10 Social Media Tools – Some of which, you MUST know…

View CommentsFriday • May 14, 2010 • by christina

Following is a short list of some of the social media tools that can either help improve your website, increase the productivity of your online marketing or simply improve your daily workflow by leveraging the technology they offer. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it is a great one with some honest feedback. Not all of them are worth using but at least you will know a little bit more about what they are and how they work.

1. Wibiya -  See below! This amazing toolbar allows people to follow you on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. It also allows your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feeds, share your contents, chat with other visitors, see who else is on your site and a lot more. The best part is that this toolbar can be installed in just two minutes on your site. I just added this to my site and am very excited to see it put to use.
2. Soocial – This one isn’t for me. ( I prefer mobile me – see below) However, for those of you without the need to access storage in the cloud as well as syncing capabilities, Soocial offers a great way to keep your contacts organized and always available online, no matter what computer you’re connecting from.
3. Google Voice – A new way of talking over the phone. The cool thing about Google Voice is that you can generate a single phone number for yourself that never has to change – you link it to your work, home and mobile numbers. When your work, home or mobile numbers change, you simply update the connection to your Google number. I like that.   … Also, with Google Voicemail you have your VM messages delivered to your computer, listen to them over the computer or read them as text, which is also great for organizing and searching (like email).
4. Mail Chimp – A terrific email marketing solution. I am using here on this site and with other clients. The best part is that up to 500 subscribers is free and you can send 3,000 emails / month. Once you eclipse that mark, plans are really affordable and scale well.
5. UserVoice – Gives your customers a platform for voicing their ideas, allows you to vote for the best ones and implement them into your business / product if you choose. Kinda cool.
6. Ning -  the social platform for the world’s interests and passions online. Great for niche markets and specialized interest groups. Currently free but doesn’t look like it’s staying that way…
7. FriendFeed -  aggregates you news feed from across your social networks in one place. This is great if you have 4-5 networks to keep track of, but I’d only recommend it for the “light” social media user looking purely to chat with friends. It wouldn’t be great for managing multiple accounts within a network.
8. Spokeo – A phonebook that is supposed to give you heaps of information about prospective employees, vendors and partners using this tool…problem is I couldn’t find anybody on it. I also didn’t appreciate that it doesn’t appear to search outside the U.S. To be truly useful, this would have to change…rapidly.
9. Google Trends - A research tool for finding out what  the hottest topics in the social media sphere (or any other topic area)  are at any given moment. Scales results for you based on average world wide traffic; therefore, it’s not going to be something for localised trend searches, but serves well on a global scale.
10. Technorati – a blog directory for listing your blog and getting feedback on its rank / status in comparison to other blogs in the same category. Also a great place to find out about new blogs. If you have a blog, you must register it here (amongst other places but I will do an entirely separate post on that)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Getting Social On the Web: Part 1 – Creating an Online Presence (marketing-helper.com)
• A Social Network/Social Media Snapshot (walt.lishost.org)
• 5 Tips for Making Your Presentations More Social (mashable.com)

Posted in: Social Media

Tagged with: blog optimization, friendfeed, google, google social media, google trends, google voice, google voicemail, mail chimp, ning, SMO, Social Media, soocial, spokeo, technorati, uservoice, wibiya

About christina:

Author, Blogger and Entrepreneur. Founder and Director of Infinet Creative Group - a boutique marketing and design agency specializing in social media marketing and brand development.

Find all posts by christina | Visit Website