Managing social media is a never-ending task. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and other digital media streams generate terabytes of data every day. Fortunately, there are many applications and web-based services that can help. Anyone who uses social media or manages social media internet marketing campaigns will find this list of the top ten social media tools very useful.
Not all internet marketing tools are created equally. Some of these tools are free, and some are not. Some work with one form of digital media only, while others work across multiple social media channels, and each tool requires a certain degree of technical understanding. We’ve arranged this list from tools that are easy to use for almost anyone, to those that require a steeper learning curve.
1. Topsy.com
Most people will be able to put Topsy to work almost immediately. You provide a search key word, like “camping equipment”, and the site will search social media streams for content with your key word (or words). It can find tweets, link, photos and videos. You can select how far back you want to look (within the last hour or several days). Advanced search options allow you to enter up to three keywords and apply Boolean logic, search for hashtags, and more. You can even find top influencers associated with your search term, and Topsy offers a number of languages besides English. It is a free service, and has a Pro option available.
Once you find your target audience who are actively chatting using your stated keywords, engage them on the respective social channels and interest them with your content!
2. Targetpattern.com
Targetpattern is designed to monitor Twitter and look for key words and phrases. When you join this service with a 6-day free trial (which does not require a credit card), you provide several keyword terms to begin your campaign. The service searches for tweets with your terms and displays them, giving you a button to favourite the tweet and a link if you want to join the conversation. Results can be minutes or days old. After your trial campaign period is over you can choose from a variety of service plans if you’d like to continue using this internet marketing tool.
3. Slingbot.co
Slingbot lets you search for key words, hashtags, and user names on Twitter, and collects tweets that match your terms. It holds them for 24 hours, giving you the opportunity to favourite them. You can start with a ten-day free trial, which lets you run five campaigns. There is a fee if you want to use this service past the trial period.
4. Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo monitors Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. It is very easy to use. Enter a search term and Buzzsumo looks at content from those social networks and presents it in a list. It finds articles, videos, infographics, guest posts, giveaways, and interviews. While this is hugely useful in itself, Buzzsumo includes a tab for influencers.
Click it and your search term gets matched to profiles and bios in social media and give you information like page authority and page rank, number of followers, retweets, and is one of the few services that indicates a reply rate. This tool is very effective if you want to find the most active users on Twitter. Results can be exported to a CSV or Excel file. It is a free service.
5. Tacticscloud.com
Tacticscloud searches for keywords in Twitter member bios, looks for people who live in specific locations, have certain followers or who are following other individuals. It can evaluate your search terms using Boolean logic. It will display a list of people it finds that match your criteria, and provides a follow button. It shows the number of followers and number of tweets, a partial bio and associated URLs, and more. This service also allows you to compile search results into lists. This is a free service.
6. Followerwonk.com
Followerwonk is another Twitter-centric web tool, Followerwonk lets you search Twitter bios and profiles, analyze your followers and twitter users following your competition, and offers easy ways to follow/unfollow users, giving you a handy method to fine tune your internet marketing efforts. You can also search a user’s name to find who they are following. Like the name suggests, the functions of this application center around users and it provides many analytic functions. This service is free for 30 days.
7. Circlecount.com
Circlecount monitors Google+ and shows you what users are most active and have the greatest influence, and more. If you are signed in to your Google+ account, it can access your circles and other Google+ social information. You can search for users based on name, location, or URL in their profile. You can see user reactions to posts, the location of your followers with extensive geographic information, the number of reshares and comments to your posts, and other factors. Circlecount is quite comprehensive, even polite, and offers many features that can be quite useful for internet marketing, and includes a NSFW filter. Advanced features, such as data export functions, are fee based.
8. SoDash.com
SoDash is a paid social media monitoring tool watches multiple channels of social media and analyzes information based upon your internet marketing requirements. It can filter and route information, and can even provide automated responses. Advanced algorithms allow you to filter by location, device, gender, source, even number of follower/follows (influence), and other factors. It also provides reports and alerts (including audio alerts when the function is running in the background), and lets you schedule posts. This is a full featured tool and provides many useful features for anyone involved in internet marketing campaigns.
9. Thunderpenny.com
Thunderpenny is a Facebook application. It lets you create custom tabs on Facebook pages you manage, which can contain anything you want, since you provide the custom HTML code. You can even turn a page of your external website into a tab. Since tabs are always visible they won’t get lost in content posted to your page. The free service requires you to understand and provide basic HTML, but the Pro function (fee based) does not. Easy-to-find information, provided through the use of tabs, can boost any internet marketing campaign. It is a handy enhancement to your Facebook marketing efforts.
10. Adobe Social Marketing
With a name like Adobe you’d expect a large number of options, and in this case you’d be right. The Adobe Social Marketing system is designed as an enterprise-wide solution to monitor, control, and track internet marketing efforts. Like most Adobe products you can download a trial package, but aside from that it is a fee-based service.
The Adobe Marketing Cloud includes the following tool groups:
· Adobe Analytics: Measures, share and analyzes data from web, mobile and other digital channels
· Adobe Social: Helps you manage and improve Facebook pages, applications, your twitter stream, and other social media.
· Adobe Media Optimizer: Helps to find the perfect mix of advertising for display, search, and social networks.
· Adobe Target: This tool helps you test and optimize content to find the right message for the right audience.
· Adobe Experience Manager: Organize and manage content in one location.
· Adobe Campaign Your headquarters for managing all of the other Adobe tools and campaigns across your internet marketing channels.
This Adobe suite of internet marketing tools is quite comprehensive, so expect a learning curve if you want to get full benefits.
All of these services and applications give you varying degrees of control over the enormous amount of information that is streaming each day from the social network world. Some are easy to use, some require more work in order for you to take advantage of their functions. All of them are powerful and useful tools for study, research, promotions, and internet marketing. Try them out and choose the one which you are most comfortable with. Do share with us your thoughts in the comments section below.
You may also like to check out my posts on other interesting social media topics here.
