Get great results from your social media efforts without sweating it
Studies reveal that small businesses benefit most from social media. According to the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 66% of small business owners strongly agree that social media has helped them in more ways than one. It has helped them to:
- Generate sufficient exposure for their business
- Stand out in the marketplace by improving their search engine rankings
- Increase traffic and subscribers
- Find new business relationships
- Generate qualified leads
- Improve sales performance
- Lower marketing costs
As such, one can safely say that social media can be instrumental in helping small businesses achieve their business goals. However, it can also take up a huge chunk of your time. If you don't have enough time to devote to this undertaking, here are some tools you can use to better manage and automate your social media presence.
Low-Cost Tools for Social Media Management
HootSuite
HootSuite allows users to manage multiple social media [3] accounts, schedule messages and tweets and analyze traffic without having to leave their dashboards. With this tool, you can manage your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google +, Foursquare and MySpace accounts, connect your WordPress site and accurately track your results.
Sendible
Sendible prides itself on being the easiest way to manage your company's social media presence. It can help you track your brand's activities on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr so you can effectively respond without logging in to your individual accounts. It also supports LinkedIn [4], Tumblr, Bebo, Ning and a number of other services. In addition, Sendible brings email and SMS technologies together with social media to help you grow your business and track results. Sendible offers a web-based application, a mobile version and mobile apps for both Android and iOS.
CrowdBooster
This is yet another social media management platform that allows you to schedule your posts and monitor your results in the easiest way possible. What's great about this platform, however, is its audience insight and recommendation features. By using CrowdBooster, users can understand their audience better and receive useful recommendations on who to engage with and how to improve their content.
Buffer
This platform allows you to share timely and engaging content (articles, photos and videos) with your audience throughout the day. It supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and App.net accounts and provides detailed analytics on your posts. It is available in both Web-based and mobile versions and is compatible with most major news reader apps so you can access it even if you are constantly on the go.
Jugnoo
With Jugnoo, you can have three team members managing up to 20 social media accounts for free. Jugnoo allows users to target the right audience, share updates to multiple social media accounts in one go and follow conversations around the Web using a set of designated keywords. It can also be used to create engaging content and Facebook coupons, distribute your articles across the social Web, create and share videos on YouTube and track your results without leaving your dashboard.
Needless to say, these tools can help you get great results from your social media engagement without sweating or breaking the bank. Who wouldn't want that?