One of the big themes of my Top New Social Media Tools from 2011
was the maturation of social networks like Google+, Instagram, and
Pinterest as well as the trend of automation to auto-creation.
As popular social networks continue to mature, gone are the days in
which we post something and hope that it “sticks” or becomes viral. We
can now take calculated risks and posting and sharing has become more
intelligent and efficient.
2012’s social media theme centers around metrics, analytics, and
tools that are helping us create deeper connections with consumers.
Content is the underlying current that many are trying to navigate more
successfully using the below list as their support team.
1. G+ Hangout On Air
If your friends still refuse to watch that interview show you have
been toiling away at for years on your local public access channel. I
might have a better option for you Garth.
With On Air you are now able to broadcast your Google+ Hangout to the
public via your Google+ profile, YouTube Channel and website.
After your hangout is over you can then share this video like any
other video. Even while the live hangout is going on, you can embed the
live broadcast, like any Youtube video, on your own website or blog.
Google+ hangouts are increasingly being used well by businesses and
are an easy opportunity to work video content into your business’s
content stable.
2. Little Bird
Every time an expert advises companies to “simply identify and build a
personal relationship the people who matter in your industry,” the
marketers responsible for making it happen think – easier said than
done.
After all, the democratization of media has created an infinite number of “potential influencers.”
A marketing or communications professional could spend all day every
day turning over rocks looking for relevant influencers.
Enter Little Bird, a new influencer search engine that analyzes the
social graph related to any given topic to help marketers not only
identify hyper-connected individuals, but also paves the way for
relationship-building by highlighting the most relevant blogs on the
subject.
Little Bird is still in private beta. Thanks to Joe Chernov, VP of marketing for Kinvey, for contributing this review.
3. Percolate
Many brands, when you ask if they have a brand voice, they will of
course say yes. Now if you ask them to actually explain that brand voice
in a short sentence or two, far fewer will tell you something that you
remember, and more likely will put you to sleep.
On social channels these days, the content we share on Facebook and
Twitter and elsewhere builds our brand voice, how consumer consider our
businesses, one piece at a time. Months and months of content builds up
in their grey matter until one day, your brand voice becomes bad memes
and cat photos.
Percolate helps brands define their brand voice with content. They
will put a face to your voice and then help create and curate the
content you need to maintain a consistent voice and an engaging
presence.
Percolate uses human intelligence certainly, but their software makes
it really interesting as it recommends content for brands, specifically
related to their voice and what the fans want to see and engage with.
The software organizes and suggests which content a company should be
sharing from existing assets and third party content available on the
web.
Their price point will only make the tool accessible to Fortune 500
brands and other large enterprises, but a great concept nonetheless.
4. Addvocate
Tired of pleading with your coworkers to help retweet that last
company announcement or asking them to “engage with the brand” more only
to see them keenly focused on sharing Lady Gaga’s latest fashion
choices every morning?
Addvocate is
a publishing and measuring platform for employee advocacy that can help
you win over your Lady Gaga fan and get your coworkers help with
lifting brand messages in social.
The service focuses on organizing your internal advocay efforts and
making it much easier for your coworkers to help share specific messages
that you and they both approve.
Any employee can suggest content directly from their browser
window and route it to their coworkers. And anyone using Addvocate can
pull up a list of approved messages while on Twitter or Facebook and
share which one they like best.
5. Sprout Social
If you ever get a little frustrated managing your company’s several
social channels and creating powerpoint reports about the weekly
progress on those various channels, Sprout Social might be able to help.
So put your therapy nunchucks down and breathe a little with me, ok?
Ok.
I spoke with a lot of social marketers who signed up their brands to
use Sprout Social this past year. It is a very robust social media
dashboard solution that allows scheduling post, queuing content from
multiple sources (mobile, email, social) and covers many of key features
businesses need to manage and grow their social presence across
channels.
Sprout Social integrates with Twitter, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn,
Foursquare, among many others. Beyond their publishing capabilities,
Sprout Social has a social inbox feature and “presentation ready”
reports that many of their users herald. And they also seem to have
found a pricing sweet spot that works well for small social teams.
6. Buffer Images to Facebook
Buffer has been on our list before. But this past year they added a
feature that makes sharing images to Facebook so easy, I had to share it
with you here.
Sharing images is the most engaging content strategy Facebook.
We’ve seen this supported with data several times. And while it is not a
hugely time sensitive task to share images on Facebook, logistically it
does take more time, effort and knowhow.
But now it is as easy to post an image to your Facebook profile or
page as it is to pin an image to Pinterest. Easier even. With Buffer,
when you use their Chrome extension, you can simply right click on any
image and share that image to Facebook.
It is a huge time savor and can take away any barrier to using a more engaging content type to up your Facebook results.
7. PostAcumen
Do you stalk your Facebook page competitors like a really bad private
investigator? Following too closely so they’ll clearly see you in their
rear view mirror? Dressing up as a garbage man and digging through
their trash?
Well, clearly you need help. Head home to live with mom for a few
months and let me know who takes over social for you while you are gone,
because boy do I have a tool for them.
PostAcumen (from the makers of EdgerankChecker) gives
you deep competitive intel. It finds what images are working best for
your page or your competitors, dives into industry focused reports,
compares pages side by side, and does a lot of it in real time. You can
figure out time of day, which status types work best, best historical
posts, and even which frequency of content is working best.
All that AND it is easy to consume. Their visual web reporting is easy on the eyes and quickly understood.
PostAcumen is a very impressive tool. And I don’t just throw that
description around like that stranger’s trash you ripped up on your
stakeout.
8. Netbase
You might think from their website that Netbase performs some kind of
Trivial Pursuit based brain surgery to help you with trivia night. But
it is way cooler than that.
(In all seriousness, they are “unlocking” your customer’s mind, pretty cool comic strip style illustration on their site)
If you are trying to figure out your customer’s purchase intent or
influence rankings, NetBase is your key. delivers tools and scorecards
that give market researchers and brand managers a reliable way to
understand online brand equity, analyze and compare consumer passion,
and generate deep insights that help marketing teams make smarter and
faster business decisions.
9. Mention
Ever use Google Alerts? I thought so.
Ever wish that Google would, I don’t know, pull Google alerts out of
whatever closet in the basement it has been running out of since 1999
and add a few features, spruce it up a bit? Me too.
Well, Mention has beat them to it, and in a big way.
Mention monitors your alerts and notifies you in real-time for
anything published on social networks, news sites, forums, blogs, and
webpages. Mention has many functionalities including the ability to
share your alerts with any user and assigning tasks to your team
members.
10. Tagstand
Tagstand is a one stop shop for Near Field Communications (NFC).
Using the Tagstand App, users can recreate repetitive task and associate
them with tags and activate their phone with a simple tap. So you can,
say, check in on Foursquare when you set your phone down on your desk,
or send out a Tweet every time you get home.
You press your phone to an NFC “tag” and control what action happens
through the web. So what a tag does today can change tomorrow.
For businesses, they serve a similar to QR codes, but more flexible. They are easier to use and can simply do more.
The one problem is that NFC enabled phones are not quite
yet pervasive. At least in the US. But the trend line is clear. If you
have a lot of tech savvy android users (or maybe just a bunch of Google
employees?) in your storefront each day, it might be worth testing out
today.
11. Facebook WordPress Plugin
WordPress is awesome because there are usually a dozen plugins for
anything you would need for your website or blog. WordPress will also
drive you a bit nuts, mainly because there are usually a dozen plugins
for anything you would need for your website or blog.
I’ve had to go through 3, 4, 5 different plugin installs looking for
the plugin that does what I want well, looks professional, and doesn’t
break.
Getting Facebook functionality on your WordPress site got a little
easier for those out there that are a little less tech savvy this past
year when Facebook released their own WordPress Plugin.
Some of the features include being able to add a like, send, and
subscribe button to every post to help your reader’s share content with
friends and a Recommendations Bar, helping your visitors discover
additional content on your site.
12. Unroll.me
Which is it 789 unread emails or 897 unread emails?
Unroll.me organizes your inbox by tidying up the mess left by all of
the unwanted subscriptions we all have become victim to. The ones that
you actually want to read?
Those are organized and sent to you in an organized overview.
Unroll.me is much more of a personal organization lift than a
business tool, but considering how many social media notifications you
probably get each day, it might be a huge aid in your productivity.
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