• Hubspot - Although Hubspot isn’t free, it’s one of the better Social Media Marketing tools. It’s easy to create and manage a website or blog without having much technical prowess or IT specialist. Your content is garnered for the greatest SEO and link rankings. Lastly, and probably most importantly, is Hubspot’s analytic monitoring. It’s able to collect data across multiple channels and generates great visual reports, which are also excellent for research.
• Dynamic Tweets - This program is for scheduling tweets. One of the greatest aspects of Dynamic Tweets is that it’s very basic and easy to use. There’s a free option, which is reasonably sized for small to mid-size businesses, as well as larger paid options. You can program all your scheduled tweets to follow predefined conditions or rules.
• Hootsuite - One of my favorite programs, Hootsuite does it all. You can manage several Social Media channels from one dashboard. You can follow trends, lists, and/or hashtags, as well as your home stream, all at the same time. You’re able to set up email notifications for any action (i.e. new followers, re-tweets, direct messages). Hootsuite also provides analytic tools that graph your engagement – more in depth measurement resources are available for a fee. One of my favorite aspects, however, is the ability to add team members to an account. You can see what your team members have responded to and when.
• Storify - Storify is great tool for saving and aggregating information on Social Media. You can search for terms, tweets, YouTube videos, RSS feeds, Google, other Storify articles, Flickr, Facebook, etc. Then you create your own Storify “article” where you compile your search results. You can personalize the title and add sound, too.
• Google+ Hangouts - I just started playing with this relatively new tool. A Hangout is basically a group video chat (for free). Whomever starts the Hangout can set the title, which is great for adapting to different audiences and topics. There is a chat sidebar where anyone can share links, questions, comments, etc. Google has already integrated YouTube videos into Hangouts so you can share a video with the members. Up to 9 people can join a hangout, making it a great option for pitches, internal meetings, telecommuting, promotions, and the list goes on. Since it’s still young, I expect a lot more to come from this new, creative tool.

Related articles

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In several recent campaigns, mobile technology proved to be an important tool. It’s easy, fast, and accessible features make it extremely valuable for any campaign. Whether it’s holding a contest, fundraising, petitioning an issue, or updating followers on the status of a campaign, mobile technology is simply the ultimate way to connect.

These days, everyone has a mobile phone (or cell phone). In fact, they’ve become so commonplace that, if they’re not chock-filled with the newest gizmos and gadgets, people won’t buy them. Cell phones have gotten so technologically advanced that they’re called “smartphones” instead. Cell phones aren’t used just for phone calls anymore, too. They can search the web, stream video, connect to social networks, message each other via SMS (text messages), and play music.

Social networks are increasingly being used various PR and Marketing campaigns. Social media, in general, has become a standard tool to increase the reach and visibility of campaigns. So, it’s not surprising that utilizing mobile phones, which easily connect to a multitude of social media outlets, would become popular. But I doubt anyone knew how popular this would get. People have begun to use their phones to perform the tasks computers used to do. Campaigns have become innovative in their attempts to engage via mobile access. Geo-location programs, like Foursquare, let companies reward consumers for their loyalty. Non-profits, such as the Red Cross, have been able to raise substantial funds from SMS donations. Even more recently, QR Codes (scannable squares – like barcodes) offer information, discounts, as well as many other innovative uses.

Companies can align Facebook, Twitter, a website or blog, mobile marketing, and traditional PR and Marketing tools to create a seamless, user-friendly campaign. Mobile technology should be seriously considered as a useful, cost-effective, and sustainable tool. It’s ability to go anywhere trumps every other method of reaching an audience. In order to reach your target audience, you need to find where they are. Well, look no further – it’s probably in the palm of your hand.

Related articles

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Happy Social Media Day! I felt it was appropriate to reach out to my followers via social media in celebration. Let’s talk brass tacks…

Do you think social media is helping or hurting your day-to-day?

What would you add/subtract from the various social platforms?

What advice would you give to someone just starting to use social media?

How are you celebrating Social Media Day?

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The world of social media is a vast expanse of seemingly infinite information. It’s impossible to be everywhere at once but there are some great tools to make life easier. Whether it’s monitoring multiple platforms, visualizing metrics, or filtering through the clutter, there’s a tool to help. Here are some time-saving and helpful tools to make your social media experience a bit easier.

BackType – This site measures the social impact of a site, topic, or person. It’s similar to Klout, focusing on Twitter influence. BackType shows who you influence and who is influenced by you. You get statistics on the number of followers and other metrics in a clean, intuitive image.

TweetAlarm – This program allows you set up email alerts when a keyword or topic (whatever you want to follow) is mentioned on Twitter. Saving you from spending too much time monitoring the clutter on your Twitter feeds, this tool gives you the freedom to get work done and manage your brand or service as needed. 

Social Mention – One of my personal favorites, Social Mention provides free daily email alerts of your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, a developing news story, or a competitor. It searches the universe of online content to bring you real-time updates on the site or via email. An additional perk is the availability of a widget for a blog or site.

Twoolr – Although it’s not free ($9.90/month), this is probably the most in-depth Twitter analytic program. It gives a comprehensive visualization of your account growth, which you can break into segments based on dates. View the activity of your content, followers, and influencers. You can monitor the frequency of posts and the effect it has among the Twitter universe. 

CrowdBooster – This tool is still in the works but it looks so good I had to add it. By using colorful visualizations, CrowdBooster shows your most effective Twitter messages and the impact they have. It will recommend the best timing and content to boost efficacy. Detailed insight into your audience and how to build and grow your community. All of which can be put into a well-done report. I’m excited to see this in action! 

Summify – Similar to the popular Post.ly, Summify composes a periodical of relevant news stories from all your social networks. It has the ability to reduce the clutter by cutting out duplicates and only showing the top 5 or 10 stories. It’s a true time-saver, that’s for sure. 

Proxlet – Proxlet is filter for Twitter. It can block certain applications, mute users, and filter hashtags. It’s available for several desktop and mobile clients and filters about 9 tweets per minute (so they say). 

Check these out yourself, or take my word that they’re worth utilizing. I’d love to know what you think of these tools and if you have others to add to the list.

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Image via Wikipedia

Social media is no longer a new subject. While there may still be some skeptics, social media has been embraced as an important business tool. There are dozens of platforms available and just as many reasons to utilize one or multiple platform.

Each platform is unique. Some are great in some areas but fall short in others, and vice-versa. Let’s take a look at the most popular social media and their strengths and weaknesses. Which platforms help customer communication, brand exposure, boost site traffic, and search engine optimization (SEO).

Facebook:

• Facebook is an excellent tool for customer communication. It creates a central, open hub that companies can use to drive their social interaction with customers. Companies can send their message and respond to the positive and negative feedback.
• By using sharing buttons, linked icons, and a company page makes it easy to expose your brand on other relevant sites.
• Facebook is a powerful tool for driving traffic to posts and messages. However, it doesn’t have the same effect with driving traffic to a company’s website.
• Adding Facebook to your arsenal has little effect on SEO with the major search engines. Although, if well done, it won’t hurt your SEO either.

Twitter:

• Twitter is, probably, the best tool for customer communication. Outbound messages can have an enormous reach and do so quickly. Inbound messages are brief and to-the-point, allowing easy monitoring and responding.
• As a metaphorical “Cocktail Party”, by interacting with customers and other Twitter users, the opportunity arises for others to spread exposure of your brand creating real impact.
• One issue with Twitter is that there is a ton of chatter, making it difficult to ensure you’re reaching your target to drive traffic to your site. However, it generates traffic from other sites (i.e. Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon).
• Twitter is not the ideal tool for improving your SEO. Although, the potential reach of your brand or message has a positive effect on your visibility.

Flickr:

• As an image and video hosting site, customers can comment on and share images or videos here. While Flickr creates a rather professional, organized hub for media, it’s only useful in certain areas at certain times.
• Combining its search ranking and integration with other social media platforms, Flickr is perfect for high-quality image posting.
• Unfortunately, Flickr is abysmal for boosting site traffic – end of story.
• While there may be some short-comings, Flickr is great for SEO. Everything is indexed in search engines and this platform is a major player in Google’s and Bing’s social search component.

LinkedIn:

• This platform isn’t optimal for communicating with customers. While you can create polls on industry-related issues, LinkedIn shouldn’t be your communication hub.
• LinkedIn flies under the radar but is a very useful, and powerful, tool to promote your brand. It highlights your professionalism and allows employees to create profiles, shedding light on the high quality of your team.
• Don’t count on boosting site traffic through this platform – period.
• Your LinkedIn profile will help with your SEO rankings, usually showing up on the first page of a search. However, it’s not where you want traffic.

YouTube:

• YouTube is an excellent channel to inform and entertain customers. It shows you’re tech-saavy and allows quick responses to customers.
• As long as you update your channel steadily, YouTube is an imperative tool for promoting your brand. Combine this with Facebook and you have a brutal one-two punch.
• New additions to YouTube’s toolbox, such as in-video messaging, are starting to improve driving traffic back to your site.
• Videos have an enormous impact on SEO rankings. Generating brand exposure through building links back to your site, which rank well on every search engine.

Digg:

• Any actual communication with customers is non-existant.
• The opportunity for mass exposure of your brand is available. If a story about, or from, you does well on Digg, it will definitely garner great exposure. However, there’s no guarantee.
• Digg is the most consistant viral-traffic generation site.
• Regardless of the popularity of your posts or stories, they will be indexed quickly and creates visibility among bloggers in your field.

Tumblr:

• Tumblr is a rapidly growing platform. Communication with customers is easy and effective. Tumblr is growing so rapidly that, if it continues to grow at this rate, it will rival Twitter.
• The platform is simple and makes content-sharing easy creating a viable branding tool.
• At the moment, what happens on Tumblr stays on Tumblr. There is virtually no traffic potential.
• Tumblr sites rank well and is compounded by the blogging style it uses to be a useful SEO tool.

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