Fortunately for all of us, along with the growth of social media, tools have been developed to make social media marketing for business easy. Without them, our day would have to be spent tweeting and wall-posting and blogging, instead of attending to our businesses.
In Chapter Thirteen of my upcoming book, Thumbonomics: The Essential Business Roadmap for Social Media & Mobile Marketing, I give a comprehensive list of all the productivity tools that we recommend. These tools allow you to monitor exactly what is happening online, help you rapidly build your community, and easily feed that community with highly relevant content.
From Thumbonomics, Chapter Thirteen:
“When we took Keegan Gerhard (owner of the Denver restaurant, D Bar, and judge of the Food Network Challenge) on as a client, he was lucky enough to already have a huge fan base. Not only did he have nationwide fans who watched him on television, but also many locals here in Denver who absolutely love his dessert and wine bar.
Although he had this burgeoning fan base, he was neglecting them. Our goal was to allow Keegan to engage with this fan base in a meaningful way—but one that didn’t require him to sit hours a day at his computer. After all, he’s a busy chef and TV host, not a computer geek.
We made his social media program simple, yet fully authentic–by automating it.”
Today, we are going to get up close and personal with one of my favorite automation tools for a social media marketing campaign—HootSuite, the social media dashboard. Here at the Findability Group, we write all of our tweets and wall posts a month in advance. This gives us a coherent program designed for specific goals, as opposed to randomly making them up as we go along. Then we go into HootSuite.com http://hootsuite.com/ and schedule them, perhaps four a day–early morning, mid-morning, lunchtime, and mid-afternoon.
HootSuite allows you to spread out your social media communication to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and various other social networks all from its easy-to-use dashboard. When you log onto their easy to use “dashboard”, you can watch everyone who is talking about you on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media portals. Using HootSuite to automate your posting lets everyone get back to work. As the folks at HootSuite like to say, “Save your time and save your sanity.”
Great HootSuite features include:
v Custom analytics reports, so you can track brand sentiment, follower growth, and even integrate Google Analytics. Show everyone in your company the proof that your social media efforts are a success in black and white.
v Mobile technology, with free apps for your iPhone/ iPad, BlackBerry or Android mobile device.
v Custom “search streams” allow you to monitor brand mentions, industry key words, competitor names and industry trends, allowing you to rapidly adjust your marketing tactics to keep pace.
A basic account on HootSuite is free; there is also an inexpensive “pro” version with even more great features. Check out HootSuite.com’s terrific series of instructional videos on how to use their technology to organize your social media campaigns.http://learn.hootsuite.com/hootsuite-university-video
Stay tuned for more sneak previews of Thumbonomics.