When large corporations like General Motors, eBay, and others shift their marketing efforts toward social media to increase their ROI, there's a lesson for every social media marketer here. 2013 is shaping up to be like nothing we've seen before, and a big part of it stems from an explosion in social media marketing.
It's clear that social media engagement is the key to a sustained following, interest, and greater ROI. Social media is an extension of a person's life; creating engagement at this level is the easiest way to market your idea, product, service, or website.
Managing Social Media Efforts
Like
most aspects of online marketing, from search
engine optimization to proper web
hosting and pay-per-click
marketing, social media marketing demands its own discipline. Without proper
metrics to guide you, targets to be achieved, or measurements that provide
valuable insights, any social media effort can easily become a negative-ROI initiative.
We've come a long way since the time when "social media marketing" meant simply having a Facebook and Twitter account and occasionally posting links to your own blog content. These channels remain the largest sources of engagement, but the possibilities have expanded considerably with services like Google+, App.net, Quora, etc. Social media management is now a scientific process where you should be as much concerned about the metrics as you are about the quality of engagement.
With the Right Tools...
To help media marketers manage multiple social profiles, engagement, relationship building, and other efforts, there are myriad tools to consolidate all your social profiles into a single dashboard. This makes your job easier by eliminating the need to worry about switching between multiple tabs and windows every time you need to post a link, reply to someone, retweet something, or perform any other social activity.
There's a huge and growing number of web services that do will do this, but not all of them are great. I put together the following list of services based on a few key features that are vital:
1.
SproutSocial
Has
a neat mobile interface, too
2.
Sendible
3.
Gremln
4.
Buffer
5.
Dlvr.it
7.
Socialoomph
8.
Yoono
9.
Bottlenose
10.
Socialmotus
Apps like Simplify360 and Socialite are desktop-based clients that work natively instead of through browsers. Jetpack.me is a Wordpress plugin which lets you control your posts to social media from within your Wordpress account.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. As the emphasis on social media marketing increases, more startups built around social media management and measurement are sure to crop up. For now, the competition is robust, offering social media marketers and managers plenty of options.
|
Jayson DeMers is the founder & CEO of AudienceBloom, a Seattle-based content marketing & social media agency. You can contact him on LinkedIn, Google+, or Twitter.
Search marketing information for small business owners.
Fetching the best small business news.
A friendly place to share small business ideas and knowledge.
Small business support through education, resources and community
The directory of the best small business sites and tools.
Copyright © 1998 - 2019 Search Engine Guide All Rights Reserved. Privacy
FreeFind Site Search Engine - FreeFind adds a "search this site" feature to your website, making your site easier to use. FreeFind also gives you reports showing what your visitors are searching for, enabling you to improve your site. FreeFind's advanced site search engine and automatic site map technology can be added to your website for free.
Buy UPC Codes
Get your products listed online!