Business owners often find themselves making a couple of New Year’s resolutions for their companies in addition to personal resolutions. We’ve talked with several small businesses who have resolved to make this their social media year. To that end, we have also been asked to recommend some social media tools, sites and resources that fit for small business, so we’ve compiled a list of ones we tend to share. This is by no means an exhaustive list, or a list of brand-new stuff, just some of our favorites.
RockMelt: This browser (www.rockmelt.com) keeps social media front and center when you’re exploring the web with an easy-to-use interface that allows you to quickly see what’s going on in Facebook, Twitter, your favorite blogs as well as a host of other sites you can add-on. Boasting several hundred thousand users, it’s not as popular as Chrome or the other heavy-hitters, but it’s worth a look.
Alexa: Want to know how your website’s traffic stacks up against other websites in the world, or in your country? Take a look at Alexa (www.alexa.com), which calls itself the “leading provider of free, global web metrics”. Search Alexa to discover the most successful sites on the web by keyword, category, or country. They also have a nifty feature that shows you the top search queries for your domain.
WordPress.org: If you still have a static website that hasn’t been updated in ages, it’s time to think about getting a website that allows you to make your own content changes, add blog posts and take advantage of thousands of free or low-price plugins that let you build a truly socially-enabled hub for your business. Hosting your own WordPress site on your own domain is a smart move for most small businesses. www.wordpress.org
Tweetcaster: We love this mobile Twitter application because of its ease of use, attractive interface and frequent, thoughtful updates. Manage multiple twitter accounts and never miss a tweet again. www.tweetcaster.com
Checkthis: Their tagline is “between nothing and a blog”, and this is a great description of a place where you can create simple landing pages for just about anything. This especially works great for businesses that want to create a quick landing page for a promotion or event but don’t have an easy-to-update website. www.checkthis.com
Socialmention: Describing themselves as a “Real-time social media search and analysis” service, socialmention give you the ability to measure and track what people are saying about your company across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties. www.socialmention.com
su.pr: If you use StumbleUpon, then you know how powerful it can be to drive traffic to your website or a landing page. Su.pr is an extension allows you to send out a shortened link with a short message via Twitter and Facebook as well as post it to your StumbleUpon account. We love the instant tracking of clicks on the links you send out and have found that when we post articles to su.pr, they get picked up by the StumbleUpon community more quickly.
TweetReach: Want to know how far a link you tweeted reached? Type in a link or username and see how far your tweet went in the Twitter universe. Fascinating. Tweetreach also lets you see who your most frequent “retweeters” are. www.tweetreach.com
DropBox: This free service (with pricing options for larger storage) is a simple file-synchronization tool. Dropbox gives you access to your files – documents, photos, videos- no matter what computer or device you have available. The service stores files with strong protection on multiple servers and lets you access your files quickly and easily from pretty much any Internet-enabled device. Dropbox is downloadable, with a version for every major operating system. All users also get a Web account with file access as well in case you’re on a computer that doesn’t have Dropbox installed. Dropbox also makes it really easy to share a large number of photos or files with someone else, even if they don’t have a Dropbox account. www.dropbox.com
Google+: Now that you can build a business page on Google+, it’s time to think about adding one. Yes, it is one more social network, but it is growing in popularity rather quickly, and you’ll find a somewhat different group of prospects here.
dlvr.it: This site gives you a way to instantly syndicate your content and expand your reach on the social web, making it easy to manage and measure the flow of content everywhere your audience is. dlvr.it publishes your blogs and your media to your social channels, ensuring your audience sees it instantly. dlvr.it
Skype: We use Skype all the time in our business, especially when we’re talking with international clients and prospects. We can share screens, send files, make a video call or just a phone call. Yes, there are other contenders out there, such as Google+ Hangouts, but Skype is the most familiar to most of the people we encounter. www.skype.com
How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age by Dale Carnegie & Associates: Of course, there are thousands of books about social media available these days. But the time-honored words of Dale Carnegie’s original How to Win Friends and Influence People stand true because our expanding networks and instant messaging call for even greater attention to developing good strategies for dealing with people- so that you don’t offend, send the wrong message or appear indifferent. This book is an important update for our times.
LLN Reports Web Radio Show: OK, so this is a shameless plug, but we have a weekly web radio show that features local, national, and international business owners and professionals. We also do a “Social Media Minute” for small business. http://bit.ly/LLNReports
Please share any other resources and tools that you may have used for your company.