Are you struggling to make social media work for your business? Sometimes a few well-chosen tools are all you need to get your social media marketing working for you.
In this article, we’ll share 12 of those tools that were recommended by the pros.
Tools to Refine Your Visibility and Engagement
Here are three tools recommended by Mari Smith during her first presentation on increasing your visibility and engagement on Facebook.
#1: Socialbakers
Get useful stats from Socialbakers. Socialbakers offers paid services to monitor your Facebook statistics, but it also provides useful free statistics for Facebook and LinkedIn.
Check out the useful marketing data on Socialbakers.
#2: Kurrently
Find out what’s being shared on social media with Kurrently, a free, easy-to-use, real-time search engine for results from Twitter and Facebook. “Companies can capitalize on just-in-time marketing and social CRM opportunities like never before.”
You can search through Facebook or Twitter or both.
#3: Blekko
Select the sites you want to search with Blekko. You can create “slashtags” for groups of URLs, friends, experts and communities and you can “slash in” what you want and “slash out” what you don’t want to search.
With Blekko, you have more control over your search results thanks to the slashtags you create.
Tools to Measure Specific Social Media Goals
Jay Baer gave a fantastic presentation on measuring social media. He clearly identified the different goals a company could have on social media and recommended tools to use to monitor results for each specific goal. Here are three of those tools.
#4: Social Mention
If social awareness is your main social media goal, then be sure to check out Social Mention, which allows you to set up social media alerts so you can measure awareness for specific keywords.
"Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user-generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information."
#5: Klout
Klout is another tool you can use to measure awareness on Twitter and Facebook.
Check out the different graphs for your score results on Klout.
#6: PostRank Analytics
If customer loyalty is your main social media goal, you can use PostRank Analytics to measure results in improving loyalty.
PostRank Analytics is a favorite tool of social media marketers.
Tools to Get the Job Done
Frank Eliason gave an overview of how to use social media in business and shared two of the tools he’s found useful.
#7: Blogsearch.Google
Use Blogsearch.Google.com for better search results than Google Alerts. There are many tools to monitor keywords. Don’t forget to use this one!
Remember to check out what blogs are writing about you through Blogsearch.Google.com.
#8: Twitterfall
Use Twitterfall when you need to show executives how you can monitor what’s being said about your brand on Twitter.
Twitterfall specializes in real-time tweet searches.
A Useful Tool for Twitter Marketing
Hollis Thomases showed businesses how to use Twitter marketing to grow using this tool:
#9: Friend or Follow
Friend or Follow helps you improve your Twitter marketing. It tells you who’s not following you back on Twitter and who you’re not following back.
Use Friend or Follow to craft a stronger Twitter presence with your audience.
Tools to Make Video Blogging Easy
Steve Garfield always makes video blogging easy for everyone. Here are three tools to create on-the-fly videos to enhance your social media content.
#10: Wetoku
Sign up for Wetoku to make the popular side-by-side video interviews. All you need to do is sign in and send an invite code by email to the person you want to interview.
Wetoku is an easy tool to use for interview videos.
#11: Socialcam
If you have an iPhone or an Android phone, be sure to check out Socialcam. Steve says this is the easiest way to share videos with your social networks.
Socialcam combines video sharing with social communities.
#12: Stupeflix
Use Stupeflix to integrate after-effects and photos to your videos. If you want to do editing without using editing software, this tool is for you.
Stupeflix is an easy way to make your videos more appealing.
Find the Tools You Need
One of my takeaways from the summit was that you don’t need to use all of the tools available. Businesses have different cultures, different goals and are at different stages in integrating social media into their marketing mix. These social media pros found the tools that worked best for them.
Do you think any of the tools above can make your social media marketing easier to execute? Please let us know in the comments below if you’re going to try any of them.
