With the New Year upon us, many companies are working out their marketing campaigns and budgets, keeping the latest trends in content marketing and SEO in mind. As you consider promotion strategies for your business, check out the 10 most important social media tools for 2014.
1. Google Analytics is fundamental to your marketing strategy, as it provides the information you need to determine success. With a few clicks, you’ll know who is visiting your landing page, how long they’re staying, and the referring site that they came from, among other details.
2. If social media marketing is a significant component of your promotions approach, Crowdbooster is an excellent tool for keeping up to date. Instead of logging in and out of several social media outlets, this app allows you to access all of your accounts from a single dashboard.
3. Success with a blogging campaign means optimizing your content through sharing and generating comments from viewers. Disqus enables you to streamline the experience for readers, meaning they’re more likely to visit again and share your content with others.
4. HootSuite is another one of the 10 most important social media tools for 2014, as it’s useful for managing multiple social media accounts from one dashboard. It’s especially handy if your company has several people that log in and out for posting comments and content.
5. It can be time consuming posting to all of your social media profiles numerous times a day, and you risk message inconsistencies if your posts conflict. Buffer is a tool that allows you to post to all of your accounts with a single click, so you stay on topic without varying content.
6. Photo content is used both for visual interest as well as optimizing searches, so Compfight is a top tool for bloggers. Professional-looking pictures can be expensive, and getting great shots requires skills that many don’t have. Compfight searches the inventory of photos on Flickr that are copyright free or licensed for commercial use, so anyone can post pictures without worries of infringement.
7. Addvocate is a tool that enables companies to spread their messages across employee social media accounts, rather than the business account being the sole repository for content. It distributes a recommended message of the day to all employees, encouraging each person to share the content on their personal accounts. This multiplies the message while not over-saturating.
8. While it’s important to compile as many fans as possible when you’re aiming for a successful Twitter campaign, it is increasingly difficult to determine who is following you and vice versa. ManageFlitter is a tool that you can use to weed out your irrelevant followers, or those who might be spam related.
9. One of 10 most important social media tools for 2014 offers a way of keeping track of keywords being searched in cyberspace. Tagboard enables you to input a relevant keyword and view all of the conversations across social media where it is being discussed.
10. Once you’ve mastered many of the other tools used as part of an online marketing campaign, you might want to consider Shoutlet. This complex software encompasses more of the advanced features that you might be managing elsewhere in your company, such as customer relationship managing software.
These 10 most important social media tools for 2014 are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to devices companies can use to manage their online marketing. Not all will work for every industry or business, so it’s best to understand these tools and appreciate their advantages before making a commitment to using them.