Social Media has evolved from a niche tool to a widely adopted communication media for brands, customers and prospects. Search Engines are using clicks from social media links as one of the ranking signals that decides how your web page rank for certain keywords. It is important that you see the value of social media beyond SEO.
Why should you use Social Media?
Trend Monitoring: Social Media is highly effective to get the latest trends or widely discussed topics in your industry. Monitor the topics discussed by your prospect, partners, customers and advertisers. Can give a unique insight on the same topic? If you can, then start creating articles that will answer some of the questions asked by your market.
Engage with the Market: Most of the time, prospects will ask direct questions about your industry. This is a great opportunity for you to interact and engage with the prospect. Solve the prospect’s problem with your articles or your services. Don’t sell your products/services directly. Focus on their problem first and give your expert advice. If they find your advice/articles useful then suggest your services.
Customer Service: Although Email is still effective in maintaining a solid relationship with your customers, B2C markets have seen customers using social media for communication. It is easy to use, has a direct reach (you don’t have to worry about Junk Folder) and the interaction is public (brands don’t want to risk being projected as a slacker when it comes to customer service).
There are many paid and free social media monitoring and influence measuring tools. These tools will help you monitor mentions of your brand/keywords and your influence in the market. Here are our top 5 picks:
1. Socialseek
Socialseek enables any kind of brand, including companies, celebrities, sports teams, universities and more, to provide one web destination for customers and fans that combine all social activity and web content, making it easier to engage a brand’s audience and for fans to stay abreast of news of their favorite brands.
Klout allows users to track the impact of their opinions, links and recommendations across your social graph. Data is collected about the content users create, how people interact with that content and the size and composition of their networks. Klout identifies influencers and provides tools for influencers to monitor their influence.
HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard. Launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audience, and distribute targeted messages using HootSuite’s unique social media dashboard. Streamline team workflow with scheduling and assignment tools and reach audiences with geo-targeting functionality. Invite multiple collaborators to manage social profiles securely, plus provide custom reports using the comprehensive social analytics tools for measurement. Key social network integrations include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and new Google+ Pages, plus a suite of social content apps for YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr and more.
Addictomatic is a Free, user friendly and free web application that collects information from all major social and news sites for a given search word and displays in a nice looking user interface.
Social Mention is a social media search platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information.It allows you to easily track what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web's social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.
If you want us to help you pick the best social media monitoring tool, contact us or you can call us at: India (Ph): +91 9497189032, UK (Ph): +44 (0)20-3371-9976 or US (Ph): +1 650-491-0004
ByteFive provides comprehensive Internet Marketing Services and Training in Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing (PPC Campaign Creation, Management and Optimization), Developing processes and best practices for Internet Marketing, Managing and Analyzing Web Analytics, Landing page Optimization, E-Mail Newsletter Management, Competitor Research, Content Creation and Content Marketing.