Social Media Tools

There are literally thousands of tools available to help individuals and businesses create, manage, monitor and measure social media; some of them are free and some are quite costly. So, how do you decide which tools are going to suit your industry, your campaigns or even your employees? Well, the social media team at Just Search have tested and will continue to test tools, so that our recommendations can be tailored to best suit our clients’ needs.

Which social media tools do Just Search recommend?

Whether you are looking for a specific social media service, or just an all-round consultation from Just Search, then we will always incorporate the use of social tools as an integral part of any campaign or strategy. These tools can be broadly broken down into six main areas:

Social management tools

These tools are often known as social media dashboards and are designed to allow a user to manage several accounts across different networks. Two of the most popular are Hootsuite and Tweetdeck and they give a user the ability to manage Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more through one interface.

Social influence tools

Social influence is by its very nature quite ambiguous but there are tools out there which can offer some clarity. Klout has become the standard for online influence, giving users a score from 1 to 100; the higher the score denotes a greater sphere of influence. This particular tool uses over 35 different metrics from Facebook and Twitter to calculate the score.

Social productivity tools

There are certain tasks when running social media campaigns that can be quite time consuming but are definitely necessary, like sending greeting messages to new Twitter followers, vetting who you follow or fan for spammers and scheduling updates. Tools like Socialoomph can automate some of these tasks, thus freeing up your time.

Social mobile tools

Managing social media is a 24/7 job, so it’s widely accepted that to do it well requires some tools that are accessible via the mobile web. Most of the popular online tools now have mobile versions for iPhones, Androids and BlackBerrys, etc. and compatability is worth considering when choosing from any of the other tool categories. Some of the more popular mobile tools are Facebook, Foursquare, Analytics and WordPress, and so becoming familiar with them is must when managing a campaign.

Social monitoring tools

Monitoring and listening to conversations is becoming more and more important to every business and this is possibly why this category contains some of the most expensive tools. Depending on your budget it is possible to monitor live conversations from virtually any form of social media; blogs, micromedia, forums, mainstream news, video, images and Facebook. The social media team at Just Search predominantly use a tool called Radian6 but also use Sysomos, Trackur, Social Mention and even broader tools like Google Alerts and Yahoo Pipes.

Social tracking tools

Measuring the success of your social media activity is a must as a business and so tracking tools play an important part. At Just Search we have many Google Analytics qualified staff and we employ Analytics tracking code throughout our client campaigns. We also use trackable URL shorteners for social networks with limited character counts, giving clients statistics on number of clicks on a particular tweet or Facebook post.

To find out more about how social media tools can benefit your business, call one of our experts now on 08451211194 or fill out a contact form.