marketers today. It is one of the most effective ways for any business
to get more traffic and generate new leads, and so, having an active
presence on the major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and
LinkedIn are a necessity.
Handling various networks at the same
time, on the other hand, can be challenging and actually cannot be
achieved without certain social media management tools. These tools let
users promptly reply messages on social, monitor all social accounts in
one place, schedule posts in advance and analyze online activity.
Expert social media managers of today understand the importance of not just
having the right tools but learning how to manage them effectively. But
what kind of marketing software, dashboards, and publishing tools are
these gurus actually using?
Our editors are bringing you the right tools to take your blogging and social media marketing promotion to the next level. We will focus on the top 6 tools for blog promotion and social media management.
Bit.ly
is simply a URL shortener that takes a long web address and turns it
into something much shorter. Most of the social networks (especially
twitter) have a limited number of characters for each post and a shorter
URL used across all your social networks makes for easy tracking from
one dashboard.
Bit.ly does not only shorten your URLs though, it also
offers an analytics and tracking service. The tool has both free and
paid accounts.
Possibly the most popular
social media management tool for businesses people, HootSuite can be
used to execute campaigns across multiple social networks, including
Facebook and Twitter, from one web-based dashboard.
It is an essential
tool for managing social media, tracking dialogues and gauging campaign
results via the web or mobile devices. HootSuite offers free, pro and
enterprise solutions.
Perfect for promoting any
Instagram account, Iconosquare lets you manage your existing community
while simultaneously assisting with its growth by measuring likes,
comments and followers.
Its optimization analysis records the time your
followers get online and measures them against interaction at the time
you post. It has a slew of other features, including the ability to run
and monitor contests.
A smart and easy way to
schedule content across social media, Buffer is the ultimate tool for
publishing on social media, and it offers great analytics services too.
The free plan exhibits the number of link clicks, likes, retweets,
comment or shares depending on the platform, while the ‘Buffer For
Business’ plan allows you to view and export analytics for updates
posted from the platform.
Another popular web app
for social media management, Tweetdeck is a Twitter-focused managing
tool, with a clean and responsive interface which makes it easy for
users to engage with streams and posts swiftly. It is extremely
flexible, as it allows you to add all the Twitter streams you are
interested in.
You can even set up notifications to ensure you respond
to comments or questions in real time when you connect with Twitter,
Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more. Unlike
HootSuite, which operates within your Internet browser, TweetDeck can be
installed as a separate program on your hard drive as a desktop
application.
Although not as popular as
its counterpart, buffer, and a bit more specialized, Commun.it is a
social media relationship management tool that reveals to users, the
members of their Twitter community and those who influence them.
In addition, users can find the people who unfollowed them and decide
whether they want to unfollow them too.
The core features of Commun.it
are free, but the Pro plan is reasonably priced and gives access to full
reporting features, as well as unlimited monitor or lead items, engaged
members and custom groups for as much as 4 Twitter accounts.