Social Media Apps for Your Business

If you're like many businesses, you are probably realizing the huge potential that social media holds for your marketing efforts. Think of it as Word-of-Mouth 2.0: instead of hoping that people talk about and share information about your product after watching a commercial, you can directly make an announcement on the social network of your choice. You can then use the analytics tool of your choice to determine its impact. 

What are the different tools that businesses may need to maximize their social media marketing company efforts? Here are a few suggestions.

Hootsuite

If you want to centralize your posting activity on different social media networks, a good tool to go for is Hootsuite. A Hootsuite account can be linked to different social networks and groups within social networks: you can link it to your Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ accounts. You can also use it to post to specific groups or pages within LinkedIn or Facebook, and posts can be scheduled in advance according to your preferred timezone. A Free Hootsuite account lets you link to 5 social networks, but you can get more by upgrading to Basic and Enterprise accounts. There are also other opt-in services you can get, like building project teams and social media analytics.

Mention

If you're more concerned with hearing how your brand or company is mentioned, you will likely want to use the app Mention. You can enter a keyword of your choice into the app, and it will scan different social networks for mentions of that keyword. If you happen to see a mention that is specifically relevant to your business and would like to react to it, you can leave a reply or a comment; you can even pass it on by retweeting or reposting within the application itself. Like Hootsuite, it has a trial version but can be upgraded to a paid account to access expanded or additional features.

Woobox

A third app that you can use, particularly if you have a Facebook page, is Woobox. It's an application that lets you put additional tabs on your Facebook page. What does that mean? Instead of just the default sections like Photos, Likes, and About Us, you can put other tabs like an SEO tab (lets you publish a mirror of your website within Facebook). Depending on the account you get, you can also add sweepstakes, coupons, photo contests and more.

There are other ways for you to maximize your social media marketing. But if you don't want to go through the hassle yourself, you'll likely want to engage the services of a professional social media marketing consultant or social media marketing company.