5 Tools Everyone in Social Media Should Be Using

By Ben Harper at Social Media Today:

Social media is becoming more and more of a data game in 2014.  Those in the know can optimize and dominate those who aren't running their campaigns in a data-led way.  Combine this with the ever increasing usage of social, the fragmentation of audience by platform, and the trend towards paid reach on some platforms and many social media managers will be at a loss as to how to manage their social presence in a sensible way.  Fear not though, we've put together a handy guide on 5 of the tools that everyone in social media should be using to help you survive and thrive in an ever-expanding marketplace!


Socialbakers (www.socialbakers.com)

Socialbakers are a company providing a whole suite of tools, including listening, posting and ad analytics.  However, their key tool is Socialbakers Analytics.  This tool allows you to compare your social profiles to your key competitors, seeing all publicly available social metrics alongside each other.  This allows you to benchmark your performance versus the competition & in the market, and see which parts of your content strategy are performing best, allowing you to optimise your content accordingly.

The ability to fully use data to optimise your content is really helpful, and allows you to consistently deliver better results from each Tweet & Facebook post based on your learnings.


Kuhcoon Ads (www.kuhcoon.com)

This tool is a relatively new one that we've started using here at Datify.  Kuhcoon is a tool that allows you to create, manage and monitor your ads, but the key point here is that you can do all of this from your iOS device.  About 70% of social media usage from the social media manager perspective is on mobile, however the one element we have struggled to control when on the go is advertising management.  Kuhcoon Ads solves this problem with a handy app that allows you to monitor campaigns on the go in terms of their performance, and pause and restart adverts and campaigns from your smartphone.

This means no more having to drag the laptop out at home to double-check how things are going and is a real time saver.

TweetDeck (tweetdeck.twitter.com)

TweetDeck has been around for a number of years now, but is still one of the top 5 tools that I believe everyone should be using for their Twitter management.  TweetDeck allows you to pull in all of your accounts, organise columns to track various keyword terms that are appearing in other Tweets and track competitors feeds.

Another advantage of TweetDeck is that you can schedule content for different dates and times for your profiles, to allow you to build out your content calendar quickly and easily.

For interacting with customers and people who may potentially be interested in your services, TweetDeck is an amazing free options that allows you multiple options.


Optimal Social (www.optimalsocial.com)

Optimal Social is a really interesting tool that I'd definitely recommend everyone checking out.  Optimal run an advertising optimisation platform, but the most interesting part of their tool is the Analytics section.  This area allows you to start in depth audience analysis by searching for people who like and dislike certain topics, by location and by platform.  Searching for those who like 'football' for instance shows you the total potential reach, the gender split, and what else those people are interested in.

Graphics like the above show the kind of insight it can pull out in terms of income of people who like different brands, and there is a real wealth of data in the platform to explore.  Some elements are paid, but there is plenty of data in the tool that can be found for free that will come in handy for your planning and strategy.


Topsy (www.topsy.com)

Topsy is a massively useful tool for social listening purposes.  Topsy is a relatively cheap tool to use the full social analytics section.  This allows you to search for multiple keywords over specified date ranges.  From this you can graph the Twitter mention data, and see sentiment scores.

Topsy is also great for link tracking when you have a blog post or other content that is being shared widely - the free version of Topsy allows you keep a track of this very easily so that you respond on Twitter as required.

There are literally thousands of social media tools that are worth investigating these days; however, the above five are all essentials that you must have in your locker ready to use when you need them.  They make our job a lot easier here, and I'm sure they will for you too.

Apple Buys Twitter Analytics Company Topsy

Apple has acquired the social media analytics startup Topsy.

The acquisition was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which says the deal was worth more than $200 million.

Topsy is one of the few services that has access to Twitter's data firehose. It offers users a way to analyze tweets, gather sentiment and measure the reach of a campaign, hashtag or message. In September, the company rolled out the ability to search Twitter's entire archive.


Read the full story >>

#Topsy Indexes Every Tweet, Makes Them All Searchable

Why are other companies always making Twitter features better than Twitter does? This is especially true for search. I don’t know if you recall Twitter Search from a few years ago, but it was pretty bad. The company knew this, so it bought Summize, which was doing a much better job at allowing users to search Twitter.

Since then, Twitter has made numerous improvements to search, but it still hasn’t been perfect. Now, Topsy aims to one up Twitter in search, as it has announced that it has indexed every tweet back to the first one from Jack Dorsey, and made them searchable. You can start your searching at Topsy.com.

The company writes on its blog:

Topsy has always been great for helping brands, agencies, and consumers extract meaningful signals from the social media noise. And today, we’re making a good thing even better.

Topsy.com, Topsy Pro, and Topsy APIs now offer the entire history of public tweets on Twitter, dating back to the first-ever tweet by Jack Dorsey in March 2006. (Want to check it out for yourself? Visit Topsy.com to try it free, or set up a free 14-day trial of Topsy Pro to try out our most advanced tools for discovery, metrics, and insights.)

Read the full story >>

5 Advanced Twitter Tips for Your Small Business

By Alex Fitzpatrick at Mashable:  
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

So you’re running a small business and you’ve got the basics of social networking mastered: You tweet often, you’ve created a venue on Foursquare and your Facebook Page is beautiful. How do you move to the next level of social marketing mastery?
Devin Desjarlais, social media manager at Max Borges Agency, has five can’t-miss tips for upping your Twitter game.

1. Don’t Schedule and Split

Scheduling tweets with a platform such as HootSuite or Tweetdeck can be a great way to spread out your business’ social sharing throughout the day. However, Desjarlais says that it’s important to pay attention to any responses your scheduled tweets may elicit — the follow-up conversation is just as important as the initial tweet, if not more.
“The key to attracting a following on Twitter is to engage with users,” Desjarlais says. “Hootsuite is a free platform that allows companies to schedule tweets for all accounts in one place. That means that you won’t have to spend all day planning the next 140 characters to publish. However, check back hourly to see who has tweeted back at you. Twitter users have a short attention span, so it’s important to respond as quickly as possible.”

2. Sit in the Stream

Get familiar with platforms that let you build streams around phrases or hashtags relevant to your company. That way, you’ve always got your ear to the social ground.
“Hashtags are an excellent way to track conversation about a specific topic,” Desjarlais says. “With Hootsuite, companies can create streams that track a specific hashtag, giving the account manager an easy way to find content and engage with other tweeters. For example, if your company makes custom guitars, you might want to follow a stream dedicated to the #music hashtag.”

3. Don’t Rely on Your Handle

It’s the mark of a successful social company to have plenty of customers tweeting at you or about you using your Twitter handle, but you can’t rely on all users to do that. If you’re only listening for tweets mentioning @BobsBurgerShack, for example, you’ll miss out on a tweet such as, “Man, I wish Bob’s Burger Shack had relish!”

The solution? Enhanced listening techniques.

“Topsy.com is a little-known website that lets users do real-time searches in the social web,” Desjarlais explains. “Do daily searches for your company’s name and narrow the search results to just tweets to see who is talking about your company but not @-mentioning you.” Or you can save searches for some key terms and common permutations of your company name, such as “Bobs burger” and “Bobs cheeseburger.”

4. Don’t Be a Social Egomaniac

While the majority of your tweets will probably be about your business, it’s important to develop a personality beyond tweeting out discounts or new menu options. It’s all about building a human personality.
“The last thing a company wants to do is spam their followers with tweets,” she says. “Twitter is about sharing ideas, information and occasionally inspirational quotes in order to build a community around what the business offers. Try to tweet at least five times per day and dedicate one or two of those tweets to sending users back to your company’s website. Schedule those posts between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. EST on the weekdays for the most engagement.”

5. Stay on Track

Determining the return on investment of social networking can be a real challenge, especially for smaller businesses that don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to complex analytics. Desjarlais says free tools are available to make that task just a bit easier.

“The URL shortener Bitly lets users create shortened links for any URL available online,” says Desjarlais. “Sign up for a free Bitly account and create custom Bitly links or ‘bitmarks’ that can be used whenever you send users back to your company’s website. To see how many people have clicked the link, simply paste the URL with a ‘+’ at the end into your Internet browser to see up-to-date metrics.”