Time makes a mockery of most predictions. Once derided as the
tools and hobbies of hopeless shut-ins and intellectual ivory
tower sorts, social media sites such as PayPal, Facebook and
LinkedIn have become the home of an entirely new, powerhouse
economy. Where hundreds of years of war and diplomacy have
failed, social media marketing has succeeded in bringing people
around the globe together in the pursuit of common interests and
open markets. Social media marketing is the home of successful
brand promotion, and finding the right mix of tools to take
advantage of it has become the defining issue of the modern
brand.
When people refer to SMM tools, they are discussing a host of
applications and programs that allow real-time and long-term
feedback on the performance of their social networks. This kind
of information goes beyond the purely mechanistic approach of SEO
and website performance, moving into the realm of genuine social
engineering. Social media tools can track the number of times a
brand is being mentioned across each network, compare traffic
between networks, determine where the buzz is starting and which
path it took to get from, say, Digg to Facebook. Knowing the
focus of each of these tools and the best way to use them is the
key to bringing all this power under control and using it to help
promote a brand to its full potential.
TweetDeck
TweetDeck is an excellent platform for brands to manage social
networks. A simple, efficient, all-in-one approach makes
TweetDeck very useful for getting updates out quickly to a number
of locations. TweetDeck supports Facebook, Twitter, MySpace,
GoogleBuzz, LinkedIn and Foursquare, giving a user easy access to
all of the major networks. Users can send out status updates to
any or all of these at once, allowing unified messages to be
spread in a single step, without the potential to forget one.
However, it does have its limitations. Very heavy traffic to
multiple accounts can slow down its efficiency, making it more of
a startup and middleweight tool than a long-term solution.
HootSuite
Similar to TweetDeck in that it is targeted toward smaller
businesses, HootSuite is an alternative tool that allows for
several levels of customization. For starters, the basic package
is completely free, and will support five networks of the user's
choosing. Currently available platforms include Twitter,
WordPress, LinkedIn, MySpace, FourSquare, Facebook and PingFm.
Upgrading to paid subscriptions allows additional networks to be
included.
HootSuite really shines because it offers steady "streams" of
information about each of the user's networks, allowing the
aforementioned real-time monitoring of web traffic. If a
particular network is flagging or performing particularly well,
it will be brought to the manager's attention. Further,
HootSuite provides user bios and links to various users' social
networking profiles, allowing a brand to tailor its content to
the needs of the market more efficiently. The information is a
bit limited in the default package, but even upgrading to the
$5.99 a month subscription brings a great deal more detail to
hand.
Engage121
For larger businesses looking to make their mark in the social
networking world, Engage121 offers a number of more powerful
options. This is a program for professional social networking
managers, because it is entirely customizable to the exact needs
of a business. One of its touted features, for example, is the
ability of a local office to examine, modify and approve messages
from the central branch. In this vein, a generic message can be
sent out about company directives, while allowing each branch to
add or delete content based on the relevance it has to their own
particular mission. Thus a large clothing chain won't waste time
sending out messages about their new swimwear line to their
regional users in Alaska.
However, it has to be stressed once again that Engage 121 is not
a tool for beginners. The sheer number of options can be daunting
to put in the hands of an inexperienced manager. It's best to
offer it to someone with a great deal of skill under his or her
hat who can offer a specific plan of attack for using this tool.
General Thoughts
As a more broad consideration, there's no reason to limit
oneself to any one of these applications, or indeed any of their
competitors. A sound SMM strategy might, in fact, use several
programs at once, either to get multiple sources of information
or to test out which works best for a given company's needs.
Then as the brand grows and needs increase, the manager can move
up to more robust software and applications that better service
the needs of the company.
Above all, remember the axiom that these tools are based on the
need to promote communication between brand and audience. They
are not meant to reduce the users of the network to data that can
be analyzed and directed — these are people with their own minds
and agendas, who will respond in kind if they feel slighted or
taken advantage of. Instead, they should be used as a way to get
information about what people want to talk about and to build a
brand's reputation.
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