Top Ten Best Social Media Tools to Use Everyday
Filed Under Social Marketing
We all know that social media is a fantastic way to market your business and boost your brand power. When you start marketing your business through various social media outlets, it’s very important to keep up with everything so that you can gauge just how effective your marketing strategies are.
To help keep you on track and stop you from being overwhelmed by your social media marketing efforts, here is a list of the top ten social media resources that you can use on a daily basis.
#1 Facebook “Like” Button
Including this tiny scrap of code to your website or blog will let your visitors share the content they like on your page with every one of their Facebook friends. You can also alter the “like” to “recommend.” You can place this button on all of your opt-in and sales pages to give you extra visibility. The “Like” button is just a great, simple tool that lets people share content with the rest of their Facebook community.
#2 TweetMeme Button
This is Twitter’s answer to the “Like” button. You can add it to your website, blog, sales pages, and just about anywhere else you can think of. This makes it so easy for your visitors to share their favorite bits of content with their own Twitter followers. (LinkedIn also has a “Share” button that you can include on your various pages, so don’t leave that one out!)
#3 Twitter Lists
You can create your own handy source of organized content when you make a list of Twitter users who fall into a certain niche. You can make up to 20 different lists on your account, each with up to 500 names. These lists can be made public or private. A public list can be followed by anyone.
You can have one list that focuses only on related news stories in your industry, for example.
#4 Twellow.com
Here you have the Twitter Yellow Pages, listing tens of millions of accounts. You can set up an account for free and then find and follow targeted people when you search for keywords that users include in their bios. You can scan through various categories and cities around the world so that you can find top users in certain locations. This is a great tool to help build your Twitter following. When you write-up your extended bio, include relevant keywords that the search feature will be able to latch onto.
#5 ManageFlitter.com
This site allows you to manage your Twitter following easily. You can stop following inactive accounts and see who is no longer following you. There are various ways to sort through followers, like those with images, inactive, no bios, etc. There are free and paid versions available. It’s a fun and effective tool to use with your Twitter account.
#6 Echofon
This is a great mobile app for Twitter. It has great features and is constantly synched with your online activity. You can check and reply to saved searches, trending topics, Twitter Lists, Direct Mentions and more. Echofon also has a desktop app for Firefox and Mac.
#7 HootSuite.com
HootSuite is an amazing free online tool that allows you to manage several social media profiles, set up scheduled updates, monitor keywords and analyze statistics. You can also check and reply to Twitter Lists, Direct Mentions, saved searches and so much more. It’s also available as a mobile app, giving you an easy way to pre-schedule your social updates on the go. There is also a paid version available.
#8 Bit.ly
This is one of the top link shortening services out there. It’s perfect for Twitter and just as useful for Facebook and email marketing. You can copy any long link and paste it into your bit.ly account. This makes quick work of customizing links and tracking your click rate.
#9 Disqus Blog Commenting System
Disqus is a very user-friendly tool that you can add-on to any blog. This lets users have a unique, portable profile for commenting. Their comments can be shared on Facebook and Twitter. Visitors without a Disqus account can also post a comment using their Facebook or Twitter accounts with a simple click.
#10 TwentyFeet
TwentyFeet is a simple way to monitor and track all of your social media metrics from one place. Your first two accounts are free and any additional account is a mere $2.49 a year. You can keep track of your Facebook profile, fan pages, Twitter accounts, Bit.ly, Google Analytics, Twitter feeds and more. You will be sent a daily email that includes activity reports comparing predicted activity to past performance.
Social media tools change on a daily basis. Do you have any favorites that you use in your business? Have you found any that are especially helpful and easy to use? Tell us what you’re doing to make your social media marketing strategy more effective.
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Dawn Pigoni, IVAA Member
