We are quite well versed with social media and its capabilities by now. The point of concern is how to use the hidden powers of this particular tool to the fullest and in the best possible way. Latching onto the current trends and using them to your advantage always gives you an upper hand over your competitors.
Now what you will be needing is a few helper elves to get out and harness the immense power of social media. All thanks to Inc. we have a few tools listed below.
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite (like Tweetdeck, below) is handy for its ability to “create custom live feeds of posts that allow you to monitor a brand, profile, or search term in real time,” Echter says. “These feeds are one of the easiest ways to monitor what is being said, then reply or resolve the issue as quickly as possible. They use modified Boolean operatives to discover new posts, allowing you to be fairly specific with what it is you’re trying to monitor.”
For instance, he says, you can set a feed to search for posts containing your company name and a negative sentiment, posts sent by or mentioning a specific profile, or even posts containing a search term and asking a question. If your company sells sewing patterns and supplies online, you might want to flag posts containing a question and the terms “sewing pattern” or “cotton thread,” for example. Hootsuite’s home page makes it appear that you can only get a free trial for 30 days, but in fact the service does offer a free level.
2. TweetDeck
TweetDeck offers many of the same features as Hootsuite, Echter says. The catch is that, since the company was acquired by Twitter, it only works with Twitter and no longer with other platforms such as Facebook. But some companies and industries are very Twitter-driven and if that’s your case, Tweetdeck is worth considering, Echter says. “Of the two, it’s the quicker tool.”
3. Social Mention
Enter a term into Social Mention and the service will let you see mentions for that term across a variety of social networks and blogs. It allows you to see whether those mentions are positive, negative, or neutral, how often the term is mentioned, corresponding terms, top social profiles mentioning the term and the passion and reach of those mentions, Echter says. “As a start, I recommend you search for mentions of your brand and a few of your competitors to benchmark the size and sentiment of your social footprint.”
4. Hashtagify
“Hashtagify allows you to discover the most popular and most frequently used hashtags related to a specific topic,” Echter says.
