Since this is social networking strategy on your terms week, I feel it is only fitting to provide you with 8 labor saving social networking strategies and techniques to help you more effectively use social networking for your business. Especially, with today being Labor Day I believe that having the right social networking strategies will keep the work out of social netWORKing. Some of these tools are free and some have minimal costs to them. All are ones that I use, and a number of them I am affiliated with.
1. Tweet Adder- Tweet Adder helps you automate your Twitter Followings by systematically following new Twitter users based on a keyword list or looking at someone else that has the followers you are looking to gain yourself. You minimize this product and let it work for you, so you do not have to sit there and follow people for an hour every day. Update: 9-12-12 Hopefully at some point Tweet Adder will not be sued by Twitter. That Time Has Not Come As Of This Update.
2. SocialOomph-Is a social networking contact management system and Twitter Tracker Tool that helps you with everything you need for your social networking strategy from scheduling Twitter and Facebook post campaigns to blog posts to sending welcome messages to your new followers. The statistics and account management features on this program are tremendous for those with more than one Twitter account. Note: to incorporate your Blog and Facebook you do need to use the paid version.
3. Tweetdeck– Want to know what is going on in Twitter without sitting their all day scavenging for specific Tweets. Then you need to download Tweetdeck. You can create as many fields as you want of tweets containing relevant keywords and hashtags. Additionally, Tweetdeck allows you to follow, retweet, direct message, and reply directly from the program.
4. Aweber– Need to stay in contact with all of your followers over the long run? Then you need to have an automated response email campaign for your business. I use Aweber, but you can also use ConstantContact, GetResponse, or iContact. Whatever you do, make sure to save the double opt-in’s that you receive from prospects and at least once a month download your list to an excel spreadsheet for backup. Other than that, just let the leads come in automatically with this great program.
5. Google Alerts– Do you need to know what people are saying about your services, brand, company, and YOU? Then you might want to check into Google Alerts. Every few days I receive an email mentioning where different keywords about my business were mentioned. If someone is praising or hazing me on the internet I need to know about it, because there is a good chance my customers will Google me before doing business with me, so I need to know what they will find. On a side note, SocialOomph will send out daily @mention reply’s for my Twitter accounts. That way every time someone contacts me on my numerous Twitter accounts I will receive an email within 24 hours of that Tweet.
6. Feedburner-I love Feedburner, because it helps me in a number of ways. First, my subscribers can now receive daily doses of my blog without me having to constantly re-send emails telling them I wrote something new. Additionally, I use it with Twitterfeed (see below) to direct my blog posts to Twitter where it will inform my followers of what is going on.
7. Twitterfeed– As you probably inferred from number 6, Twitterfeed sends RSS feeds information to Twitter. I use it for blog posts, Ezine Articles, Youtube videos, content sites, and affiliate marketing. I no longer have to focus on creating tweets for numerous Twitter accounts.
8. Ping.fm- Ping is similar to SocialOomph. The one big difference is that you can not schedule posts, like on SocialOomph. At the same time you can send out posts to many more posts versus SocialOomph. Update: 9-12-12 Ping was bought out by Seesmic who in turn was bought out by Hootsuite.
Bonus: Use Onlywire.com and SocialMarker.com to get your blog posts easily spread out across the web.
With so many different options out there the key is to choose the social networking strategy that will free you from the daily work of social networking.
I have learned to use Google alerts extensively. Very helpful to keep up with trends in search words, searches pertaining to your site, etc. Don.
Don,
Google Alerts are great for search words. I have a number of them coming into my blackberry throughout the week, keeping me up to date on different topics related to my business. Thanks for the post!
Andy