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For all the wonderful things social media can do for your business, a lot of our clients do have one tiny complaint: they just don't have enough time to update their own profiles and content, much less pay attention to what's going on in the social networking universe.
That's not a very good excuse for failing to get the most out of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. After all, few of the other activities you're going to do in a workday could potentially open you up to tens of millions of new customers, and using social networking sites tends to be as much fun as it is work. Still, for those of you who are hanging on to a lack of time as your reason for not getting involved, we're going to fill you in on something important – it's getting even easier to stay on top of your social media marketing...
All you need are the right tools.
There are lots of new websites and applications out there that can help you manage your social profiles, search new content, and even keep track of all kinds of analytics. If you are new to social media tools, however, there are two in particular you should definitely check out:
HootSuite (http://hootsuite.com) is a social media hub, allowing you to create a dashboard from which you can monitor all your social accounts from one place. Whether you're on a desktop, or connecting to the Internet via a smart phone, it's a great way to keep an eye on your stats, customers, and everything else from one convenient location.
TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com) is a similar service with a slightly different layout and feature set. It has better Facebook and LinkedIn integration, and also allows you to add video to your profiles more easily, but doesn't offer quite as much in the way of metrics and reporting.
Which one is right for you and your business? That's tough to say. Since they both do the same kinds of things, but in a slightly different way, why not try them both and see which one is a better fit? Regardless of whether you prefer HootSuite, TweetDeck, or one of their lesser-known competitor's, one thing will be clear: you just ran out of excuses not to make the most of social media marketing.
