In today’s economy, a low cost and effective marketing strategy for your business is more important than ever. Many business owners use social media as part of their marketing plan. The question is, ‘Are you using the right tools to effectively manage your time and reach your target audience?’
There are literally thousands of tools available! So many that It can become a daunting task to research and select the most efficient ones to manage a solid social media presence. So, what’s in your toolkit? From my toolkit to yours, here are 11 essential tools to consider:
Business Blog
- Type Pad, a web based proprietary blog software program.
- WordPress, web software you can use to create a website or blog.
Social Profile
- Facebook, to connect with people and brands.
Business Profile
- LinkedIn, a business-oriented social networking site.
Photo Sharing
- Flicker, online photo management and sharing application.
- Photo bucket, the place to store, create, and share your photos and videos for life.
- Zooomr, share unlimited photos with family, friends and the entire world.
Project Management
- Basecamp, a web-based project-management tool.
- PB Works, world’s largest provider of hosted collaboration solutions for business and education.
- Zoho, a feature-rich online project management software.
Listening Tool
- Google Reader, a web based aggregator that archive news and other RSS feeds from blogs and tools.
Social Bookmark
- Delicious, collection of bookmarks
- Digg, a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web.
Social Conversation
- Twitter, real-time information network to connect, communicate and monitor conversations that interest you.
Search Tool
- Blog Search, provides fresh, relevant search results from millions of feed- enabled blogs. Users can search for blogs or blog posts.
- Technorati, to help bloggers succeed by collecting, highlighting, and distributing the global online conversation.
Video Hosting
- Blip TV, the place to discover the best in original web series, from professional and up-and-coming producers.
- YouTube, allows billions of people to discover watch and share originally-created videos.
Automation
- Feed burner, a web feed management tool that provides custom RSS feeds and management tools to bloggers, podcasters, and other web-based content publishers.
- Hoot suite, a social media dashboard that can manage multiple social media accounts, assign tasks to team members and track/monitor your presence.
- Ping.fm, a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social networks a snap!
- Social Oomph, schedules tweets, Facebook updates, auto-following, auto-Direct Messaging, managing multiple accounts and
tracking activity related to your profiles. - Twitter Feed, used to syndicate content to multiple social media profiles such as your latest blog post shared on twitter, Facebook etc.
In conclusion, by selecting the proper tools to fit your needs, will allow you to leverage your time and online activities.
Sylvia Browder is CEO of Specialty Home Services LLC, a Home Improvement Company; a Small Business Consultant at Browder Consulting Group, a startup consultancy firm to help women with startup assistance, marketing, website and graphic design work and other support services. In addition, she has co-authored several published books; publisher of ‘Sylvia Browder’s Blog for Women Entrepreneurs’ a lifestyle blog; and publisher of ShopSpendBlack.com Business Directory & Blog platform created to help consumers find black owned businesses in a searchable format. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her husband of 30 years; 5 adult children and 5 grandchildren; church; friends and motorcycle riding.
