Social media by itself is one of the greatest – possibly the greatest – marketing tool ever invented. But social media combined with smart phone apps is sort of like nirvana for product marketers….it just takes the whole concept of using social media to drive customer engagement and sales to a formerly off-limits level of effectiveness.

In this post, learn about some of the hottest and best smart phone apps to rocket launch your social media marketing efforts.

App #1: Snapchat.

When Madonna uses it to drop her latest music video, you know it’s gotta be good. The key to Snapchat’s allure is simple – content is only viewable for a mere matter of seconds or hours (depending on the content) before it’s gone forever. So you really, really, really want to make sure you tune in daily!

Making Snapchat work for you: How long your content is viewable depends on what you send (photos = up to 10 seconds; stories = up to 24 hours). This is what makes Snapchat so effective for marketing – it automatically creates a strong sense of urgency in the target market most likely to already be feeling it (ages 13 to 25)!

App #2: Vine.

Vine is the brainchild of Twitter’s founders and has developed a bit of a cult following all its own. Basically, Vine and Twitter are joined at the hip, making Vine a must-have app for maximizing your Twitter marketing. Sometimes Vine is even called “Instagram for video,” which gives you more than a hint of its appeal!

Making Vine work for you: Vine lets you share videos (up to 6 seconds long) within the Vine community and out to Twitter. You can also create a whole story line by shooting a series of 6-second videos, which is a great way to bring your brand’s story to life.

App #3: Buffer.

Just when you think you have heard of every possible new “hot” smart phone app for social media that there is to hear about, a new one is launched. After awhile, it can all start to feel like a bit too much to keep up with. This is where social media management smart phone apps come in, and Buffer is one of the best.

Making Buffer work for you: Buffer lets you pre-schedule and send social posts to any number of social feeds, monitor interactions and view analytics to tell you how your various feeds are performing. Buffer for mobile also integrates seamlessly with Buffer for computer.

App #4: Everypost.

If you have ever wished you could simply share out a post to all of your social networks with one touch of a button, well, now you can! This is exactly what Everypost does. Even better, there are no content restrictions – you can use text, images, graphic, video, hashtags and more, and Everypost will also automatically shorten URLs for Twitter so you don’t exceed the 140 character-per-Tweet allotment.

Making Everypost work for you: This free app is a great way to separate out your general social marketing from feed-specific marketing efforts. It is a huge time saver as well, since you can just format your post once and then “click” and it’s out there!

App #5: Spredfast.

If Everypost is the content sharing multi-tacker, Spredfast is its analytical sidekick. If you have ever wished you could view at a glance, and side by side at that, exactly how each of your social feeds is performing, well, now you can. Even better, you can use Spredfast to find out when is the best time to post to each of your feeds based on your user demographics and use history.

Making Spredfast work for you: Spredfast is a very visual little app. You will be able to view small graphs that tell you at a glance how interaction is proceeding on each feed. And when you use Spredfast’s promotion/campaign design feature, you can test-deploy and measure new campaigns before doing a full-scale launch.

App #6: DrumUp.

DrumUp is every content manager’s answer to post-block. Can’t think of anything relevant to share? DrumUp will find something for you, and it won’t be yesterday’s news when you find it! DrumUp is also a great tool for posting and managing content to multiple social platforms simultaneously. Something less common in the world of smart phone social media apps – you can also integrate and link your blog feed and queue up a few posts in advance for those weeks when you are too swamped to go day-by-day. Best of all, DrumUp is free.

Making DrumUp work for you: DrumUp is one of a growing number of apps focused on on-the-go social media automation – tools designed to keep you sane even when you have an insane number of platforms to manage. So the best way to make DrumUp work for you is to take the time to set it up, integrate your blog and your social platforms, and then spend the extra time it saves you engaging with your followers (aka soon-to-be customers!).

These six apps are a representative sample of today’s most exciting app-based smart phone technology. With these apps loaded and ready to fire, you can keep tabs on your social platforms from anywhere in the world.