focus on the top Google Chrome extensions every social media professional should utilize.

The sleek and fast functionality of Google Chrome is a blessing in disguise, but not much attention is given to the vast array of feature-rich extensions supported by this web browser. Below is a list of 11 useful extensions to help you manage social media tasks:

1. Social Analytics

With this extension installed, you just need to click on the icon in Chrome browser to instantly view how many shares your social media post received.

It displays stats on Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and Delicious. For Facebook, it shows likes, shares, and comments.

There’s a refresh button in the extension bar that can be used to see updated social media stats. A unique thing about this extension is that it shows the stats of every web page you visit.

Therefore, you can track the performance of your own content, as well as see how others are performing.

2. Giphy

Creating visual content is time-consuming, but necessary as posts containing visuals or visuals + text receive far more engagement than posts containing just text.

The quickest way to spruce up your post with a visual without brainstorming with your creative team (only when you’re fully occupied with other tasks) is to insert a GIF in your social media post.

With Giphy, you get an archive of GIFs, searchable through the extension icon. Marketers can search for GIFs with a tag.

After you’ve selected a GIF, you can drag it directly on your social media page for posting. And there’s a short link (automatically created) that can be shared on social channels.

3. RiteTag

This extension analyzes your social media post and then suggests hashtags to accompany the content of the post.

After you choose a hashtag, RiteTag displays real time analytics on it, including key metrics such as how many views a hashtag gets each hour.

Other than hashtag optimization, the extension can also be used to create memes and tag influencers.

There’s also a “Coach” that explains users how to get better results.

The extension integrates with your favorite social networking websites and third-party tools.

RiteTag offers 14 integrations in total.

4. Hootsuite Hootlet

You only have so much time; which platform do you choose to spend it on?

With the help of Hootsuite Hootlet for Chrome, you can divide your energy across all social channels to ensure you’re giving equal attention to all audiences.

With it, you can track and monitor keyword mentions, schedule your posts to go live at the best time (perhaps when your audience is the most active), and highlight text on any web page to share to social media directly.

The extension also enables users to discover targeted content from Yelp and Google Maps.

Furthermore, social media marketers can use this extension to reply to comments directly via the browser window.

5. Check My Links

Social media marketing is not just about posting at the right time or having a monthly content calendar; you also need to think about user experience.

Broken links can tarnish the user experience, and may also bring a bad name to your brand.

Imagine the audience saying “this guy was in such a hurry to promote his product that he didn’t even care if the links were working or not.”

You can avoid this problem through the Check My Links Google Chrome extension.

It checks all the links on a webpage, and highlights broken ones in red.

As a result, you can analyze the links inside your content and fix any broken ones before posting your content on social media.

6. vidIQ Vision for YouTube

This extension is for marketers who deal with video content day in and day out. You can see an in-depth summary of any YouTube video with vidIQ Vision.

The extension highlights reasons why a particular video is successful and presents all of the necessary information, which could be used to improve your own videos.

By clicking the extension, you can see the stats on a video including shares, subscribers, and views. This can be done for your own videos or videos of others.

There’s also a graph that you can analyze to see how a video has performed through the passage of time.

Note: This extension is only for YouTube and not for other channels like Dailymotion.

7. Instagram for Chrome

If you’re managing multiple brands on Instagram, signing in and out of the app through your smartphone can get frustrating.

Instagram for Chrome is an extension that enables you to see your company’s Instagram stream without requiring you to go to the official website or sign in through the phone app.

It can be used to like posts, comment on posts, and see which filters were applied on an image.

While you still need the phone app to post content, you can reduce the time required to like and comment on content for engagement purposes. Videos are not supported at the moment.

You can see the overview of the connected Instagram account by clicking on the extension’s icon.

8. Klout

Klout’s Chrome extension comes in handy when you want to see the influence score of an individual or brand across all social media channels.

For instance, you can view the score in the Twitter stream right next to any profile’s username.

The score is a number between 1-100 and represents the influence of a social media profile, which indicates the ability of that profile to drive action.

The higher the score, the more influential a social media personality is.

Social media marketers can use this tool to search for influencers to collaborate with; hunting for them by browsing individual profiles and analyzing metrics would be time-consuming.

9. Discoverly

Social media marketers should work towards making connections with people within their industry than just focusing on having a good relationship with their followers.

Imagine if you’re promoting a coffee brand and you have a good relationship with the social media manager of another food brand that isn’t your direct competitor.

You can ask them to promote your coffee brand on their social channels, which would give you greater visibility across all platforms.

But making such connections is no easy feat, which is why you’ll love Discoverly. This is a Chrome extension that displays social media details of a person, even in email, so you can reach out to them on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The extension also shows if you and the targeted contact have any mutual connections on LinkedIn or Facebook.

By analyzing their social presence, you can reach out to them in the right context.

10. DrumUp

DrumUp for Chrome makes it easy to discover and curate content, as well as carry out research related tasks.

The plugin is smart and understands the content you view. It will recommend you 10 relevant articles at one time.

Then you can browse through story recommendations and share the relevant ones on your Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages.

This extension also offers scheduling. Users can select the day and time when they want the post to be published.

11. Momentum

A social media marketer’s worst enemy is repetition. It can easily lead to boredom, which is the gateway to loss of productivity.

Momentum is a Google Chrome extension that replaces the new tab background with a personal dashboard featuring inspiration, weather, and to-do.

A moment of clam awaits you in the new tab and you get inspiration to be more productive.

You can enjoy daily quotes and photos while setting a daily focus and tracking your progress on pending tasks.

It’s a great extension to get rid of procrastination while reminding yourself what social media tasks are due for the day.

Final thoughts

With these 11 extensions, you can save hours of manual work and drive your social media campaign towards its goal faster. Other than that, you’ll get joy out of being able to utilize your time more efficiently.

I’d love to hear what extensions you’ve got working for you. Feel free to share them in comments.