As social media continues to become a more popular form of reaching and engaging with customers, the more time you need to spend on it, right? Wrong. There are plenty of tools (a lot of them FREE) out there that can keep your social media running like a pro with only 10 minutes a day. These ten tools are the only ones you need to turn your social media accounts into hyperdrive!
TweetDeck & Hootsuite
One of the most effective things you can do is monitor your profiles. But with multiple social accounts it can be difficult to keep track! With both TweetDeck and Hootsuite, you can add and monitor multiple accounts from multiple social networking sites (Twitter, Facebook, etc). Don’t want to post right away? Both allow you to schedule posts ahead of time, allowing you to spread out your messages strategically.
Timely
As mentioned above, scheduling posts can be a great way to spread out your content without have to login multiple times throughout the day (or even week). Timely not only does this for you, but shows you when your posts are best optimized for engagement! It tracks when your posts receive the best click-rate, ‘likes’, retweets and more, then suggest these times for future posts.
Bitly
Bitly is widely popular amongst Twitter users due to its quick and easy way to shorten URLs. In Twitter you are held to only 140 characters, so each letter saved is great! But Bitly’s advantages don’t stop there; it is also a great way to track engagement. You can track, customize and monitor your links to see which ones are receiving the best engagement (and then use them again in the future!).
TwitterCounter
Unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn’t easily allow you to track analytics (followers, following, etc). Twitter Counter not only shows you a detailed chart of ‘New Followers’, but also projects how many followers you will gain going forward.
IFTTT
IFTTT (Which stands for, “If This, Then That”) is a very clever and incredibly handy app that lets you put together ‘recipes’ that automate your social accounts and let them work for you. You can set up triggers through sites like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Linkedin (just to name a few). You can choose from a popular list of recipes, or create your own!
Examples of recipes include;
- If Mentioned on Twitter, Then Reply with “Thank You for the mention!”
- If Tagged in Facebook Photo, Then Send me a Text to Notify Me
- If Checked in on Foursquare, Then Send me an eMail
Klout
Klout is not as much a tool as it is a great research partner. If you are looking for ‘influencers’ in your industry, Klout can help you out. Klout is an influence measurement tool that ranks people/companies on a scale of 1-100 (1 being non-existent, 100 being the President of the United States) and displays them to the world.
Google Alerts
It can be cumbersome to monitor the entire web for mentions of your business. Google Alerts takes out the pain by setting ‘alerts’ off of keywords of your choice. It can look for blog posts, videos, photos, or even comments that relate your company’s name. If your keyword is mentioned anywhere you will receive an eMail with a link to the location.
SocialMention
If setting up alerts isn’t your thing, Social Mention may be your tool of choice. Simply type in the term you want to search (the name of your company, for example) and it will find all tweets, posts, videos, blogs and any other mentions across the web.
Facebook Insights
Okay, so Facebook Insights may not be a ‘tool’, but it is the best way to monitor your Facebook account. It allows you to create an export a variety of different reports in relations to your Facebook pages. Other tools may offer the best Facebook analytics, but look no further than Facebook itself for the best bang for your buck.
Do you have a favorite tool that you or your company uses? Let us know in the comments below or continue the conversation on Twitter and Facebook!