posted on: 2011-12-26 02:51:00
The Five Best Social Media Tools for Small Businesses
It seemed like a no-brainer at the time. Everyone told you to get a Facebook page for your new business, so you did. You faithfully updated several times a week, and a few of your most faithful customers liked your page and followed your posts. And the page was manageable, but didn’t appear to increase your profits. So you decided to try adding Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more.
That’s when things got confusing. The necessary time commitment to your social media marketing grew rapidly, but your spare time did not. How on earth did other people find the time to tweet 12 times a day? And why does Facebook keep changing things? If only there was a way to streamline your social media efforts without making them less effective.
Luckily, there are many social media tools that do just that make social media marketing faster and easier. Here are five of the best social media tools for small businesses.
Sendible is for the business owner who wants to be on every social media site this tool supports over 15 different social media websites, plus email and blogs. It also lets you add multiple Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, and lets you create separate usernames for employees so that they can log in and help your social media efforts by themselves.
Additionally, Sendible includes powerful analysis tools that show you how which social media methods are working the best for your company.
Cost: This is a huge tool with 10 different pricing plans ranging from $9.99/month to $399.99/month.
Socialot is great for those of you who don’t want to connect via 15 different social media sites. In fact, this tool is specifically for small and medium-sized business owners who want to focus on the big 5: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, and YouTube. It’s meant to be a simple tool for people who don’t want to spend tons of time on social media, and it’s easy enough for those who are brand new to this type of marketing.
Socialot allows you to post photos, videos, and statuses to more than one social media site at a time. It also allows you to connect your blog and publish your blog posts to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Cost: Currently free.
Timely keeps things simple by focusing on one social media site: Twitter. First, it analyzes the effectiveness of your most recent tweets. Then it figures out the best time slots for your tweets to be seen, retweeted, and mentioned. You can use Timely to store your tweets and it will release them at the time when they have the best chance of creating an impact.
There are quite a few tools that let you schedule tweets, but Timely takes care of the scheduling for you. All you have to do is enter your tweets.
Cost: Free
Mediafunnel is another tool that allows multiple users, but this one focuses on Facebook and Twitter. You can schedule your posts and tweets, or have them released at timed intervals. Mediafunnel also monitors your brand across these two sites, so you’ll know when someone is talking about your company.
One of the most unique things about Mediafunnel is the way in which it handles multiple users: You can set up the users to have different roles and permissions, such as administrator, publisher, contributor, and guest. If you want, you can review each item that one of your employees contributes before it is posted for the world to see.
Cost: The free plan allows two users and two social media accounts, the standard plan is $1 per user plus $1 per channel per month.
Roost lets you post to Facebook and Twitter from one spot, just like the other tools. But it also contains a unique feature called Circles. Circles allow you to connect with colleagues on Roost, and then share your content with their contacts as well as yours. In a way, Roost becomes yet another social network because it allows you to connect with friends and acquaintances.
Roost also includes a campaign creator full of marketing templates. The campaign creator suggests posts and content for you based on your company and audience.
Cost: Free
Small business owners are busy enough! Stop spending hours and hours on social media free up some time with a tool to do the work for you.
