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Saturday 11 December 2010

Choosing The Right Social Media Marketing Tools

By Ryan Bersitallat


Social media marketing tools aren't just something that geeks fiddle around with. They're an essential component of a professional outreach campaign which is a lot more than a single staffer typing out messages. The number of followers and friends to a popular account on the networks is mind-boggling, and it is virtually impossible to maintain all the relationships without using at least one good tool.

This demand has fueled a profusion of tools that are as varied as the demographics of all the tens of millions of people on the networks. Some are web-based while others are for installing on desktops. Some offer a unified login and central dashboard, while others simply send notifications for multiple accounts based on tracking parameters.

Some are free and to be used by individuals, while others are good enough to be enterprise level systems. It's even possible to collect metrics and calculate ROI using an advanced tool. Some are specific to a platform, while some may even have multi-language support.

Picking the right one has to be based on several things like the company's size and the size of the team, not to mention the budget for the campaign. An enterprise level operation with an active team dedicated for the networks will need a solid tool like Spredfast. It is an SMMS aka a social media management system which offers a unified login for all the accounts and networks and supports an enterprise team.

The same message is automatically customized on Spredfast before being sent to each network, which offers a bit of individualism while reducing the need to replicate efforts on different networks. It also collects and correlates data from across all the networks to provide overall analytics. On a slightly smaller level, Hootsuite offers almost all the same things.

For individuals, TweetDeck is a very useful tool that helps one person manage multiple accounts. CoTweet goes in the opposite direction, and is handy if multiple team members are posting on the same account. It can track each person's activity separately.

No matter which one fits the bill, the fact remains that without using social media marketing tools, it is virtually impossible not to get drowned by increasing numbers of followers and friends. With the tool, each mention can be responded to, and messages can be put out on all the networks with a minimum of effort and the capability to figure out ROI. Relevant keywords and brand name mentions can also be monitored. The sum of it is that a tool is not an optional item on the social media plan of action.




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