Small Business Marketing & Business Acceleration | FrontlineMarketingSystems.com

Clearing Clouds of Confusion – the 5 Categories of Social Media Software

Posted on 20. May, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media tools

The social media software industry offers some amazing functionality, but it suffers mightily from murky messaging and customer confusion.

The truth is, many marketing professionals do not know what this software can do, much less what specific companies’ versions can do. And the software companies themselves make it worse by not being specific about their capabilities and areas of focus.

There are five specific categories of social media software, and lumping them all under “social media management” does us all a disservice. I’ll clarify the categories below…, but first please take this little quiz, and see if you can match the software to its benefits messaging (taken from the website home pages of the companies listed). (NOTE: The all-time best score is just 6 out of 9 correct)

Hard to figure out who does what, right? Everyone in this industry needs to sharpen their messaging and be more specific about what they do. Let’s at least try to sort out the categories of software that exist.

The 5 Categories of Social Media Software

First, let me reiterate that all of this is more about the wizard than the wand. I don’t care which of this software you procure, if you don’t know why you need it, and how to use it, it will turn into a pit of despair and social media dream killer faster than you can say “Lebron chokes in the playoffs.”

Consequently, I’ve organized 5 categories of social media software not based on company size, or pricing, or platform, or niftiness of logo, but based on your needs. The questions you need answered will (and should) guide you to the right type of software.

Important notes on this taxonomy:

• This list is not exhaustive. There are WAY more companies than this. If I’ve overlooked your favorite, please leave a comment.
• In practice, these categories aren’t quite as tidy as I’ve made them, as many of these software companies are trying to play in multiple categories. This is especially true of the marketing management guys like Buddy, Involver, Vitrue, Wildfire, et al who all hope to be end-to-end solutions. Further, every company has analytics at some level. So, you may not need five different software packages (thankfully), but it’s entirely possible that you’ll need more than one.
• For purposes of this segmentation, I have listed companies in the category where I believe they are best-of-breed, or where they originally focused their efforts.
• There are other types of social media software, such as social sign-in, social advertising, etc. But these five are the categories needed by the broadest array of businesses.

“I need to know what’s being said about my company, our competitors, and our category in social media. What words are used in association with our brand? Where is this chatter occurring?” 

You need Social Listening Software (AKA Social Media Monitoring Software).

Key players: Crimson Hexagon, Lithium, Meltwater Buzz (reader suggestion), Radian6, Sysomos, Trackur, Visible Technologies.

Small businesses alternative: ViralHeat, SocialMention

“I need to efficiently respond to questions posed to our company in social media, and find real-time opportunities to provide assistance. Ideally, I could assign conversation opportunities to various people in the company.”

You need Social Conversation Software (AKA Social Media Engagement Software, Social Media Management Software).

Key players:  Argyle Social (a Convince & Convert sponsor), Attensity, Awareness, CoTweet (now SocialEngage from ExactTarget – a Convince & Convert client), Spredfast, Sprinklr.

Small business alternative: Hootsuite, Jugnoo, Postling, Sprout Social

“I need to create custom Facebook apps, launch and administer promotions, and manage creative assets on YouTube and beyond. Ideally, multiple people can create with workflow and approvals.”

You need Social Marketing Software (AKA Social Media Management Software and a bunch of gibberish labels).

Key players: Buddy Media, EngageSciences (reader suggestion), Hearsay Social, Involver, Shoutlet, Spredfast, Vitrue, Wildfire

Small business alternative: Agorapulse (have given us a free account), ShortStack

“I need to know how effective my social media efforts are, both on specific platforms and (ideally) overall, and whether all of this is worth the effort.”

You need Social Analytics Software.

Key players: Adobe/Omniture, PageLever (investor), People Browsr, SAS, Simply Measured, Social Bakers (reader suggestion), Syncapse

Small business alternative: Crowd Booster, Google Analytics (also viable for large business), Swix

I need to find social media participants that are disproportionately interested in, or influential about, a particular topic. I need to understand their passions and spheres of influence.

You need Social Influencer Software.

Key players: Appinions, GroupHigh (have given us a free account), Klout, Kred, Peek Analytics (have given us a free account) Plexus Engine (closed beta. investor), Vocus

Does this segmentation work for you? Did I leave out any major players?

About the Jay Baer: Jay Baer is a hype-free social media strategist & speaker, tequila guy, and co-author of The NOW Revolution. Jay is the founder of http://convinceandconvert.com and host of the Social Pros podcast.

Clearing Clouds of Confusion – the 5 Categories of Social Media Software is a post from: Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting

Favorite Social Media Management Tools for Small Business

Posted on 17. May, 2012 by Jess Ostroff in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media tools

Although we consult primarily for large and medium-sized businesses here at Convince & Convert, we are often asked online and in speaking engagements about social media management tools for smaller businesses. Several tools have been developed specifically for SMBs, although they’re often overlooked because they don’t get as much love from Mashable, AdAge, and beyond.

If you’re thinking about adopting a social media management tool, there are several questions you should be asking yourself and your team before you dive in. It’s important to make sure you’ve identified why you want to use a management or monitoring platform and what you hope to gain out of it. Using a social media management platform is a commitment and an investment in terms of both your time and your bank account, so picking the right one the first time is ideal. Also realize that it’s more about the wizard than the wand. No tool is a panacea. It’s about what you do with it.

Here are some questions to consider before we start looking at potential solutions:

What are you trying to accomplish by using a social media management tool?

Some answers to this might be:

• Improved workflow
• Keyword monitoring and listening
• All-in-one view of social media channels
• Better engagement across multiple networks
• In-depth analysis of your social media marketing program

You might have other goals that you’re trying to achieve here. No matter what your overall goal or goals are, it’s important to identify them first.

What (specifically) are you trying to measure?

• Are you evaluating user engagement over time or for a specific campaign?
• Are you trying to measure the value of each post as it relates to sales?
• Are you looking for increased chatter about your brand or topic across the web?
• Are you stacking your brand up against a competitor to see who performs best?

How much do you care about your competitors?

• Are you using your competitors as examples for what you should do?
• Are you looking to see where users are interacting with competitors?
• Do you want to see which topics or keywords your competitors are ranking for?
• Are you not really worried about your competitors at all at this stage?

What’s your budget?

This is always a difficult question for SMBs because they’re often unsure of the value-add that a social media dashboard can provide, and therefore don’t know how much is reasonable to spend. Luckily, most of these tools include a free trial so you can start measuring and monitoring immediately. Keep in mind, however, that building up your social media presence and seeing results can take time, so don’t give up if you haven’t seen the arrows move in just 30 days.

Choosing a Social Media Management Tool

Most of the tools below have options for every type of social media scenario that small and medium-sized businesses may encounter, but certain aspects of each tool are more robust than others. This is why you should have a clear goal in mind before evaluating your options, so you can choose the one that offers the tools that are most closely aligned with your objectives.

Crowdbooster

Crowdbooster is a social analytics platform that looks at your tweets and Facebook posts and offers suggestions for when to post, who to interact with, and what your audience cares about. It also highlights which messages are working best so that you can learn and prepare better content from your results.

Pros:

• Visually appealing dashboard that is easy to navigate
• Lots of different graphs and charts so you can measure progress, including impressions, follower growth, influential followers, and top retweets
• Scheduling functionality
• Bit.ly integration
• Recommendations are built into the dashboard
• Weekly progress summary emails
• Audience monitoring and listening capabilities

Cons:

• It takes a while for them to aggregate content, and not all past content is aggregated
• Only supports Twitter and Facebook
• Analytics are fairly simple
• No keyword monitoring capabilities

Price:

• Free for one Twitter account and one Facebook fan page
• $39/month for 10 total accounts
• $99/month for 30 total accounts

Best for:

• Measuring engagement over time across multiple networks
• Small budgets

SproutSocial

SproutSocial is a social media management and monitoring platform known for its slick dashboard and its Messages view, which pulls in all of your activity from all networks into one stream.

Pros:

• Unified inbox to see all activity in one stream
• Scheduling functionality
• Keyword, hashtag, and user monitoring across the Web plus Web Alerts when your keywords are found
• Easy following, responding, retweeting capabilities from directly within the dashboard
• “Discovery” feature with suggestions of who to follow/unfollow based on silent/irregular accounts, who is following you, and keyword search
• Robust reporting features plus exporting functionality (to Excel or PDF)
• Workflow management features, including assignment of tasks to follow up with tweets/posts
• iPhone and Android apps

Cons:

• Supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn only

Pricing:

• 30-day free trial
• $9/month for 10 profiles (1 user)
• $39/month for 20 profiles (1 user, additional users $19/month)
• $59/month for 40 profiles (1 user, additional users $29/month)
• $899/month for unlimited profiles (10 users, additional users $29/month)

Best for:

• Improved workflow
• Keyword monitoring and listening
• All-in-one view of social media channels
• Small budget

Postling

Postling provides an all-in-one dashboard for social media management across multiple platforms. They also provide listening and monitoring data from across the Web, including reviews sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp.

Pros:

• Supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs (WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Typepad, Squarespace, Drupal), Flickr, Bit.ly, YouTube, and reviews sites like Yelp
• Allows posting to text, video, and image updates to all platforms, from tweets to full blog posts
• Unified inbox
• Scheduling functionality
• Manage multiple brands from one account, separated by tabs
• Keyword tracking and monitoring
• iPhone app (Android app coming soon)

Cons:

• No workflow management system
• Analytics system isn’t perfect (pulls in all recent posts (including drafts) which can skew data, doesn’t show all past data for accurate comparisons)

Pricing:

• $1 for a 30-day trial
• $5 for up to 5 social media accounts
• Additional accounts cost $3 each

Best for:

• Managing a large number of platforms and social channels
• Measuring engagement over time across multiple networks
• Listening to chatter around physical brands like restaurants, hotels, etc.
• Small budgets

Raven Tools

Raven Internet Marketing Tools provides a bit more than your standard social media management or monitoring platform because it also includes SEO and advertising components, all of which you can measure and analyze individually from within Raven’s dashboard.

Pros:

• Includes SEO tools for campaign research, management, and link monitoring
• Scheduling functionality
• Workflow management features including assignment of tasks to follow up with tweets/posts
• Controlled access and limitations for different users
• Includes Google Adwords integration so you can create Adwords campaigns directly inside the dashboard
• Keyword monitoring and analysis
• Customized reporting features
• Includes a CRM system
• One-stop-shop for all things related to a digital marketing campaign

Cons:

• Supports Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube only
• Because it’s not designed specifically for social media management, its posting functionality isn’t great
• The entire tool isn’t as intuitive or visually appealing on the back end as some other options
• Can be overwhelming for small businesses

Pricing:

• 30-day free trial
• $99/month for 4 users, unlimited websites, unlimited social media accounts, 1,000 keyword rankings, 50,000 managed links
• $249/month for unlimited users, unlimited websites, unlimited social media accounts, 2,500 keyword rankings, 150,000 managed links

Best for:

• SMBs who have a large-scale social media/digital marketing campaign running and need to manage it all in one place
• Keyword monitoring and listening
• In-depth analysis of your social media marketing program
• Bigger teams with more social channels/websites to manage

Argyle Social

I can’t talk about social media management platforms without talking about Argyle Social, partly because they’re a Convince & Convert sponsor, but mostly because their product was designed specifically to answer the social media ROI question that social media and community managers are faced with every day. By attaching actual dollar amounts to your posts using their top secret algorithm, you’re able to see exactly what your posts are doing for your brand’s bottom line.

Argyle Social is more of a mid-market solution since its features are extremely robust (and it is on the pricier side).

Pros:

• Data-driven solution provides you with high-level analytics, plus exporting functionality (Excel
• Scheduling functionality
• Workflow management features including assignment of tasks and separate user permissions
• Unified inbox that allows interaction directly within the dashboard, plus email notifications
• Real-time measurement that includes clicks, interactions, and conversions
• Custom URL shortener for tracking purposes
• Ability to set up Campaigns and Goals to separate programs and see results in terms of dollars
• “Hopper” functionality where you can add content when you want, and Argyle will push it out periodically according to rules you set (similar to Buffer)
• Ability to set custom rules and notifications for monitoring purposes
• Social CRM (currently in beta)
• White label option

Cons:

• Only supports Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
• More expensive than other solutions

Pricing:

• $300/month for a single user
• $400/month for social media marketing teams
• $1,100/month for advanced users and larger teams

Best for:

• Improved workflow
• Keyword monitoring and listening
• All-in-one view of social media channels
• Better engagement across multiple networks
• In-depth analysis of your social media marketing program
• Mid-sized businesses who are ready to take their social media marketing programs to a higher level

What did we miss? What’s your favorite social media management tool?

About the Jess Ostroff:

Jess Ostroff is Managing Editor at Convince & Convert. She also acts as Director of Calm for the new virtual social media assistant agency, Don’t Panic Management. You can find her tweeting about social media, martinis, and music as @jessostroff.

Favorite Social Media Management Tools for Small Business is a post from: Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting

Social Media Time Savers: 4 New Productivity Tools and How to Use Them

Posted on 18. Apr, 2012 by Jess Ostroff in Blog, productivity, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media tools, Springpad

Jess Ostroff is Managing Editor at Convince & Convert. She also acts as Director of Calm for the new virtual social media assistant agency, Don’t Panic Management. You can find her tweeting about social media, martinis, and music as @jessostroff.

As Jay mentioned in his post yesterday, there’s a serious influx of information out there, plus an increasing urgency to get things done better and faster. It can be overwhelming to stay up on what’s happening in the world while also tending to your day job. Between our new newsletter, the One Social Thing, and the handy tools below, we hope to give you enough time- and sanity-saving techniques so you can go home at 5pm, be with your family, and even take up a hobby.

While a few of these tools can be used solely as a creative outlet, they can also serve as a way to harness creative energy that can be put toward your content marketing efforts so you can maintain a cohesive, high-quality, and consistent strategy.

DivvyHQ

Self-proclaimed as “the spreadsheet-free editorial calendar system,” DivvyHQ lets you “divvy” and conquer your content marketing efforts.

If you’re a blogger or individual consultant, you might only need one calendar. If you’re an agency or a freelance community manager, you might need to manage several calendars. DivvyHQ lets you set up and keep track of tons of different types of content on multiple calendars at once. It also lets you easily assign pieces of content to individuals and reminds those people when things are due through email notifications so you’re not hounding people for that guest post, newsletter copy, press release, podcast, etc.

Through their subscription model, DivvyHQ lets you manage virtually any type of content that you can think of, and keeps it all in one organized place for everyone on the team to view. And if your editorial calendar is currently in a spreadsheet, that’s no problem. DivvyHQ lets you upload your current calendar and converts it into the DivvyHQ format, so there’s no painful learning curve to worry about. You can also assign editors and publishers to each piece of content so that your workflow is completely streamlined and efficient. After their 30-day free trial, you probably won’t remember how you managed your content without it.

Pinterest

If you haven’t heard about Pinterest, you’ve probably been hiding in a fantasy land where the internet doesn’t exist. But, if you’re reading anything online, you’ll know that Pinterest is all the rage these days among everybody from runners, chefs, photographers, moms, and more. Aside from simply pinning things like “recipes to make” and “gadgets to buy,” Pinterest is a great tool for storing ideas and inspirational articles, especially if you’re a part of a collaborative team.

The great thing about Pinterest is its versatility. Collaborative pinboards provide a nice clean way to keep press mentions, blog post ideas, inspirational artwork for advertising campaigns, or even funny things that your team collects around the internet for moral support. It’s much easier to glance at a Pinterest board than sift through countless circulated emails.  At Convince & Convert, we use a collaborative pinboard where we can all pin ideas for our daily newsletter, the One Social Thing.

Creating collaborative pinboards is easy, and you can choose who you want to be able to pin to it by inviting people via email. From inside your Pinterest account, click the “Add” button, and select “Create a board.” Once you have the new board screen, you can select your board name, category, and decide who can pin. Make sure you click on “me + collaborators” in the last step. Then you can start pinning! That’s it.

Pinning things on the fly becomes even more seamless with a browser extension like the Pinterest Button for Chrome, which lets you pin directly from the site you’re on with the click of a button.

Don’t forget that collaborative pinboards are still public, so don’t use them to collaborate on secret missions!

GroupHigh

If you’ve ever launched a blogger outreach campaign, you know that influencer identification goes beyond the Klout score. You also know how time-consuming it can be to not only find relevant blogs, but then manually pull out the blogger’s social networking channels and email addresses to get in touch with them. GroupHigh pulls out that legwork on your end, promising a simple and effective search tool that filters through the thousands of blogs across the Web and only sends back the ones that fit your criteria. That way, you can spend your efforts focusing on your communication with the bloggers.

In addition to the blog URL and SEO rank, GroupHigh also pulls in location, total number of shares, and social profiles of the blogger (including number of fans/followers on each channel).

Finding the bloggers is only the beginning, of course. GroupHigh also lets you track engagement and touch points so you can stay on top of blogger communication and keep the relationship strong.

GroupHigh offers different packaging for brands and for agencies so you can find a pricing model that’s best for your team.

Springpad

Springpad hasn’t hit the mainstream market yet like Pinterest has, but there’s a chance for it to go there soon if it plays its cards right. Described as what would happen if Pinterest and Evernote had a baby by GigaOM, Springpad provides a visually appealing way to store things online based on interests. While it is similar to Pinterest in a lot of ways, its latest release reveals some really cool social updates that may even make it more useful than Pinterest. For example, instead of just pinning whatever content exists on a web page, Springpad lets you categorize that content with their pre-populated categories such as business, restaurant, recipe, book, movie, album, TV show, etc. Then, when you add a note to one of your Springpad notebooks, it automatically identifies other things you might like based on that note. Kind of like related videos on YouTube, but with less cats.

What’s really awesome about the new Springpad features, however, are its productivity tools, which automatically sync with your mobile devices and calendars. You can add things like an alarm, a checklist, a task, or even a new contact and save them directly to a new or existing notebook.

You can also set reminders or tasks from springs that you’ve already added.

Like Pinterest, Springpad also has a nifty browser extension so you can “spring” things from wherever you are. You can also add collaborators you to your notebooks, similar to Pinterest, but Springpad allows private notebooks so your world domination plans can be done in stealth mode.

Which fancy new tools are you using to make your daily social media life easier to manage?

Note: We wrote about these tools because we like them. None of them are paid affiliates.

Is Social Media Strategy Required or Redundant?

Posted on 25. Mar, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Guy Kawasaki, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media ROI, social media strategy, social media tools, Twitter

I don’t have a problem with Guy Kawasaki. I enjoy his books. His track record in business is substantial. We have friends in common. But on the subject of social media strategy, we disagree in every possible way.

Last month, Guy was interviewed (that happens a lot) in Inc. Magazine about social media, as was asked whether entrepreneurs should hire a consultant and develop a social media strategy. (edit: for clarity, this is the exact question he was asked: “Let’s say an entrepreneur is new to the whole social media thing. There’s a tendency to hire a consultant and formulate a plan. Is that the right approach?”) To which he replied:

No. Just dive in…It’s very difficult to create goals and strategies for something like Google+ or Facebook or Twitter if you’re not familiar with Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.

I reject everything about this sentiment, but perhaps most vehemently the notion that you should have a strategy for Google + or Facebook or Twitter per se. There is no such thing as a Twitter strategy. Or a Facebook strategy. Or a Google + strategy. Participation in these (or other) social outposts are tactics used in service of a social media strategy, which in turn is in service of a marketing (and sometimes customer service/retention) strategy, which is one element of an overall business strategy.

The goal is not to be good at social media. The goal is to be good at business because of social media. Never forget that.

The Pyramid of Social Media Strategy

A Social Media Strategy of Denying You Have a Social Media Strategy

Perhaps the greatest irony here is that Guy Kawasaki actually has a very clear, multi-faceted social media strategy that maps to business outcomes. He advises people to just wing it, while he is doing anything but. Is this a disingenuous misdirection, or a semantic misunderstanding?

Inside the Guy Kawasaki Social Media Strategy

Recently, Kawasaki has embraced Google + as tightly as any non-Google employee on Earth not named Chris Brogan. (I like Google + myself, and believe Google has the leverage to eventually make it a major player. Guy’s new e-book on Google + is doing well, and I admire him sticking to his guns and predicting that the pundits have prematurely written the platform’s obit). I enjoy what Kawasaki does on Google + as his curated links are almost always interesting photos or videos. He clearly understands what is often missed about Google Plus – that it is a multi-media discovery network.

But like most of the popular members of Google +, Kawasaki made his social media bones elsewhere, most notably on Twitter where he has 750,000 followers. Let’s look at that element of the social media strategy.

Each day on Twitter, Kawasaki shares 25-50 links to interesting content on a vast array of topics. He does not interact personally from his @GuyKawasaki account. No replies. No mentions. No thanks. Just link after link after link after link. Unlike most heavy curators on Twitter, however (including me), Kawasaki does not link to source material. Instead, he links to his own Alltop website, where he excerpts the original content and then includes a link for the “rest” of the story. (disclosure: On a couple of occasions, my blog posts have been tweeted from his account) 

Each of these Alltop pages include five banner ads. Thus, Kawasaki is directly monetizing his tweeting by running ads on top of content he did not actually create. Whether you agree with its lack of humanization and intellectual property mechanics, if that’s not a social media strategy then the Hunger Games isn’t going to start a youth archery boom in the U.S.

Another mystifying quote from the Inc. interview:

You really can’t spend money on social media unless you really try. Social media is really more about effort than expense.

Firstly, I’m guessing the providers of social media management software (a hundreds of millions of dollars per year industry) would disagree with Kawasaki’s thoughts on this point. I do too, but for a different reason.

As Charlene Li said first, social media isn’t inexpensive, it’s different expensive.

Effort IS expense. Everything in life, business, marketing, and social media has an opportunity cost. All the minutes you spend on social media are minutes you could be spending on something else, and even if your full-time job is social media, there are labor and overhead costs associated with your participation. It’s not an insignificant time investment to do it well, and to give the impression that social media is “free” is reckless and incorrect, like having Lindsay Lohan host SNL.

Social Media Strategy is Easier Without All That Pesky Labor

Perhaps one of the reasons Kawasaki overlooks the effort required to excel at social media is that he hasn’t had to expend as much as the rest of us. Kawasaki has at various times been listed on the Twitter and Google + “recommended followers” lists, which enable you to accumulate hundreds of thousands of followers in short order. But that doesn’t really bother me. Follower counts are overrated anyway, and there’s a lot of people with even more followers whose value to humanity is subject to debate.

Snooki showing her social media "strategy"

To be sure, the links shared on Kawasaki’s Twitter account are uniformly interesting. They scream “click me” and you could easily devote a decent chunk of each day following those links. (in fact, one of our clients – Right This Minute – is a daily TV show and website that takes the same approach but solely with awesome videos). But the thing is, Kawasaki doesn’t find all the great stories he tweets, or write all the excerpts, or even send all the tweets. His Twitter account is ghost-written (at least partially) by professional staffers, and has been for years.

This makes his quote about social media being free even more puzzling. Are these ghost-tweeters working for oxygen and tap water only? If so, I need to talk to the HR Director at Alltop immediately. (disclosure: my managing editor tweets one “greatest hits” post of mine each night from my account)

Social Media Strategy That Actually Has a ROI

I don’t know enough about Guy’s Facebook, blogging, and other social media programs to understand how they fit into the master plan, but I can guess at how the Twitter program supports the business strategy, because it drives direct revenue. We can actually determine the ROI of the Twitter program (which is how you calculate social media ROI – always at the tactic level first. Then, you combine the ROI of each tactic to determine the ROI of the social media program in its entirety).

I am of course guessing at these data points, but here’s how you’d go about the calculations:

Return

• Average of 35 tweets per day x 30 days = 1050 tweets per month.
• Average click-through rate on each Tweet of .2% (what I average) = 1,500 clicks per tweet = 1.575 million clicks per month.
• Average sharing rate of 1% (a bit lower than usual, due to excerpts only) = 15,750 sharing-driven visits = 1,590,750 total visits per month.
• Average pages per visit of 1.25 (what I average) = 1,988,437 pages viewed per month.
• Five ads per page (one is sometimes a self promo, so make it 4.5) = 8,947,968 ad impressions per month.
• Average ad CPM of $2 = $17,894 in gross ad revenue per month from Twitter program.

Total Monthly Return = $17,894

Investment

• 2 half-time employees at average of $3,333/month each + 40% overhead factor = $9,333 per month in direct labor costs.
• 10 hours per month at $500/hour yield rate for Guy’s oversight = $5,000 month in indirect opportunity costs.
• Amortized server/design/admin costs = $2,000/month

Total Monthly Investment = $16,333

ROI (Return minus Investment, divided by Investment) = 9.5%

What do you know? The Guy without the social media strategy may be making almost 10% off of every tweet.

Social media has too much opportunity (and too many pits of real-time quicksand) to just blindly jump into the deep end of the pool. Of course, if you’re only involved in social media personally, these rules don’t apply. My wife – who is on Facebook only to connect with actual friends and family – does not need a social media strategy. But for business? I don’t care if you’re big or small. B2B or B2C. New or old. Enthusiastic or suspicious. You need to know how and why you’re getting involved with social media so that you can rightsize your resources, relationships, and expectations.

A social media strategy allows your company to focus on being social, without worrying as much about doing social media and the tactic du jour. It provides guidance (and math) that help you make better and more effective decisions in the social universe.

To me, it’s worth it.

You?

6 Must-Have Social Plugins for Your WordPress Blog

Posted on 14. Mar, 2012 by Jess Ostroff in Blog, Blogging and Content Creation, Hello Bar, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media tools, WordPress

Jess Ostroff is Managing Editor at Convince & Convert, and also runs the virtual social media assistant agency Don’t Panic Management. You can find her tweeting about social media, martinis, and music as @jessostroff.

If you have a conversation with any WordPress developer, they’ll likely tell you that less is more when it comes to plugins. And with the thousands of plugins out there in the WordPress repository, finding the right ones for your site can be a ridiculously time-consuming (and headache-inducing) feat. Social plugins and optimization are more important than ever though, and can really make a difference in your site’s traffic and engagement.

These 6 social plugins are all compatible with the latest version of WordPress, and are easy to install and customize. We use most of these here at Convince & Convert and can attest to their awesomeness.

1. Digg Digg

This popular plugin lets you incorporate all of your social sharing buttons into a customizable bar that sits on the top or side of each blog post for easy sharing. Digg Digg lets you choose which buttons you want to display, and whether you want a floating sidebar (all the rage lately) or a top bar. Digg Digg was acquired by Buffer a couple years ago, and includes all popular sharing buttons and their share count for each post.

Digg Digg with a floating left implementation

2. All in One SEO Pack

Some WordPress frameworks have search functionality already built in, but if you want to really pack an SEO punch into your posts, the All in One SEO Pack is the best of its kind (in my estimation). All in One SEO Pack sits in your WordPress dashboard at the bottom of each post and allows you to enter your own custom title, description, and keywords for search engines to index. It works with most advanced WordPress customizations and e-commerce sites, and works straight out of the box for beginners as well.

All in One SEO Pack interface

3. Facebook Social Plugins

Facebook is the social giant that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and whether you love it or hate it, you can’t argue that 500 million international users is a heck of a lot. You can find some unofficial “like” buttons and other Facebook plugins in the WordPress repository, but with the amount of changes Facebook makes on a regular basis, your best bet is to use the official Facebook Social Plugins from Facebook.com. These tend to be a little more tricky to configure than some of the other plugins we’ve listed here because they require some HTML knowledge, but Facebook provides detailed documentation on how to install their Facebook social plugins so you don’t get lost.

Facebook Social Plugins Instructions Page

4. Photo Dropper

Creating visually appealing content for your blog has become increasingly important, especially now with the advent of Pinterest. But finding royalty-free images that don’t look like ’90s clip art can be a pain. Photo Dropper is a free plugin that aggregates creative commons images and makes them available to you from directly within your WordPress dashboard. No Google or Flickr search necessary. It’s not laziness, it’s efficiency! Plus, Photo Dropper ensures that you use (and credit) photographs appropriately.

Photo Dropper Image Finder

5. Hello Bar

The Hello Bar is so simple, yet so effective. Type your promotional message, your link text, and your link URL into the Hello Bar dashboard, choose your colors and font, and voila! You now have a slick little bar sitting at the top of your site with your latest event, newsletter, or whatever else you want people to see. (you might even see it at the top of this page). Because of its location and customizable color scheme, you’re likely to get more eyeballs and clicks on your message. And that’s not all – Hello Bar allows you to measure visits, clicks, and even perform A/B testing, all for the low price of $0 (The Pro version of Hello Bar is fee-based).

Hello Bar message creation interface

6. InboundWriter

Jay has written about the impact of InboundWriter here on Convince & Convert before, and we continue to see its increasing value as Google’s newest algorithm demands excellent content. InboundWriter is a social writing application that analyzes sample copy against websites you’ve chosen, and recommends relevant keywords for you to focus on. As you continue to write, InboundWriter analyzes in real-time, providing you with suggestions and an SEO score of between 1 and 100 so you can measure your progress. You might also  go back to your most popular posts and re-work them using InboundWriter. You may be pleasantly surprised with the SEO results.

InboundWriter for WordPress Interface

While plugins can provide an easy way to customize your site, it’s important to be careful about which ones you install as too many social plugins can slow down your site and make you more vulnerable to hackers. Keeping your plugin library lean and always keeping your plugins updated will take some of this anxiety away, especially if you’re not a developer.

What are we missing out on? What social plugins can you not live without?

14 Ways New Facebook Betrays Small Business

Posted on 04. Mar, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, facebook, involver, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media tools

I get it. The IPO is coming, and even though Facebook is the largest seller of online advertising, it has massively under-monetized its inventory due to the relative paucity of big-brand spend. Most of Convince & Convert’s clients are larger corporations (or the agencies that serve them), but we’re a small business and work with a few as well, and I never thought I’d yearn for the cozy embrace of Google and it’s methodologies and mechanisms that were – and are – small biz friendly.

In word and in deed, the new design and rules accompanying the new Timeline version of Facebook pages is a boon to big business, and a blow to small business.

1. Cover Image

Sure it’s visceral to have a 850-pixel signature image dominate your Facebook page. But for small businesses that lack existing photography and/or personnel with the creativity and time to get something created for the Facebook Cover, it’s a burden not an advance.

2. Prohibition on Cover Promotion

Facebook wants businesses to act and interact like people, and banning promotional language on the Cover image is one way to enforce this “engagement trumps calls-to-action” philosophy.  About the new Cover photos, and in particular Facebook’s ban against promotional messaging in them, Facebook design lead Sam Lessin said:

“The key with cover photos is storytelling and expression. We want to create a good experience for everyone, and we think these guidelines really help brands… They’re encouraging people to create engaging content that people want to come back to and create and emotional connection with.” (quote from VentureBeat)

Creating emotional connections is a luxury that is out of reach for small businesses where the Facebook page manager is doing so on her lunchbreak.

3. Death of the Landing Tab

One area where small businesses could excel in “old” Facebook was with the default landing tab. This became a de-facto landing page/microsite for many companies, and made it relatively easy to drive fan behavior – especially when using inexpensive software. Of course, Facebook killed it in Timeline.

For big businesses that can and have embraced other ways to drive “likes” however, the death of the landing tab is less troublesome. Said Roland Smart, Director of Product Marketing at enterprise social media management software company Involver (whom I interviewed about Facebook’s changes)

“I don’t think it’s a big deal at all. Facebook users aren’t spending a lot of time browsing around. They are getting to the Nike Facebook page via a link on the Nike website, through an ad, or through a link on the Facebook Wall.”

4. Pinning and Starring

"Pinned" post – indicated by small bookmark graphic in top right corner.

The new ability to highlight posts to make them double-width, combined with the option to “pin” a post to the top of the page for up to 7 days (but not both on the same post) is being touted as a big advance. For larger companies, I agree. But for small business, having to now not only figure out what to post to Facebook but also what to star and pin creates additional editorial calendar pressure and complexity that many are unprepared or under resourced to tackle.

5. Direct Messages

Presumably to keep the Wall chatter more positive and to stop Twitter’s march toward becoming the default place for social media customer service, Facebook is offering an (optional) feature whereby people can send direct messages to businesses. Note that people must initiate this interaction, brands cannot direct message people unilaterally. This seems commendable, but for small business it’s now one more “inbox” that must be monitored and responded to in as close to real-time as possible.

Screen shot of recent activity from @kikolani. Click image to see her excellent Pros/Cons post.

6. Activity Stream

On each Page, the new Timeline version prominently displays the interactions that your friends have had with the brand, as well as all activity on the page. Thus, if a small business is not willing or able to update the Page on a regular basis (at least daily) the design of Timeline will make that lack of activity glaring and garish. Perhaps that’s a good thing, and companies that can’t update their Page shouldn’t be on Facebook at all, but it’s still a change that doesn’t favor the small guy.

7. Penalty on 3rd Party Apps

From @kikolani. Click for more.

Despite the fact that it continues to proclaim its disinterest in entering the social media management business, Facebook embraces its ecosystem partners with one hand, while slapping them with the other. Posting to a Facebook page using some third party tools often results in status updates that are displayed with less visual prominence than content entered directly at Facebook.com.

For small business that rely on third party tools to save time and boost social media efficiency, this is a problem.

8. New Tab Width

To provide additional real estate for apps, Facebook has changed (again) the maximum width from 520 to 810 pixels. This isn’t a catastrophe, as legacy, narrower apps will float in the center of the newly wide page. But eventually, apps will need to be widened or overhauled entirely, creating another issue that small business needs to address.

(Fortunately, several low or no cost software options are already available to assist in this process, including Lujure, North Social, Short Stack, Tabsite, and Agorapulse).

9. Premium Ads

Says Involver’s Roland Smart, “Facebook is sending a clear message about experimenting with new ad units that Madison Avenue will enjoy.” Indeed they will, and at the expense of small business. The targeting potential of Facebook ads is unprecedented and extraordinarily powerful. But, this opportunity to hyper-target your message is primarily of interest to smaller business looking for clicks and leads and sales, rather than big business looking for branding and engagement. The new Premium Ads (larger, more dynamic) will be sold to large companies on high-dollar, cost-per-impression deals, reducing the inventory available for the (mostly) cost-per-click Marketplace ads favored by small companies.

From Facebook’s perspective, this of course makes sense, as every seller of advertising would prefer to do so on an impression rather than clicks basis. But for small business, it might hurt.

10. Reach Generator

Facebook will now allow large companies (only, for now) to purchase additional “reach” for their status updates via a new Reach Generator option. Sheryl Sandberg – Facebook’s COO – acknowledged that on average the reach of status updates is only 16% – meaning that only 16 out of every 100 of your “fans” actually see your status updates. Compare this to the average open rate for an email newsletter (~25%), and note that Facebook gives companies one third less visibility than does email. But magically, Facebook has found a way to fix this “problem” – by purchasing more ads from them.

Given that Facebook itself dictates the 16% ratio (which is actually higher than the 7.5% – 10% figure researched and cited by Facebook experts like Pagelever.com’s Jeff Widman), based on its EdgeRank algorithm, it’s maddening that they have now essentially admitted that they have been artificially reducing the reach of status updates as a precursor to the rollout of Reach Generator ads (which can put your status updates in front of the eyeballs of ~75% of your fans).

Essentially, Facebook has said that companies need to spend time and money (on apps and such) to acquire “likes” but that the vast majority of those fans won’t typically see updates from the brand, unless the brand pays for it. This is the end of Facebook as a “free” option for brands, and demonstrates such gall and guile it makes me want to scream at my laptop.

11. Real-Time Insights

Facebook’s built-in Insights statistics platform has been positively Gingrich-like in its frequent changes of direction, and now it’s unveiling real-time stats. The notion is that businesses will be able to instantly know when posts are gaining disproportionate traction, so that they can be immediately turned into paid ads to build reach. This is a nifty opportunity to be sure, but of course will be beyond the reach of small business due to budget and lack of staff to sit around and stare at real-time data streams.

12. Milestones

Starbucks' Timeline with Milestones

The biggest indicator of Facebook’s new scrapbook mythology is the Milestones function. Brands can now create posts from any time in their history (including long before Facebook existed) and note them as Milestones. This notation shows them in the scrolling milestones timeline on the right hand side of the Page. For legacy brands, it’s a very nice option. For small businesses that may not have the photos to post, the time to post, or the inclination to figure out a backwards-looking historical record, it’s probably a bridge too far.

13. Auto-play Content

According to Involver’s Smart, an underreported feature of Timeline is that Facebook apps can now auto-play content – without requiring a user click or other action. This has serious implications for rich media apps and video-oriented Facebook content. A newfound playground for big brands, but probably not something most small businesses will have the dollars or desire to embrace.

14. Rollout Schedule

My favorite quote coming from Facebook in the announcement of Timeline for brands and the other changes, was this beauty from Facebook’s Lessin:

“We’ve been focused on giving tons of notice. It really helps in terms of people understanding what’s coming.” (quoted by VentureBeat)

Compared to small businesses, Facebook and large companies with staffed social media departments (or consultants like Convince & Convert) have a different sense of “tons of notice.” Thirty days to find a Cover image; replace the landing tab; change about copy; decide what and when to pin and star; figure out how to handle direct messages; reconfigure legacy apps and pick which two will be shown as a default; and potentially add milestones, is actually a frighteningly short period of time for small business – who do not sit around and ponder their Facebook best practices every day.

And one of those four weeks that Facebook graciously offered before Timeline becomes mandatory will be occupied by Spring Break, when many small business owners are on vacation with their families – ostensibly making the memories and images that Facebook craves above all. Oh, the irony.

What do you think?

Please participate in the Quipol below, and then sound off in the comments. How has Timeline been for you?

9 Social Media Hacks I Use Every Day

Posted on 26. Feb, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, linkedIn, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media marketing, social media tools

Social media isn’t inexpensive, it’s just different expensive. To do it well requires a tremendous time commitment, and regardless of what your life and lifestyle entails, the time you spend on social comes with an opportunity cost price tag. Thus, one of the characteristics that sets adept practitioners of social media apart from less successful adherents is wise use of time.

Using your limited social media time wisely is all about going beyond the obvious activities. If you’re doing the exact same things everyone else is doing in social, I can guarantee you will not have an advantage. But, if you do some things differently, you may find activities where the reward is disproportionate to the effort. These nine efficiencies — hacks — are what you need to embrace right now.

1. Listen to Podcasts

Sure, they’ve been overcome by newer and sexier social flavors du jour but podcasts are still the best way to spend time when you’re not in front of a screen. Driving to work? Listen to Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation or MarketingProfs’ Marketing Smarts with Matthew Grant . Working out? Put on the earbuds and embrace John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing , or Chris Penn’s Marketing Over Coffee . I’d love to have your ears on my weekly Social Pros Podcast, where we focus on real people doing real work in social media. (you can put your eyes on it too, because we run full text transcripts here).

2. Take and Curate Photographs

I’m not certain if a picture is worth a thousand words, but it’s definitely worth 140 characters. This is the year that photos challenge writing as the lingua franca of the social web: Instagram; Pinterest; Path; Google +  using large thumbnails in the news feed; face recognition technology. All trend lines point toward photography. If you’re not taking and posting pictures to dedicated photo networks and cross-posting (when appropriate) to Twitter and Facebook, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to grow your network and see the world through the eyes (or cell phone cameras) of thousands of new friends.

3. Read LinkedIn Today

It’s pretty safe to say that most people keep their LinkedIn shrubbery more closely pruned than their Facebook or Twitter trees. Thus, when content is shared in LinkedIn, it often has a better chance to have been shared by people you trust, or at least people with a modicum of business sense. That’s why when I’m looking for a summarized source of what’s happening in the categories I care about, I turn to Linkedin Today.

4. Buffer Your Links

One of the most insidious time sucks in all of social media — especially for content curators — is the “Oh, I found something cool. I should share this on a social network or four!” keyboard fire that spontaneously erupts a few times a day. This kills your focus and productivity. The better approach is to set aside a chunk of time first thing each morning to find the handful of truly interesting content bon mots that are worthy, and use Buffer to automatically share them across your chosen social networks at pre-determined, optimized times. While you’re at it, add the Buffer button to your blog too. (disclosure: I’m an investor in Buffer)

5. Use “if this, then that” Recipes

If This, Then That (IFTTT) is the best social tool nobody ever mentions. It’s like a virtual assistant social media robot, where you can create an almost infinite array of conditionally-defined, time-saving tasks. Create an account and hook up all of your social profiles, blogs, cell phone numbers, etc. Then sift through the mountain of existing recipes to find processes that will save you effort.

For example, want your Twitter profile photo to change automatically when you update your Facebook profile photo? Done. Want to have your favorited tweets automatically emailed to you? Done.Want to automatically store your Instagram photos in a Dropbox account? Done.Want to automatically post to your Pinterest board any link you add to Facebook? Done.

The opportunities are nearly endless at IFTTT.com.

6. Create a Stalker List

Grab a piece of paper, or open a new document and write down a list of the 20 people you most want to interact with in social media — people you don’t know, but want to know. Then, create a list for these people on Twitter and Facebook, and a circle for them on Google +. Where applicable, visit their blogs and bookmark them. Also subscribe to their feeds (via email, not RSS because you’ll check your email every day, but not your RSS.) Find them on Instagram, Pinterest, and LInkedin and connect in those places, too.

Done? Starting tomorrow, spend 15 minutes total per day interacting with some of these 20 people. Not in a yucky way, and not in a pandering way. If you have something interesting and relevant to add via Twitter, blog comment, or elsewhere, do it. If you don’t, keep your hands to your sides. But pay attention to your list of 20, and find ways to interact with and help them. In short order, they will recognize you and you’ll have grown and leveled up your network of social contacts. Make a new list every three to six months.

7. Interact on Google +

Let me make this clear: If you’re reading this, you should be on Google +. Not for the SEO benefit — although that’s not insignificant. Not for the entertainment value — although the large number of videos and GIFs there can be a hoot. Do it for the opportunity to interact and engage with industry professionals in a comparatively quiet and efficient location. You want to get on Chris Brogan’s  radar? Or Mari Smith’s? Or Brian Solis’s? Google + is the place to do it. It’s Twitter before Oprah; Quora for the masses; blog comments but easier to use. It may not last, but for now Google + is the place to interact with people that no longer answer every tweet.

8. Blend Personal and Professional

Quit worrying about showing your real self in social media. If your social media bios talk only about who you are at work, you’re leaving attention on the table. The reality is that unless you’re a sword swallower or an astronaut, your personal life is more interesting than your professional life. You’re a marketing director for a B2B software company? Yawn. You’re a marketing director for a B2B software company, and you happen to grow prize-winning roses? That, I’ll remember. What you love makes you memorable in ways that what you do cannot. There’s a reason most of my bios say I’m a tequila lover.

9. Quit Obsessing Over Case Studies

How much time do you spend reading case studies, trying to find evidence that social media will work for your company? Case studies should be used for ideation, not ratification. Beyond the fact that case studies are often strategically irrelevant because the company profiled is in a different industry, with different goals, competitors, and customer expectations (among other variances), perhaps the biggest problem with most social media success stories is that the measures of that success are largely without real merit.

Even in the best possible scenario, where the case study in question is extraordinarily applicable to your business goals, social media situation, KPIs, budget, timeline, customer personas, and more (which is a rare alignment indeed), you are placing significant influential value on one outcome. Worry less about what some other company is doing, and worry more about doing your own work.

Social media is too complicated for you to be wasting your time, spinning your wheels on activities and behaviors that won’t make much difference. I know these nine hacks will save you time and propel you forward, because I use them all consistently. But I’m sure I’ve missed many terrific ideas. What are you doing to save time and boost your social media efficiency?

(post originally written for iMedia Connection)

45 SEO and Social Media Tools #SESLondon

Posted on 22. Feb, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, Search Engine Strategies, seo tools, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media tools

I really lucked out after moderating the morning session at SES London on Social Media Tools by joining the SEO Tools of the Trade session that followed. Both sessions had great speakers and I’ve decided to combine my notes for both into one post about social media automation tools and SEO tools.

The sources for the SEO tool recommendations include:  Richard Baxter of SEOGadget, Dave Naylor from Bronco, and Neil Walker from Just Search. The social media tool recommendations came from Andrew Girdwood from bigmouthmedia, Paul Madden from Automica and Marcus Tober from SearchMetrics.

Before I get into the list of tools, I feel compelled to share a quote that I’ve often used to give people context for tool use, since it’s so important to use them for scale, efficiency and to gain a competitive advantage:

“Tools are only as effective as the expertise of the person using them.”

I think that’s an important perspective, because some online marketers use a small handful of tools but their expertise is very deep. Therefore, they get a tremendous amount of productivity from them. Others use many, many tools without deep expertise in anyone area and as a result, effectiveness may be lacking. Once you find a handful of tools that work for you, get really, really good at using them. At the same time, always be open to trying new tools as they come along.

Ok, let’s start off with SEO Tools:

1. RedFly GoogleGlobal Firefox & Chrome Extension – See SERPs in other countries
2. Netcraft - Hosting, DNS, site uptime and many other features
3. MajesticSEO – Link tracking, research and analysis. Export links by country code (TopRank uses MajesticSEO
4. Copyscape – Find copies of your content elsewhere on the web to avoid duplicate content issues
5. Google Webmaster Tools – How does Googlebot interact with your website. Check for crawl errors that could affect inclusion and ranking of your content
6. Firebug – Firefox extension for reviewing code, look for hidden text issues that could affect search engine penalties
7.  Google Page Speed - Check the load time of your web pages. Slow loading pages are not your friend and certainly nothing Google will reward you for
8. Pingdom – Monitor uptime of your website. If your website is down neither customers or search engines can get to it.
9. Xenu Linksleuth or Screaming Frog to spider your website
10. Open Site Explorer – Download data and segment anchor text for identifying good/bad inbound links
11. KISSinsights – Find sales objections and test them with a super short survey
12. Fivesecondtest – Show an image and see what people think of it. Analyzes most prominent areas of your design
13. Google Website Optimizer - A/B test your page designs
14. Google Adwords Keyword Tool – Official keyword research tool from Google
15. Spyfu – Perform competitive PPC and SEO keyword research
16. Alexa - Wide range of traffic and keyword information about websites
17. SEMRush – Get competitive SEO and PPC keyword information on websites found on Google.com and many other country domains
18. KeywordSpy - Keyword research tool
19. Wordtracker - Keyword research tool
20. Wordstream – Keyword research tool
21. Keyword Discovery – Keyword research tool
22. Socialmention – Social search tool allows you to download to csv file of social keywords and influences that you can pivot to see what what kinds of mentions are you getting, on what kinds of social media sites and how it compares to the competition.
23. Analytics SEO – page load time, pages indexed, ranking overview, reveal potential keywords, next opportunity keywords, reporting.
24. Sistrix toolbox – Tracks PageRank over time, ranking, position, search volume, traffic index
25. Searchmetrics Essentials - Suite of SEO and social media tracking tools
26. GTmetrix - Compare multiple sites for their page download speed
27. Link Research Tools – Link research and profiling tools
28. Keyword Density - DaveN tool providing a wide variety of data points about a website according to a specific keyword phrases
29. maxmind – Geographic ip detection down to the city level
30. wipmania – Geographic ip location tool

Social Media Automation Tools (Some are a bit Grayhat SEO)

1. Evri – Social content aggregator
2. Trapit – Topical news aggregator that leans your preferences with AI
3. Strawberryjam – Shows the links your social network shares the most
4. ifttt – Rules based automation of actions through social channels/media sites
5. Paper.li – Crawls links contained within RSS feeds, Twitter lists you supply and creates an online newspaper that auto-tweets the most popular twitter handles that share
6. Pearltrees.com – Tool for aggregating content and sharing content with a rich visual interface
7. Tweetguru Multi – DM up to 12 people on Twitter at the same time
8. RSS Graffiti - Pull in RSS data feeds into a Facebook page automatically
9. Tweetadder – Auto follows people on Twitter (um, kinda spammy no?)
10. Socialoomph – Schedule social content and status updates (Twitter and Facebook)
11. dlvr.it - Takes a RSS feed, filters content based on rules and publishes to Twitter, Facebook and other social channels
12. Odesk – Not a tool but a resource to outsource redundant tasks. Use for research, writing small content, etc.
13. Socialenhancer – In beta: Auto reply to tweets by keyword. Export followers for analysis
14. Tweetdeck – Twitter management tool
15. Hootsuite – Twitter, Facebook and other social channels management tool

Richard Baxter, Dave Naylor, Neil Walker

There you go. I hope you find these tools useful. Some are quite old and some are new. Some are a bit iffy in terms of being more mechanical than meaningful for social engagement. Take care when checking them out. Tools can be a bit of a time suck so think about what your goals are, what tasks do you want to achieve. Look at these sites if you have time or ask other SEO and Social SEO professionals about them to decide what you want to try or test out.

What are some of your favorite SEO tools? What tools do you use to improve efficiency and automate redundant tasks when it comes to Social SEO actions? Would you like to see us do more reviews of tools?

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
45 SEO and Social Media Tools #SESLondon | http://www.toprankblog.com

47 Essential Social Media Tools for Content Marketers

Posted on 01. Feb, 2012 by Joe Pulizzi in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, social media tools

It’s hard to believe the sheer number of social media tools we use everyday to help grow the Content Marketing Institute and SocialTract, as well as my own personal brand.  Since there are so many, I decided to update this post from almost three years ago.  It’s amazing the number of social media and content marketing tools that I continue to use, as well as the many that died over the years from lack of use.

Which ones am I missing that you cannot live without? [disclaimer: many of the tools below are CMI partner tools]

The Basics

• LinkedIn - Start the practice of connecting with every business card you receive from contacts.
• Facebook - Less business, more entertainment the better.
• Twitter - The best way to broadcast great business content…period.
• Google+ – The fastest growing social media network of all-time.  Due to Google’s link with search, Google+ is now critical.

Conversations and Listening

• LinkedIn Answers - Listen and answer.  Best if you have business customers.
• LinkedIn Groups - Find groups that make sense for your business.
• Yahoo! Answers - Listen and answer questions. Position yourself as the expert.  Better if you have consumer customers.
• Google Alerts - Get updates on who’s talking about you, your industry, your customers.
• Google Groups - Find the group relevant to your job and get active.
• Google Trends – Love this tool!  See where keyword trends are heading.  It will help you tell better stories.

Twitter Management

• Tweetdeck - The ultimate Twitter management system.
• Hootsuite - Manage multiple twitter accounts from one dashboard.
• Dlvr.it – Possibly the best reporting structure for distributing Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
• Twitter Search - Find anything on Twitter real-time.
• Yammer - It’s Twitter for inside the company walls.

Content Sharing

• Slideshare - Upload your PowerPoint presentations for all to see.
• YouTube - The #1 video sharing site and #2
• Vimeo - The alternative to YouTube.
• StumbleUpon - Randomly generates content for users by interest area. It still amazes me how much traffic we get from StumbleUpon.
• Scribd - Share original writings with others.
• Pinterest – In less than two months becomes a Top 100 website.  Amazingly addictive.
• About.me – Great way to share the information that is all about YOU.
• BufferApp – Integrates with Facebook and Twitter to easily share content.

CMS/Content Promotion/Creation Tools

• WordPress - My recommendation for a blog CMS platform.
• Tumblr - Post anything quickly and easily.
• Zemanta - Great for adding additional content and links.
• Outbrain – The PPC tool for content distribution.  Used by some of the best brands on the planet.
• PR Newswire – Our preferred tool for distributing news and research releases.
• Jing- To create screenshots for clients when something needs to be explained.

Measurement

• Google Analytics - I recommend using Google Analytics even if you have a paid analytics service (courtesy Cim Buser).
• Alexa - Some high-level information on website traffic for any site.
• Compete.com - Excellent comparison tool for web analytics-type information.
• Quantcast - Provides good overview of analytics and site demographics.
• Radian6 – A paid social media measurement tool.  Now a Salesforce.com company.

Operations

• Google Apps - Runs all email and calendar functions through one place.  We use it and love it. Basic option is free.
• Google Docs - Share Word documents, spreadsheets and presentations via secure invitations. Great for editing a document with multiple people involved.
• Teamwork Project Manager - Easy-to-use project management tool.
• BaseCamp - An alternative to Teamwork Project Manager. Also very easy to use.
• DropBox – Easy way to share files with co-workers and associates.
• Salesforce – Track sales opportunities, leads and contacts.
• Evernote – Easy to way to transport documents from iPad to anywhere else you are going.
• Skype – Hard to do international calls without it.  Plus, sometimes it’s helpful to see the person.
• Chrome Remote Desktop – Incredibly handy tool if you need access to someone else’s computer and you lack IT support.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

The original post is titled 47 Essential Social Media Tools for Content Marketers , and it came from The Content Marketing Revolution .

10 Social Media Pros Pick Their Favorite iPad Case

Posted on 08. Nov, 2011 by Jay Baer in Amber Naslund, Ann Handley, Blog, brian clark, CC Chapman, chris brogan, iPad, Jason Falls, scott stratten, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media tools

Given the extraordinary buffet of technology and tech-related options and alternatives available to us, it fascinates me to learn what people I know and trust use on a day-to-day basis.

In this, the debut edition of What The Pros Use, I polled a group of social business and content geniuses to determine what they use to swaddle their iPads. The fact that I didn’t consider for even a nanosecond that any of these folks wouldn’t have an iPad is an interesting circumstance too.

David Armano (@armano)
Executive Vice President, Edelman Digital

David uses the original Apple rubber case for iPad version 1.

“It keeps it as thin as possible, and has a great grip.”

Jay Baer (@jaybaer)
President, Convince & Convert

Apple Smart Cover for iPad 2, but I ensconce the entire thing in the Case SIMPL sleeve. I love Case SIMPL because it turns your iPad (or laptop) sleeve into a mobile office. Room for business cards, a notebook, pens, iPod, and a bunch of other stuff, but still in a small size with meaningful protection. Also, made in Chicago, which is nice.

(Note, Case SIMPL sent me some free samples, so I’m giving away 2 laptop cases and 2 Kindle cases randomly to people that tweet this post.)

Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan)
Founder, Human Business Works

Chris also uses the Apple magnetic Smart Cover for iPad 2, but is not terribly enthusiastic about that choice.

“I’m using that stupid expensive magnetic lid case for no good reason.”

Brian Clark (@copyblogger)
President, Copyblogger Media

Brian also uses the iPad 2 smart cover, but is branching out with a bluetooth keyboard.

“I just got a Bluetooth keyboard/cover from Brookstone that turns the iPad into a netbook-like device for writing on planes, etc.”

CC Chapman (@cc_chapman)
Raconteur, Co-author Content Rules

Like David Armano, CC uses iPad 1 and the original rubber case, due in particular to its easy folding for typing purposes.

“It doesn’t add much weight. I always looked for a softer leather one, and could never find one.”

Nicole D’Alonzo (@NikisNotes)
Social Media Manager, Porter Novelli

Niki also uses the iPad 2 smart cover, but may be the only person I’ve spoken with who actually likes it a lot.

“The slim design folds nicely to prop-up my iPad while I’m typing or watching videos. It doesn’t insulate the back of the iPad 2, I manage that by slipping it into my laptop sleeve.”

Jason Falls (@jasonfalls)
President, Social Media Explorer

This is not Jason Falls.

Always supporting the local angle, Jason uses the ModulrCase manufactured in Louisville. It’s a multi-functional case that even includes a refrigerator magnet mount!

“You can clip it into a table-top stand, a shoulder strap, a wall mount, and more. The plastic case protects it but it doesn’t add a lot of weight or bulk. I wouldn’t use anything else, and frankly love the hell out of it.”

Ann Handley (@marketingprofs)
Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

This is not Ann Handley in repose

A recently purchaser of the iPad 2, exacting Ann has been pondering her case options. After eschewing the Smart Cover and several other candidates, she settled on the DODO Case.

“It’s light, functional, somewhat protective, stylish, and not that pricey (Bonus)!”

Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra)
Vice President, Radian6

Road warrior Amber swears by the Go In Case, which offers multiple integrated screen positions.

“It handles multiple positions with stability, protects it when I drop it (because I do that often enough for it to matter), and in my full-to-bursting laptop bag, can travel in a suitcase without getting crushed.”

Scott Stratten (@unmarketing)
Author, UnMarketing

Scott uses the iPad 2 Smart Cover, but recognizes it may not be a 100% solution.

“It increases my coolness factor by 20%. I like how it turns the iPad off, and it’s thin for easy packing. But, it can slide off when I take it out of my carry-on, and offers really no protection, since it’s just a flap.”

There you have it. What the Pros Use: iPad cases. Lots of market penetration for the smart cover, but not a lot of love for it, really. Several other interesting options to consider.

(Don’t forget that I’m giving away laptop and Kindle cases randomly to people that tweet this post, courtesy of Case SIMPL).

What do you use for your iPad?