Topic: Social Media Management Tools

There is so much more to social media than just updating, posting and linking onto your accounts. All the behind the scenes management can really help you make your page and accounts thrive in such a social media savvy world. From sites that can help you manage your posts to giving you statistics of who likes your page. There is so many different types of management.

The first types of management pages that I really know about are sites that allow you to schedule your posts and tweets that make it so you don’t have to be constantly updating your sites. This is nice if you have a busy week, are out of town or have several accounts to manage.

According to Mashable.com they chose the Top 5 Social Media Management Tools that can help make your life easier.

1. TweetDeck – this allows you to manage all your personal social media profiles. Allows you to connect across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google Buzz. You can update all or just a few with the same status at one time.

2.  CoTweet – great for small businesses or divisions of larger businesses that spread social media duties among team members and have a customer service approach to engagement.

3.  HootSuite – small to medium-sized businesses that have one or two dedicated social media managers. Allows you to add five networks to all monitor at the same time.

4. SpredFast – this is specifically for agencies managing social media for several companies with high ROI demands. It has a lot of analytics which is a big advantage over other tools.

5. Engage121 – franchised companies looking to maintain consistent messaging while giving local branches a hand in social media should use this. It’s the best in its class at encompassing monitoring, broadcasting and engagement.

“The Econsultancy/Responsys 2013 Marketing Budgets survey recently revealed that 38% of companies will be increasing their investments in Social Media Management Systems this year, and 62% will increase their social media investment.”

As you can tell, social media is prevalent in todays industry and organizations are taking it seriously to make their mark online.

These tools will be very beneficial to any company trying to grow using social media. If you can stay on top your social media and know what your company demographics are, you are sure to be just fine. 

Topic: Social Media Platforms

As a person who is an avid social media user and an director for the Associated Students of Utah State University (ASUSU), I would like to think I know which social media platform works best at getting “the word out.” Choosing the right platform is key to making sure that your information gets across to the right audience. If you pick the wrong platform can decrease customers and will definitely give your competitors an advantage.

According to socialmediachimps.com, the Top 5 Social Media Sites of 2012 were:

• Facebook (950 million)
•  YouTube (880 million)
• Wikipedia (410 million)
• BlogSpot (340 million)
•  Twitter (170 million)

These are platforms that should be taken into consideration when getting ready to advertise your product/service/company. These have the most amount of traffic and can almost guarantee an increase in traffic if used correctly.

Below is a GREAT infographic from socialmediachimps.com on the top social media platforms within 2012. It shows that “social networks receive 36% of unique visitors, video sites 27%, blogging platforms 15%, wikis 11%, and micro blogging and other types of social media platforms at 6%.”

If you have noticed, whatever you are trying to market – whether it is a product, service, company or even yourself – the more you can get the name out to the public the better chance you will have at success. Be sure to use more than just one platform and make sure you update them frequently. You will often see companies that have a Facebook, who make posts about their blog and link their status to Twitter. This is a great way for them to be seen on multiple platforms.

Once you understand the top social media platforms and what you think could potentially work best for you. You need to then develop a strategy on how to become successful in using these. Socialmediaexamier.com has a great 7 Step process that helps you develop a successful social media strategy.

1.    Determine Your Goals and Objectives

2.   Research, Research and Research Some More

3.   Create a Digital Rolodex of Contacts and Content

4.   Join the Conversation to Develop Relationships

5.   Strengthen Relationships

6.   Measure Results

7.   Analyze, Adapt, and Improve

For more information on these 7 steps – click here

Hopefully these can help you think about which platform works best for you and what you are trying to market. Just remember, whatever you put on social media - is for everyone else to see. You can never get it back!