There are a ton of tools out there – free and paid – to manage your daily social media activity. I have picked out the primary tools that I use on a daily bases, for myself and my clients, that I think will be the most useful to share with you, the SMB owner. It will make your day-to-day social media activities and tracking easy and manageable. They are all free:
- HootSuite: All-in-one Social Media Dashboard. You can post to all your social media channels at the same times, schedule your tweets/posts, build a custom dashboard to monitor mentions, direct messages, followers, and search results to follow specific search keywords or hashtags. Hootsuite also provides analytics to measure short links. Its a great tool, I could not live without it! (The free version is a limited version for users who don’t require advanced tools. I think it is absolutely good enough for the SMB).
- SocialMention Real-time social media search monitoring tool that allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, your competitor, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google, blogs etc. Great, easy to use to monitor all this.
- Google Analytics: Tracking and monitoring website visitors. It really gives you great insight into your website traffic data. An absolute MUST!
- Google Alerts: Automatically notifies you (by email or RSS) when new content from news, web, blogs, video and/or discussion groups matches a set of search terms that you’ve chosen. Keeps you on top of all that is being said out there.
- TwentyFeet: Aggregate your stats from your social media accounts it displays them in a nice slick interface all in one place.: Facebook, Twiiter, YouTube, Google Analytics, Bit.ly. One Twitter account and one Facebook user profile are free forever. Facebook pages, groups and apps are not free. For the first 30 days of your usage, every account you track with TwentyFeet is free of charge. It so cheap, it can almost be for free: $2.49 for one service account for one year. I use this all the time.
- TweetStats: Graph your Twitter Stats to see how many times you tweet per day or month. See who you’ve replied to the most, what Twitter apps you love and track your follower counts over time. Very useful little tool.
- Wefollow: Directory of Twitter users organized by interests so you can find new Twitter friends and potential clients in your area as well as very specific niche areas. Very easy to use and effective.
- Google Insights: Compare and gauge interest and volume in specific keyword search terms that are relevant and pertinent to your business and very important to include in your website and blog for SEO.
Please feel free to COMMENT below and let me know what free tools you use – this will be incredibly helpful to all of us.
Of course shoot me any questions – I will be happy to help and answer.
Best
Yasmin
Hi Yasmin,
Great list! There are many free tools out there and personally, I’m all about simplifying.
I work for a company called Jugnoo, and we make an all-in-one dashboard called JugnooMe (www.jugnoome.com), featuring some really in-depth tools for businesses of all sizes – management, monitoring, analytics, and content creation. I’d love to invite you to try it out, and I’d be happy to walk you through the features (all free).
Please let me know if you’d like to schedule a walkthrough. I see that you’re an avid Hootsuite user, so I would absolutely love to hear your feedback on how we can make our product incredibly simple and easy to use for all businesses.
You can reach me anytime at julie@jugnoo.com – looking forward to hearing from you!
Cheers,
Julie Tyios
Senior Manager, Retention and Social Media @ Jugnoo
@JulieTyios
Thanks Julie. Would love to hear more at JugnooMe. I will email you and we can set up a time to talk.
Great list, Yasmin! And thanks for the TwentyFeet mention.
Thanks so much, I’m loving TwentyFeet and the weekly updates. And tx for the answer on how to deactivate the tweet: http://j.mp/deactivatepost
Awesome post Yasmin!. There is another tool called MarketMeSuite! It has a great feature where you can brand your twitter post! What do I mean by that? Remember when you tweet from HootSuite, it will say via HootSuite! But with MasrketMeSuite, you can have it via your brand! Cool huh?
Hi Yasmin
Thanks for this wonderful summary. A great reminder, because there is so much to learn and action and like so many other #SMSS11 attendees, some I had forgotten until I read your post. Thanking you!!
Francine
So glad you found it useful. There was a TON of stuff from #SMSS11, quite overwhelming. Stay tuned for more tips… 🙂
Great blog, thank you – I also use JustUnfollow that will tell you who is not following you and allow you 25 free unfollows per day. They will also show who you are not following & allow you to follow them. I am pretty sure there are a few other free unfollow tools…..Cheers
Yes, its a great tool, I use it too. Tx for adding!
Hi Yasmin,
Great post! I keep hearing about SocialMention and it is on my list of “things to try asap”. I also heard about TwentyFeet from Mari Smith, so thanks for the reminder on that one. Thanks for taking the time to do this summary!
Suzanne
You’re so welcome. I know, it can get really overwhelming with all the info out there. I feel it too. These are tools that I’ve tested and use everyday, so for me, that are great. So glad you found it useful.
Hi, Yasmin!
Great post! Some of these I know about and some I didn’t, so I appreciate you sharing. Tried TwentyFeet, loved their summary report, but I didn’t like that it sent out a weekly stats tweet (without my knowledge – darned fine print!). I use Twepe instead (also free) and find that it’s very similar.
Going to look at TweetStats now — thanks again for sharing!
Sandee #SMSS11
Awesome, tx for feedback. Hmm, I must look into that weekly tweet on stats from TwentyFeet, I did not know that. Can you “uncheck” a box??
Yep, I just went back thru their signup…you have to uncheck when you set it up (and I didn’t see that – I’m sure there’s a way to stop them once you’ve started, but I couldn’t figure it out). Here’s a link to what the “performance post” tweet looks like – http://bit.ly/jIYgDx. Not horrible, but just a tad ‘social media showoff’ like for me.
I’ll try it again now that I’ve unchecked it. Thanks for the reminder and nudge!
Sandee
Hi Sandee! There are two simple steps to deactivate the tweet: http://j.mp/deactivatepost. If there are any further questions don’t hesitate to contact us: @twentyfeet.