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It’s a well-known fact that social media is great for business and brand marketing and the necessity for business owners to market their company or products through social media is increasing on a daily basis. With most audiences spread across networks like LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter, an effective social media marketing tool can prove to be a godsend.
The list of social media marketing tools available today is quite extensive, and most of can be a waste of time (and subscription money). Fortunately, we’ve sorted through the mess to give you 7 valuable options.
First, know where to start
Google Analytics is essential to determining how traffic is driven to your web page. Is it because of a business link you have on a social networking page? Is there a reference in your post that relates to trending news? Or is a keyword search landing visitors on your site? Google Analytics is a free tool designed to help you know how visitors arrive at your site–and knowing helps you determine what to do next.
Learn who is talking – and what are they saying
1. Sysomos – Features “Heartbeat” which monitors social media conversations in real-time through updated snapshots and Media Analysis Platform (MAP), which helps you understand and analyze conversations. MAP provides analytic solutions to help you create updated strategies, discover new opportunities, and make effective decisions about how to proceed. Sysomos collects data from message boards, blogs, major news outlets, and social networks. It then combines the data into a user interface to present social media marketing solutions.
2. Mention – Another real-time social media marketing tool that monitors web pages, social networks, and news media outlets in 42 languages. You can receive alerts within seconds, which means you can respond when someone mentions your brand or uses keywords that you monitor on social networks. You can export your data and generate reports to analyze the statistics and then compare your data to that of competitors.
3. Followerwonk – A Twitter analytics tool that identifies your followers, where they are located, when they Tweet, and whether or not they are also following your competition. Followerwonk determines specific information about followers and uses interactive charts and graphs to track changes in social media activity.
4. AgoraPulse – Helps manage your Facebook page with apps that rank your followers, generate statistics, and make personalized content recommendations. You can customize viral applications like quizzes and contests to engage fans and increase traffic. AgoraPulse produces real-time statistics to help measure performance and compare your data with that of competitors.
5. Viralheat – This social management platform was developed to provide a social network marketing tool to monitor conversations, identify trends, and discover ways to better engage your followers. Viralheat provides management tools to develop business connections using multiple social networks. Viralheat analytics reviews over 600 data points in real-time to help you make informed decisions and maximize your return.
6. Buffer – Allows you to add social posts to a pre-scheduled “queue,” enabling a consistent presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and reducing the time you spend typing in dates and times for individual social media accounts.
7. Hubspot – Best described as a one-stop shop, Hubspot provides a complete set of social media marketing tools designed to meet most of your marketing needs. The company features a Content Management System (CMS) to help customize your website for different visitors. Hubspot also creates personalized SEO dashboards to diagnose content and make keyword suggestions to help improve rankings. With Hubspot’s contacts database, you can organize your leads, emails, website visits, social mentions, and video views, and see a chronological listing of each interaction. Hubspot helps to enhance your online performance by providing social media analytics for Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter–you can have more control with less hassle by organizing everything in one place.
8. Canva – Canva is a simple, drag-and-drop, design software that’s completely online and free to use. Canva’s social media templates can be used on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram.
Marketing your business or brand using social media marketing tools will help improve your online presence, increase traffic, and improve sales. Social media marketing tools can help you identify followers, monitor conversations, compare statistics, save you time, and improve your ROI.
