10 Social Media Tools to be Grateful For

If you’re managing a brand’s Social Media campaign, chances are you are doing more than just focusing on one individual channel.  As the importance of Social Media has continued to grow over the past couple of years, so has the amount of tools and websites that exist to help brands manage and track their Social Media initiatives.  Individuals managing multiple Social Media accounts are increasingly relying on these tools to help with their Social Media campaigns. Given the fact that there are thousands of Social Media tools out there, it can make for an overwhelming experience in determining which ones to use on a regular basis. With Thanksgiving approaching I thought I’d share 10 Social Media tools (in no particular order) that I’m personally grateful for.

1. Radian6 – There are many listening tools out there, but Radian6 is, in my opinion, is the best in the market.  Seeing what’s being said about your brand is important, but Radian6 allows you to dive deeper than this and analyze a variety of metrics including sentiment, influencers, media source, keywords associated with your brand, and more.  Radian6 is extremely beneficial in obtaining an accurate pulse of what’s being said about your brand, industry, and competition in the Social Media landscape.
2. Dlvr.it – An essential (free) tool for individuals who frequently promote a blog or other publication via an RSS.  Dlvr.it allows users to distribute any RSS feed to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and more.  Anytime the RSS source is updated with new content, it will automatically publish the content to the predetermined destinations. As opposed to other RSS publishers like Twitterfeed, Dlvr.it’s feeds are clean (they don’t post article titles over and over again to fill up the character limit) and provide a variety of different analytical information such as clicks, location of clicks, virality of posts, and more.  The website includes other features such as automatic hashtag integration within posts.
3. Involver Static HTML – The death of Static FBML spawned a new (and better) tool by Involver called “Static HTML.” With Involver’s Static HTML, you can easily create a custom Facebook tab using HTML or SML (Involver’s own code). For those with limited coding knowledge, Static HTML allows you to directly upload a picture from your computer as a custom tab for Facebook.  Additionally, with Static HTML, you can offer content that differs for fans and non-fans of the page.
4. TweetDeck – Considered one of the best Twitter platforms in the market (alongside Hootsuite), TweetDeck makes it easy to manage multiple Twitter accounts. With TweetDeck, users can see the interactions that are taking place with a Twitter account (in real-time) and monitor other activity such as keyword phrases within tweets.  What I especially like about TweetDeck is the ability to set alerts to receive a notification each time new activity takes place within the platform (new reply, new direct message, etc.).  TweetDeck can be a huge timesaver for those who manage multiple Twitter accounts.
5. Bit.ly – Bit.ly is currently the most utilized URL shortener and with good reason. URL shorteners are especially important for websites such as Twitter where there is a character limitation of 140 per tweet. What makes bit.ly standout from other URL shorteners is their analytics platform (i.e. clicks / bit.ly link), customization (the ability to create custom bit.ly URLs), and also, with bit.ly pro, the ability to create a URL shortener link of your own.
6. SocialOomph – SocialOomph, formerly known as Tweetlater, allows brands to schedule posts for their Social Media channels to publish at a later date.  There are many tools that already do this (i.e. Hootsuite), but SocialOomph also includes an array of additional features such as analytics (click summary, Twitter follower trends, etc.), the ability to see which followers of yours have the most “clout,” and a functionality to have scheduled tweets recur. SocialOomph can be a big timesaver for Twitter and Facebook page managers.
7. TabPress – For those looking to build a more comprehensive Facebook tab than what Involver’s Static HTML allows, there’s TabPress. TabPress allows users to easily integrate any website or HTML as a custom tab on Facebook.  While you can iFrame a webpage onto a Facebook tab using Facebook’s developer platform, TabPress does this in a more simplistic and expedited fashion. As with Involver’s Static HTML, you can create content for both fans and non-fans of a page.
8. North Social – North Social provides a suite of applications for brands on Facebook. As opposed to Wildfire which can cost $5,000 per white label application, North Social provides pricing from $19.99 to $149.99 per month that provides access to all applications. North Social allows brands to also customize each application using CSS. For brands looking for a turnkey solution to Facebook tabs, North Social provides a lot of value.
9. Facebook Insights – Facebook recently upgraded their analytics platform, Insights, for the better.   While the number of “likes” related to a fan page is important, it doesn’t necessarily portray how successful a fan page is. The new and improved Insights provides marketers with a lot of valuable information for their fan page that focuses specifically on engagement metrics. With Insights, brands can see which types of posts are the most successful, page trends over the past day, week, and month, various demographical information related to engaged users and fans, and more. While Insights still has a long way to go before it can compare to comprehensive analytics programs such as Omniture and Google Analytics, the improvement that it has seen over the past few weeks makes it essential part of tracking success on Facebook.
10. Disqus – Disqus makes blog commenting a more social and overall interactive experience for blog readers.  Disqus allows readers to comment on posts by either logging in from their Disqus account or from a Social Media channel such as Facebook, Twitter, and more. Disqus also stands out from other blog commenting platforms due to its extensive community features such as the ability to comment on mobile websites, liking and sharing individual comments, a decrease in spam activity, the ability to customize with CSS, and more.