TOP SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS

Article by Pierre Zarokian

The rise of social media has paved the way for a growing number of social media tools. There are hundreds of tools out there. I have prepared this article to review some of the more popular tools as well as some of the tools that I am most familiar with and consider useful. These tools are not the only ones available and there may be similar ones.

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT ALL-IN-ONE TOOLS:
HootSuite (www.hootsuite.com)
Market Me Suite (www.marketmesuite.com)
Social Oopmh (http://www.socialoomph.com)
HubSpot (http://www.hubspot.com)

These tools are all designed to manage several social media sites at once, such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Here are the features that most of them offer:
Manage multiple social networks
Schedule messages and tweets
Track brand mentions/keywords
Analyze social media traffic
Send automatic welcome DM�s to new Twitter followers
Twitter: Follow those who follow you automatically
Twitter: Unfollow those who unfollow you

Most of these tools have a free version or trial version, but to get the most benefits you would need the fee-based version. HubSpot has many more additional features and is a full marketing tool that offers social media tools, so if you want only a dedicated social media tool then consider the others, as HubSpot could be pretty pricey compared to the others.

URL SHORTENERS:
Bit.ly (http://bit.ly)
Goo.gl (http://goo.gl) (by Google)

URL shortening services allow you to shorten your URL�s to save space on status updates, but they also track your clicks and provide you with stats, such as location and referrers. Both bit.ly and goo.gl are free to use.

TWITTER TOOLS:
Twitter Feed (http://twitterfeed.com)
Twitter Feed allows you to use RSS feeds or ATOM feeds to post on your Twitter automatically. For example, you can automatically post Google news on a certain keyword to your Twitter account using Google RSS feeds. You can also specify how many posts you would like per 30 minutes or on an hourly basis.

Brand Chirp (http://www.brandchirp.com
Top Features:
Monitor Your Brand
Targeted Following
Mass Unfollow
RSS Feed Posting
Schedule Tweets

Tweet Adder (http://www.tweetadder.com)
This tool automates targeted twitter following and unfollowing.

TwitterLocal (http://www.twitterlocal.net)
TwitterLocal allows you to find posts by location. For example, specify a city name and a radius distance and you get a list of all recent tweets based on your criteria. You could then follow those twitters if you like and hopefully they will follow you back, so you can build a local following, if that is something you are looking for.

Twitbacks (http://www.twitbacks.com)
Twitbacks allows you to create a customized background for your Twitter account for free. If you are not savvy in graphic design or Photoshop, then this is the app for you.

OTHERS:
Rapprotive (http://www.rapprotive.com)
Rapprotive, which was recently purchased by Linkedin, is a plugin for Gmail. If you use Gmail then this is a must-use tool for you. It will display a panel on the right side of your emails with links to the social media profiles of the person you have received an email from. You can simply add or send them a friend request from within your Gmail.

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