Social media is a powerful entity in the world of online marketing and there are countless tools out there, both free and costly, that allow businesses and individuals to generate, manage, monitor and measure social media. The difficult part is determining which tools are right for your business, your marketing strategy, your sector and your staff. This is where Cubik comes in. Our social media team is constantly testing tools in order to make sure that our recommendations meet the changing needs of our clients.
What Are The Social Media Tools Recommended By Cubik?
Social tools form a fundamental part of any marketing campaign. You may come to Cubik for a comprehensive social consultation or a particular social media service and when you do the following six categories are likely to take priority.
Social Management Tools
Regularly referred to as social media dashboards, these tools are engineered to help users organise and maintain a number of accounts over a range of networks. Popular social management tools include Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, which allow users to manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on using a single dashboard.
Social Productivity Tools
Maintaining a social agenda can be time-consuming so it’s important to increase productivity where possible. If you automate certain social tasks like greeting new followers on Twitter, scheduling updates and identifying spammers using a tool such as Socialoomph then you can manage your time more effectively.
Social Influence Tools
Naturally, the field of social influence is equivocal and subject to change, but using social influence tools like Klout can help you measure just how influential your social presence appears to be. Klout scores a campaign out of 100 with the most influential obtaining higher scores. More than 35 Facebook and Twitter metrics are used to generate the final score.
Social Mobile Tools
Social media management is a round-the-clock task which means mobile access to certain tools is really important. Lots of online tools have mobile versions for popular devices like Android phones, iPhones and BlackBerrys, but you should keep compatibility in mind when choosing tools. It’s wise to familiarise yourself with mobile versions of Facebook, Analytics, Foursquare and WordPress for good social management.
Social Tracking Tools
It’s vital that you measure the achievements of your social media campaign at every step so that it can be adapted for greater efficacy. Many team members at Cubik are qualified in using Google Analytics and all our campaigns are subject to Analytics tracking codes. We also provide stats on clicks received by specific Facebooks posts and tweets by using URL shorteners for social networks which have restricted character counts and, crucially, can be comprehensively tracked.
Social Monitoring Tools
This particular category accounts for some of the more expensive social media tools out there. This is because it’s becoming increasingly important for businesses to monitor conversations in a bid to enhance their campaigns. Monitoring live conversations is possible within almost any kind of social platform, including forums, blogs, mainstream news, micromedia, images, video and Facebook. Radian6 is our monitoring tool of choice, but we’re happy to use Trackur, Sysomos, Social Mention, and even wider devices like Yahoo Pipes and Google Alerts.