Community Managers are often faced with the grueling task of sourcing out the best tools to use for social media. With new platforms launching weekly, it can be daunting.
Do you go with a paid version or do you use one of many free tools to save money?
With limited time on your side, you must choose the best tools to help monitor, engage and optimize your company’s online presence. Some tools cost a premium and most likely have all, if not more then enough of the features you need. Too many features often lead to greater confusion.
Here is a list of ten simple tools you may not have heard of, but are definitely worth checking out.
1. Summify
As a community manager you are most likely bombarded with RSS feeds, social alerts, and e-newsletters. You probably never get the chance to read all the important information. Enter, Summify, a social news reader that aggregates the top news from your friends across all your social networks. It easily allows you to read the content that really matters. It does this by analyzing the news that has been shared, liked and tweeted a lot by your friends. It then ads in the other news it thinks is most important to you by analyzing your reading history. It packages this all up and sends it to you in an easy to read daily or weekly email (whichever you choose).
2. Storify
To take your social engagement to the next level, telling a story could get more attention. Using your tweets, YouTube videos, Twitpic photos and more, Storify makes it simple. Consider it a self serve curation tool. Since most people remember stories, this tool will keep users and customers be engaged and entertained by your brand. Simply download the Storify Google Chrome extension and you will be on your way.
3. Gruml
This is for all you Community Managers on a Mac. Gruml is a free app that easily organizes your Google Reader RSS’. You can read your newsfeed, manage folders, tag posts, star them, add notes and so much more. You can also follow people, recommend and share items. It’s a reader for a reader, yet simplified.
4. SocialMention
If you aren’t currently using this tool, you had better start. SocialMention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the web and filters it into one single location. It pulls the content in from over 100 social sites, including the most popular Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Similar to Google Alerts, you can get the content specific to you sent to your inbox. It is social search at its best.
5. Shareaholic
We all like to share, especially as a Community Manager. Shareaholic makes it easier. It allows you to quickly share the webpage you are currently viewing and any links via any of the hundreds of social applications and platforms including digg, wordpress, posterous, instapaper and many more. It is a simple one-click share function that keeps your bookmark bar clean, is customizable and extremely fast.
6. Formulist
Form-u-list, is a simple list building tool for all your twitter needs. Unlike other Twitter clients Formulist allows you to build smart auto updating lists. Including those that have recently unfollowed you, you can sort your following and followers, expand your network, keep tabs on those you chat with the most, customize and combine lists and sort your followers into categories.
7. MentionMap
MentionMap makes it visually possible to discover who your Twitter friends talk to and how they expand their network through their contacts. Within a few seconds of adding your twitter handle, or anyone handle for that matter, the map loads and parses the names of people and hashtags you talk about the most. The maps are a linear representation of the conversations happening in real time. Simply clicking on a name, word, or hashtag within a map opens another map of the conversations happening.
8. Trendrr
A trend spotting tool. Trendrr tracks the popularity of events that are happening in real time, pulling from social sites like twitter, facebook, blogs, videos and more. It enables users to listen, measure and respond to the conversations about a brand, company, service or product, allowing community managers and other marketers to identify flash trends and implement timely tactics to leverage the swarm.
9. Proxlet
Everyday you are bombarded with web content. Some of it is good; most of it is irrelevant to your community management needs. Enter Proxlet, a tool to help you fight the noise. With features to ‘Block apps, mute users, ad filter tags on twitter’ it is a necessary app for your toolbox. The best part is its Chrome extension that can quickly help you mute people, hashtags and foursquare from people you don’t even follow.
10. Peerindex
If you like comparing yourself or your company’s brand to others, this is a great platform to do so. PeerIndex is similar to the infamous Klout, however measures differently. Your index is assessed based on authority, activity and audience. It analyzes the quality of the content you share, not just activity. Based on a defined set of topics it calculates your Authority Score around a topic. Since you are most likely an ‘expert’ on only a few topics, it compares you to similar people to create your ranking.
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