5 Social Media Management Tools and Services You May Not Know About Yet (But Should)

If you follow my writing, you know that I love introducing people to new things. There’s nothing I enjoy more than getting comments from readers on how they had never heard of something, but can’t wait to try it. In this post, I’d like to introduce you to five social media tools and services I have mentioned in posts this year that have elicited that reaction and what you can (and should) be doing with them.

Be sure to click to enlarge the images for a better preview!

1. KnowEm

Have you ever visited @Apple on Twitter? While the account has 31.9k followers, it doesn’t actually belong to the Apple that we know and love.

If you’re in the process of creating a brand, don’t make the mistake of creating one that you can’t claim on social media. KnowEm is a free tool you can use to check and see if your name, business name, product name, etc. is available on social media.



Not only will you be able to quickly see which networks you can establish your name upon, but you will also discover over 500 social networks. They are broken into categories including blogging, bookmarking, business, community, design, entertainment, health, information, microblogging, music, news, photo, tech, travel, and video.

2. $99 Social

You know you need a social media presence, but if you’re time-starved like many of us, even the best tools won’t help you keep things under control. Especially considering there are so many social networks that you “must” be a part of to reach your audience.

$99 Social is a social media management company based in the US in my former hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. For $99 a month, they will post an update to your Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ profile or page once a day, seven days a week. In addition, they will also promote your products and services to to your social communities and optimize your profiles to appear in social search.



As a busy freelancer, I know how hard it is to get even one update a week to some of my social profiles. This service will ensure that your main social profiles never go dry again. And of course, the less time you have to spend worrying about keeping your social profiles maintained with quality content, the more you time you can spend simply engaging with people.

3. Oktopost

For those who have time to dedicate to social media, Oktopost is a powerful social media management tool at an affordable price. You can use Oktopost to publish updates to your main social profiles including your Facebook profile, Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn company page, Twitter profile, and Google+ page. But what I love in particular about their platform is that you can schedule posts to the Facebook and LinkedIn groups you belong to. They even provide analytics so you can see engagement statistics for each profile, page, and group that you post to.



This tool is an absolute must for content promotion. In the case of Facebook and LinkedIn groups, be sure that you have taken the time to get to know the group to ensure that link sharing posts are welcome. When you do post content to the groups that allow it, be sure to review the analytics for each campaign to make sure your posts are getting published and receiving engagement. Use that data to weed out groups that aren’t engaging with your content, especially if you’re near your group membership limits (300 for Facebook and 50 for LinkedIn).

4. RivalIQ

Competitors can be a great resource when forming your social media strategy. Rival IQ allows you to analyze your competitor’s social media strategy. For example, you can quickly see your social media profile bios compared to your competitors.



You can get insights into how your social media activity, engagement, and audience growth compares to your competitors. You can even get alerted to changes competitor’s make to their social profiles. Soon, they will have a feature that allows you to see the top Twitter mentions for you and your competitors based on total reach.

5. Cyfe

Do you do the rounds across your social media networks to check to see if you have new fans, followers, likes on your posts, and so forth? The more social networks you belong to, the longer it will take. Cyfe simplifies this process by allowing you to create a dashboard with all of your social media analytics on one screen. Click on the below image to get a full view of just a portion of my social media dashboard.



Using this dashboard, I can get all of the data I want to know in a quick glance. If logging into Cyfe is too much to add to your plate, you can simply have your dashboard emailed to you on a regularly scheduled basis. Add in widgets for your website’s Google Analytics, keyword rankings, SEO stats, and other data, and you can monitor your business in one screen or PDF!







http://kikolani.com/5-social-media-management-tools-services-may-know-yet.html