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Free Twitter and Facebook Tools for Social Media Management

June 19, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

In a previous blog post titled Twitter Tools You May Not Be Able to Live Without, we covered several tools that could quickly become vital management elements in your social sharing toolbox. However, that post was just a month short of a full year ago and in the digital world, we know things progress quickly. There have been some new tools presented that may offer management options that simply were not available a year ago. Here are a few tools you may want to add, rearrange, or organize your social media management toolbox around.

Commun.it

Commun.it is a revolutionary tool that was designed for individuals or businesses that have a need to connect with their fans, followers, or consumers with a more efficient user interface than previously similar tools.

Manage Twitter Accounts Easily

Commun.it handles the ominous task that diving your followers into appropriate categories can be when your account begins to amass a larger following than is easily handled manually. It can divide them into helpful categories that can help users be more direct with their specific messages for different types of followers.

New Leads – Commun.it’s system can help users find new leads to follow by locating any who mention your site or retweet one of your messages through a currently disconnected fan or follower. Anyone not in your current network who shares your content should show up on Commun.it’s user-friendly dashboard with one-click options to follow, retweet, reply, or favorite their posts.

Engaged Fans – These are the followers you will already have a fairly high level of connectivity with based on the number of direct messages between you, replies to your posts, mentions or retweets.

Influencers – Although you are unlikely to know it without the help of Commun.it, your list of influencers will have shown some previous level of communication with you in the past. Gaining allies in those who have already been supportive of your shared media in the past is quite the easy task with Commun.it’s helpful and suggestive dashboard features.

Supporters – Those who are already among your followers and have the tendency to happily retweet or otherwise share your messages or content via linking. Although supporters do not often engage directly with you, they are a highly valuable commodity on any Twitter account.

Commun.it also shows users the level of engagement with any given follower. The dashboard features will display how many replies, retweets or direct messages have been exchanged between the followers account and your own. In many cases, users can miss out on those highly valuable exchanges and fail to follow those who engage them directly by sharing content. Commun.it will even show you those who have shared your posts without mentioning you by name or @mention.

Check out how BuildMeAnEmpire is utilizing Commun.it as a Twitter tool to help find leads for your business.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb_Hd-cRFXA]

Crowdbooster

Crowdbooster can make managing your social media accounts incredibly easy. Easy to integrate with Twitter and Facebook, Crowdbooster allows users

to really get in tune with how social media and sharing is working for them or their businesses. Using Crowdbooster will help users understand how effective Tweets or Facebook shares are faring on the world wide web. Crowdbooster has a user-friendly graphical interface that displays graphs that allow even the business owner with little knowledge of analytics a basic understanding of how their content is being accepted, shared, and otherwise promoted.

Take a look at this video below to get a closer look at Crowdbooster.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QcSjnhr7LGU]

c/o forbes.com

Crowdbooster allows users to:

Manage multiple accounts on Facebook and Twitter to gain a more robust view of marketing efforts on one centralized tool.
Gain deep insight into their audience by engaging and interacting with those who have the most influence in your sphere. Using these insights will allow users to build on and maintain brand awareness for their products or services.
Understand and gain follower and fan growth. Learn how tracking long-term engagement on your social media platforms can give you the knowledge and experience you need to learn to drive more growth to your current community.

Crowdbooster does so much more, so if you are looking for a great user-friendly system that manages social media smoothly, it is definitely an option worth looking into.

Author:

@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.

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Real-Time Monitoring for Facebook Analytics

June 5, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

With new updates kicking off on Facebook left and right hopefully you haven’t missed the opportunity they have presented to take advantage of real-time monitoring of your webpage statistics and demographics. One of their newest tools is in fact, the Real-Time Monitor for Facebook analytics. Whereas before the updates seemed to arrive on an irregular basis, they have built new post level analytics that give user’s the answers they are looking for, updated, around every 5 minutes.

This has phenomenal impact for those who wanted to more closely monitor how specific posts fared, or even gauge how fans reacted to content, contest, questions and more social communication options in real-time and ask they occur. Although the new tool is currently in beta and free for Pro users, it is worth keeping an eye on for when it makes its to public release. Currently, the beta tool requires users to remain within that tool in order for them to collect the metrics and share the data in real-time, but they have plans to expand further on this functionality, hopefully with more flexibility, in the future.

What Can You Monitor with the Real-Time Tool?

You will be able to filter by a variety of metrics including, but not limited to:

Unique Impressions
Paid Impressions
Total Impressions
Organic Impressions
Viral Impressions
Total Engagement
Shares, Likes, Comments, Clicks and Virality

Users will be able to monitor all of the active posts on the pages they administrate. The filter options are flexible and can be viewed as Change in Values or Total Values. This will offer marketers a unique perspective on how their content is trending in real-time.

c/o EdgeRank

Negative Feedback Posts

If you notice a trend that indicates an individual post is beginning to accrue more than average negative feedback, you may want to consider remove the post to help reduce damage to your average EdgeRank. This can also help your page to maintain the strongest possibility for a high-end EdgeRank.

“Virality”

Everyone knows that your content or media has a chance at going viral on a social media network. They are famous for this on a daily basis. You will now be able to view previously unseen real-time analysis of the viral lift to each piece of content you release. Users can then study how viral, organic, and paid impressions begin to interact with the content to create even further viral marketing opportunities.

Recent Posts

Users can monitor the individual performance and status of the most recent post by viewing impressions, clicks, engagement, and even negative feedback in real-time. Brand management can easily use this vital information to identify and cultivate the performance of each post to the fullest or manage damage control by pulling those negatives out quickly when needed.

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SignMyPad – the PDF Document and Signature Solution

June 4, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

SignMyPad is a great app that is perfect for those in the sales industry, or those practicing law or real estate transactions. It allows users to fill in information in fields on a document as well as gain viable signatures from clients on-the-fly.

The Test

Running a test on an iPad shows that this is a very user-friendly and quick application for filling in text fields, dates, check boxes and more on documents. While other applications such as Smartnote may have a couple of more alternatives for the insertion of special characters, Smartnote is nowhere near as fast as SignMyPad. Since those in the real estate, law and sales industries are frequently only n need of check boxes, signatures, and text fields, this app fits perfectly. If you are using the newest iPad OS, you should also have a bit more flexibility and functionality. Using it is s easy as selecting the type of items to enter.

Date
Radio Button
Signature
Check Box
Text

Using the date option auto-enters the current date and a sales person should be able to create a full purchase agreement without spending too much time or putting clients on hold for too long.

Pros of SignMyPad

Fast
User-friendly
Flexible
Functional
Opens documents from email attachments or Dropbox

Cons of SignMyPad

No landscape option
In some instances copy and paste does not work across documents

About SignMyPad

This app was created by Autriv Software Developement and is available for $3.99. The newest version allows for saved signatures and a clean folder interface for users. Even if signing documents isn’t an everyday thing for you in your industry, the convienience versus the price makes this a must-have app. A Pro version for $19.99 includes geo-tagging options for saved PDF’s.

This app is available on iPad and Android.

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Commun.it Launches Their Relationship Management Service for Twitter

May 30, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Weeks ago, Communi.it extended a few initial pre-launch accounts for some social media educational business’s, such as DBMEi, they have announced their official roll out date for their Twitter management service. On June 5th, at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo in NYC, they will officially release the tool to the public. From an initial testing phase point-of-view, the Commun.it tool is a smooth running and user-friendly option for Twitter management that can definitely help private users or marketers alike more fluidly aggregate their most highly desired content. Sharel Omar, CEO and Co-Founder of Commun.it shares that,

“Social media has become instrumental in maintaining all kinds of business relationships; with customers, prospects, partners, and more.”

Most social media marketers can attest to the validity of Omar’s statement. So what do you use to manage all of the most vital information coming in and going out of your Twitter account every day, week, month? Well, there is certainly no shortage of helpful tools, so what does Commun.it bring to the table?

Commun.it Focus

Commun.it developers wanted to focus directly on turning the stream-oriented feed of Twitter into your own personal relationship-oriented dashboard.

Commun.it can help you achieve stress-free social productivity. While many other Twitter feed tools and services provide you with an endless stream of messages, Commun.it helps to analyze your relationships with your followers and allows you to focus on the most relevant people to your interests, not their statuses.
Focus more on high value members and influencers that can help your staunchest supporters spread your message, drive awareness to top influencers, engage member, and create potential leads.
Create actionable insights to help build more meaningful relationships with your Twitter community including a full-engagement history as well as yours and your networks most used hashtags, as well as suggestions on who to follow or who to re-engage with.

With Commun.it users can read over the feeds of the recent activities of top influencers and supporters and even prioritized engagements.

Commun.it provides a complete relationship context with all of your engagements with any member in one smooth thread.
Users have the chance to and the suggestions to discover new leads and quickly make them new Twitter followers. Users can see some of the top engagers of their followers list as well, allowing them to branch out a bit more than many other Twitter management programs currently provide.
Easier management via Commun.it may give some of those small business marketers some of their valuable time back with the ability to star followers for quick access, find members by names or bios, hide those you are not interested in, or even unfollow extremely inactive members.

All in all, the Commun.it tool is a well-rounded, well-oiled machine by managing and prioritizing incoming engagements, providing users with relationship context in a quick glance, and recording and archiving valuable relationship history with each and every one of your followers.

Special bonus to DBMEi Subscribers:

Although the service is launching publicly in a week, we will be metering access for the first month or so. DBMEi subscribers can get in now, however, using this unique invite link: http://commun.it/?t=2b0d35 (for the first 100 only).

The early-bird price of Commun.it Pro tier – only $4.99 a month – will continue to apply to any user who registers and upgrades to Pro before the public launch at BlogWorld & New Media Expo NYC. After the public launch, the price will go up to $9.99 a month. So DBMEi subscribers can benefit from registering early!

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Google Places for Your Service Industry

May 23, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

An innovative business known as PlumberSEO.net has found a way to use Google Places for service industry networking. While they specialize in working with HVAC contractors and Plumbers, PlumberSEO helps those in their industry take their businesses to the next level with effective online marketing with social media, SEO, map optimization and many other internet marketing tools.

Find a Plumber and More

It used to be that when you were looking for a plumber, electrician, roofer, or any other type of service contractor, you picked up the yellow pages and almost always went with the one that had the most impressive ad, the most credentials, and the most well-known company brand name. In today’s world, very few people still use this traditional method of printed resources, instead, they head to the web to look for the best options for service contractors in their area. One of the ways in which Google has made this search easier for consumers is by adding Google Places.

Check out this quick video to get familiar with Google Places if you require a bit more in-depth understanding.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpZan96KHOM]

Now when people look for service contractors in their area, they commonly head to Bing, Yahoo, Google, or other favored search engines as well as to social media sites where they may ask friends or family if they can suggest a contractor in the area.

A recent survey of 2,000 consumers revealed the 86% of the surveyed use the internet to find local business, 74% of those cited search engines as where they go when seeking a local retail or service industry contractor.

Local businesses that are not showing up on page one of search engines are missing major opportunities to grow their business as most people tend to decide their choice in contractors from page one of search engine results.

How to Manage Google Places

Google Places isn’t without its own flaws. However, most of these are user related and may just require a bit more of an in-depth understanding of how Google Places works. If you have had any issues you may want to check out this video for some helpful tips if you find you need help troubleshooting.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/user/GooglePlaces]

In addition, be sure to check out how to Optimizing Your Google Places Page to get the best results for your business.

[polldaddy poll=6238017]

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Turning Downloads into Leads

May 9, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

A download symbol. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Do you have an eBook, whitepaper, or newsletter available as a download online? If so, you may want to consider that many business owners have been able to turn those downloads into direct leads and even clients. Downloads can be a great source of lead generation for several reasons.

At any given moment, tons of people from virtually every industry are on the hunt for educational material for themselves, their businesses, their employees.
Providing free material can help to build your business’s brand and reach by getting your name, and your link, in various places around the net.
Often those who use your material will credit you on their site, generating an even wider coverage for your business, possibly in areas even you may have not considered relevant previously.

What are You Offering?

Make sure before you begin trying to generate leads that you have a strategic foundation in place. Will you be sharing a Whitepaper, eBook, Newsletter as a download? All of those are great ideas, but implementing the plan requires great thought combined with aggressive action.

Choose the industry in which you plan to focus your marketing efforts.
Develop your marketing message that includes the answer to the problem you are solving with your offered content.
Get visible.

Whether you plan to offer your material on your own site or to branch out and have it added on any accepting format online you can find, may determine the speed at which your content can spread across the web. There are just as many reasons to promote content aggregation regardless of the content as long as viewers will be brought to a landing page where they can sign up for your free download and grab it via instant download, or even in an auto-email attachment.

Gather an Email List for Future Efforts

These days you can always combine your offered download strategy with your own need to generate a customer list for email campaigns, newsletters, and more. To do so you simply need to require users, whether on a website, a social network page, or even a blog, to enter their email to proceed to the download.

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Optimizing Content Creation for Conversions

May 8, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Content can mean everything to a small business that is based online. While having a high search ranking may bring in more traffic, it doesn’t always equal more sales. However, marketers who make a focused effort on creating only the highest quality content can not only improve their positions on search engine rankings, but also obtain more conversions than those who go with more mass produced, lesser quality content.

Putting Your Content to Work for You

Creating content isn’t just a simple matter of tossing up blog post about your products or services and hoping it promotes or sells itself. In a time where businesses of any size are swiftly becoming media outlets in their own right by publishing their own original insights related to their industries, companies should not ignore the opportunity to be a part of the conversation on their own with high-quality and original content marketing.

However, it is important to remember that just publishing high-quality content is still not enough. It is important to focus on how you can put that content to work to help you attain your personal business goals online, covering everything from attracting relevant site traffic to helping direct your visitors to your most valuable conversion or ecommerce pages. The right content marketing campaign will involve strategic planning and a constant and consistent execution if a business intends to increase online conversions. Optimizing your content

How to Accelerate Lead Quality and Conversion

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZzF4qzP7vo]

What is Content?

By now you likely know that content can be any number of things. Everything from eBooks, blog posts, webinars, podcasts, case studies and more can be very educational, relevant, high-quality content that brings audiences back to your site and with each return, closer to your valuable conversion pages or links. Make sure that your content supports your own business goals and the educational needs or wants of your target audience.

Content Marketing Strategies

There are a few optimal thoughts to keep in mind and keep your websites content focused on.

Content should speak to the content audience
Identify the goals you expect your content to achieve
Create your audience profile
Do your keyword research

As with any type of content, anytime, it is incredibly vital to have a content writer who can engage your readers effectively. We have covered some of the best ways to fit a content writer to your specific needs on DBMEi with several of our professional freelance authors and guest contributors content. Take the time to check them out.

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CEOs and Social Media Influence in the Workplace

April 15, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Although there is already a growing list of reasons why it is beneficial for every member of a company’s team to participate in social networking, there may be another new reason that should encourage further consideration.

BRANDfog Study

A recent study conducted by BRANDfog shared some rather concerning statistics about CEO participation in company leadership via social media platforms. The general consensus is that top business executives are slower than their employees and consumers when it comes to using social media for communications.

64% of CEO’s are NOT engaged on their company’s website or social media networks
Only 5% of all Fortune 500 CEOs are on Twitter
Only 4% of global CEOs have a profile on Facebook or LinkedIn
Only 13 Fortune 500 CEOs have active Twitter accounts

If that alone isn’t enough reason to encourage CEOs and others in similar positions in their company to join Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, then it may be important to understand that on the same study, 86% of respondents rated a CEOs engagement on social media networks to be either important, very important, or mission critical.

Why CEO Engagement is Important

There are a few reasons why CEO engagement on social networks can be beneficial. During the BRANDfog study respondents answers also indicated that 78% of CEO participation on social media networks led to better communication. 71% of them agreed that it can lead to improving brand image, and 64% agreed that it provided more transparency, an element vital to a successful social media marketing campaign. The study has also shown that 82% of respondents listed as employees believe that a company can garner more trust when the CEO or leadership teams communicate via social networks.

Can a CEOs Social Media Presence Influence Purchasing Decisions?

The study says yes. The majority of the study’s participants, 77%, shows that consumers are more likely to buy from a business whose CEO uses social media opportunities to help define their company’s values and leadership principles. 94% of those respondents also agree that the C-list leaders participation in social media can help to enhance a brand’s image.

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What is in Our Mobile Future?

April 12, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

In 2011, the number of Smartphone’s sold exceeded the number of personal computers. At its current projection, the number of mobile devices will significantly outnumber the PC’s in just a few years.

The Past and Future of Mobile

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bvIIIVfLYA]

As mobile use increases in the future, AI may also have a large impact on the users mobile experience. Many online services will play a large part in helping us to organize and go about our daily lives. AI combined with vital algorithms will:

Organize and handle personal information
Alert us about important events
Help us decide which products to buy
Monitor everything from calendars to health care
Help us manage services with consideration for our personalized consumer needs

With a realistic projection on the evolution of mobile devices, it also indicates that we are likely to move away from typing all of our days jargon into tiny keyboards on Smartphones and more towards touch screen options, device ‘bumping’ or ’tilting’, sensory triggers, voice activation and other types of communications that mimic ‘human’ gestures and fluidity.

To Smart App Infinity and Beyond

Although apps will continue to play a huge role in the manner it does now, there will likely be more options for consumers in helpful virtual

programs that enhance what we have now for messaging systems, virtual shopping options, entertainment, news and more. We are currently seeing this type of forward progression in apps that offer a more personalized experience. They tend to learn the behavior of the user, continuously get smarter, and stay updated on you over a period of time. As our technology for mobile devices and apps continues to grow, so does our opportunity for new developments.

Be Prepared

Once you have decided to utilize mobile platforms for your business, there are many determining factors to consider when creating the most effective business plan for your personal business needs. If you plan to bypass desktop devices and putt full focus on mobile or just implementing it slowly into your businesses marketing campaign plans, you will need to have an idea of projected requirements to meet the same standards as time goes by. One of the best ways to ensure you are giving it the proper focus is to stay on top of trending industry news and be ready to implement new and helpful interactive programs, assistance, and mobile products in very short periods of time.

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Improved Facebook Advertising Campaign Performance

April 10, 2012 by Basil Puglisi Leave a Comment

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru... — Image via CrunchBase

Social media marketing, research has shown, is the fastest growing platform for advertisers. With promises of increased customer engagement and low marketing costs, advertisers flocked to this platform in droves. 76% of companies in the US use social media. Over three quarters of marketing officers believe they will increase their ROI this year through social media and plan to increase their budgets. But ROI is not easy to measure with social media. The different metrics will yield different results. Are you doing whatever it takes? Are there some things you don’t know about?

Facebook is the most valuable platform, statistic shoes, with over 15% of the social media marketing business, while rating and reviews, Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube are there as well starting at about 10%.

Last month, a company called Techlightenment unveiled its new product called Alchemy 2. The company which is a leading provider of Facebook marketing technologies, helps solve traditional Facebook challenges of scale and performance, and has features that reduce the time spent on manual processes because the platform does it for you so you can focus your attention on higher value decisions.

The company promises that marketers will get 80% higher CTR and 50% lower CPC using their platform compared to the average Facebook campaign. Alchemy 2 allows user to take advantage of what Facebook has to offer; timeline, Sponsored Stories and Custom Action ads.

Here is what this platform includes:

Create a campaign fast and easy. You can create hundreds of ads in a few minutes.

Combine location, target audience with your creativity.
The system allows you to dynamically insert keywords and locations.
Analytics will tell you how many end users you will reach.
Easy re-posting of campaigns in one click.

Optimize and track. About 70% of what used to have to be done manually can be done by alchemy 2.

Optimize by setting up rules based on which actions are taken.
Track multiple conversion points.
Control your budget by targeting groups and locations.
Optimize to CPA with tracking solutions and analytics.

Manage and Report.

Drag and drop the data you have to see how effective the campaign is.
You can easily change the metrics, and have complete control of how the budget is being allocated.
You can see CPA and conversion data at the ad level. The platform will calculate your margin and optimize accordingly.

Image via CrunchBase

Will Ashton, Managing Director of Alchemy 2 at Techlightenment said: “Alchemy was the first Facebook advertising platform to market in 2010. We have redesigned the platform for the release of Alchemy 2 to make it even more sophisticated and agile. As Facebook makes updates to its platform, Alchemy 2 is well positioned to be updated as near to real-time as possible, allowing users to make near immediate use of new features and ad formats.”

Techlightenment was bought by Experian in January 2011.

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