Posts tagged ‘Social media tools’

November 28th, 2011

New Tool to Help You Schedule Tweets Throughout the Day

If you’re like a lot of businesspeople, you probably find it a challenge to keep up with everything you have to do to manage your social media campaigns. You may be trying to manage your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts while still developing new content and exploring new tools like Google +.

It’s enough to drive you crazy.

Social Media expert and 60 Second Marketer contributor Karen Naide created a short video about a tool called Buffer which allows you to schedule your Tweets throughout the day. There are other tools out there that accomplish much the same thing (e.g., Twitter and HootSuite), but Buffer simplifies the process down to a single click.

Check out Karen’s video below. It’ll walk you through the process and provide you the ability to streamline the management of your social media campaigns.

If you can’t see the video below, click here.

CategorySocial Media | Comment1 Comment »

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October 12th, 2011

5 Ways To Market Smarter with Social Media

When it comes to a successful social media campaign, the key is to make sure fans, followers and connections aren’t just reading, but engaging in what you have to say. Often, engagement is thought of as being pro-active, but it’s equally as important to use tools that help organize and disseminate information to give you the best chance of getting a good response.

Here are 5 tips to help you market smarter, and one free tool to make it all a piece of cake.

MarketMe Suite

The MarketMeSuite is a cool, free dashboard that can help you market smarter using social media

Tip 1: Organize Your Team

First and foremost you need to organize your social life. If you work as a team, who is managing which accounts? Do you have clients you post on behalf of? Are they posting at the same time as you? These are all questions you need to ask so you never double contact someone. By this, I mean, someone asks a question like “Where do I find info on your return policy?” and 3 different people all reply to that same person. It’s reply inundation and a major turn off. Even if you’re a “one man band” you may wear different social hats. Setting yourself up with different “team” views (even if you’re alone) helps keep you organized and on task.

Tip 2: Geo-Target

Never under-estimate the power of local. Did you know that almost all tweets are now geo-tagged even if not sent from a phone? Use this to your advantage by searching what’s being said about your industry in your location. A restaurant monitoring all tweets about their cafe within 20 miles has a perfect chance to send someone a “thanks for eating with me, mention this tweet code and get 10% off your next meal!”

Tip 3: Stop ignoring Linkedin

Linkedin is still, to some extent, the red haired step child of the “big 3,” behind Twitter and Facebook. But for marketing, there’s a big opportunity. Start Linkedin Groups and start building a following around your brand, and post to it regularly. Get the Linkedin share plugin on your site.

Tip 4: Give Credit

RSS posting is a great way to keep information going out to your followers and fans, but what if the information is not yours? Make sure to marke “RT @ ” the person, or “So and so wrote a great post.”  You do not want your streams to be cluttered with so much information that your following has no idea what’s important. Also, people tend to like being mentioned, and there’s a good chance if you’re posting someone’s feed, they will post yours in return, so let them know!

Tip 5: Be Regular

Granted, you can’t be at your social media dashboard at all hours of the day, but it’s important to have content going out to hit all the time zones you need to interact with. Schedule some posts up for when you’re away (or sleeping) to keep all corners of the world engaged. Just be sure to be ready to respond as soon as you get your computer started the next day.

One Simple, Free Solution to make this all happen for you….

Lucky for you, there is one tool… one FREE tool that helps you do all these things. It’s called MarketMeSuite, and it’s the intuitive social media marketing dashboard.

You can grab it, totally free, here: http://marketmesuite.com/get-app

Posted by Tammy Fennel, CEO of MarketMeSuite. 

 

 

 

 

CategoryFacebook, LinkedIn, Social Media, Twitter | Comment3 Comments »

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March 8th, 2011

Free E-Book: 99 Tools to Help You Make Money with Social Media

The biggest challenge most people have with social media is sorting through all the online tools that can help you run, launch and manage your campaigns.

After all, there are literally hundreds of different tools that can help you track and optimize your social media program. The problem is, you don’t have the time to hunt down all the different options.

Click here to download your free copy of "99 Tools to Help You Make Money with Social Media."

Well, good news. We’ve created an e-book that has done some of the hard work for you.

The free e-book is called “99 Tools to Help You Make Money with Social Media.” We spent hours and hours tracking down and analyzing nearly 100 different tools you can use to optimize your program.

If you’d like to download the free e-book, just click the image to the right or click here.

If you want to see samples of what’s included in the free e-book, read on:

Tools to Help You with Content Creation and Integration

  1. Context Optional:  Best for marketers with multiple team members, brands or geographies, this platform helps develop applications for Facebook and Twitter communities and monitor and analyze the conversations taking place on these platforms.
  2. Crowd Factory’s Social Campaign: Think social networking is confined to Facebook and Twitter? Think again. Crowd Factory lets you embed social elements into any marketing experience including videos, emails, ads and more.
  3. KickApps: This self-service site allows you to develop and manage social content such as branded communities, widgets, 3rd party plug-ins and social applications.
  4. North Social: Enhance your Facebook page by creating custom applications that allow your brand to do things such as integrate with Google Maps or Yelp,  post HD videos, run sweepstakes, and more.
  5. Involver Applications: The creator of the popular “Get Satisfaction” facebook app, Involver provides applications that allow you to easily add polls, RSS feeds, quizzes, music, contests and more to your Facebook or Twitter pages.
  6. Sprout: Not to be confused with Sprout Social, this cloud based software company creates interactive ads and applications perfect for bringing social content to the web and mobile devices.
  7. Lithium Community Platform: This software as a service company creates a social community right on your website that provides a place for your brand advocates to converse, tools to spread the word about your product through social channels and even generate ideas for innovation.

Click here to download the complete list of 99 tools.

Tools to Help You Monitor Brand Sentiment:

  1. Alterian SM2: More in-depth than some other social media monitoring services, Alterian provides advanced user behavior statistics, demographics, location, positive or negative tone, and trending topics for your brand as seen across a host of social media outlets and websites.
  2. PeopleBrowsr: Research.ly, and Analytic.ly  are PeopleBrowsr’s main products, and offer sentiment monitoring, trend reporting and audience profiling. Their main claim to fame at the moment is their recent announcement that they provide 1000 days of Twitter history.
  3. Social Mention: This free web-based application lets you search popular channels such as blogs and microblogs to find brand mentions and analyzes the sentiment towards your brand. You can also set up alerts so that you will be told any time someone mentions your brand.
  4. BrandsEye: A slightly different type of social media listening tool, BrandsEye helps you manage your online reputation by finding all of your brand mentions, the reputation of their source, the sentiment and even flags mentions that you may require immediate attention.

Click here to download the complete list of 99 tools.

Tools to Help You with Tracking and Analytics:

  1. Argyle Social: If you’re interested in monitoring trends and sentiment, this management tool may not be for you. In addition to aggregating your social media accounts, Argyle Social analyzes only hard numbers and direct outcomes of your campaigns.
  2. Trendrr: This site peruses blogs, microblogs, search engines, social networks and even video to see what people are saying about your brand and provides numerical analysis to help you understand what it all means
  3. Involver Audience Management Platform: In addition to providing a host of apps, Involver offers a dashboard that manages all of your social media applications, monitors communication, and provides analytics based on actionable measures so you can see the true ROI of your actions.
  4. MediaVantage: Designed for PR gurus, this tool gives you instant access to TV, print, online and social media content that is relevant to your brand’s reputation, your industry, or your competition.
  5. Objective Marketer: This site allows you to create the content and strategy and just steps in to objectively analyze how people have interacted with the content you have posted. By measuring clicks, views, likes and more, the Objective Marketer discovers trends and finds out what is working for your brand… and what’s not.

Click here to download the complete list of 99 tools.

Here’s the table of contents from this free e-book:

  • The Social Media ROI Cycle explained
  • Tools to Help You Manage Your Twitter Account
  • Tools to Help you Manage Facebook
  • Tools to Help you Manage Your Websites and Blogs
  • Tools to Help You Manage Multiple Social Channels
  • Content Creation and Integration Tools
  • Qualitative Social Media Monitoring Tools
  • Quantitative Social Media Monitoring Tools
  • Comprehensive Social Media Monitoring Tools
  • Tools to Help You Reverse Append Email Addresses to Find Out More About the Contacts in Your Database

We’ve put a lot of time and energy into this free e-book, so you can spend your time doing more important things. Download it today and, before long, you’ll be super-charging your social media campaigns.

P.S. If you’re interested in receiving more tools and tips like the ones above, you can have the 60 Second Marketer blog delivered to your in box each morning by clicking here. Or, you can sign up for our free weekly e-newsletter by clicking here.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response. Jamie is also the co-author of How to Make Money with Social Media.

CategoryGeneral Marketing, Social Media | Comment5 Comments »

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July 7th, 2010

My Social Media Secret Weapon: NutshellMail

As you might imagine, I spend a good amount of time on social media networks. It’s part of my job. Not only am I trying to build awareness for the 60 Second Marketer community, but I’m also trying to connect with client prospects for BKV Digital and Direct Response.

(Okay, to be honest, there is a third reason I spend a lot of time on social media networks – I’m trying to build early demand for my book, “How to Make Money with Social Media” which, oh by the way, will be published by the Financial Times Press this fall.)

NutshellMail is a social media aggregator that makes staying in touch with your social relationships easy.

The problem I face — and I bet you face the same problem, too — is that I can’t spend an inordinate amount of time flip-flopping between Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook and YouTube and the blog. Trying to manage that many different outlets can be time-consuming and confusing all at once.

My Social Media Secret Weapon: NutshellMail

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Constant Contact. Those of you who receive our free weekly eNewsletter are familiar with Constant Contact because it’s the platform we use to send out free tips, tools and techniques to our community. (What? You’re not a subscriber to our free eNewsletter? C’mon, get with the program!)

Anyway, the email from Constant Contact introduced me to a new tool they offer called NutshellMail. NutshellMail aggregates all the activity from your social networks and drops them into a single email delivered to your in-box. To be honest, my initial reaction was, “Oh, gosh. One more broadcast email. Enough already!”

Despite my reservations, I decided to give NutshellMail a try. I was reluctant, mind you. What’s more, the first few emails I got I kind of ignored.

But then, for some reason, I took a deep dive into one of the emails. My thought process went something like this: “Oh, look. Nutshell Mail is letting me know that Davis Tucker just got a promotion and updated his LinkedIn profile to let everyone else know. I’ll have to congratulate him via email, given that he’s a potential client. And look at this – 7 people re-tweeted my blog post yesterday. I’ll have to send them a direct message thanking them. And look here – someone asked a question on my Facebook fan page that I should respond to. And what’s this? Here’s another…”

Imagine being able to have all your social media connections dropped into your email inbox every morning and not having to switch applications and poke around different websites to find out what’s going on.

Marvelous.

Does NutshellMail Replace Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook?

NutshellMail isn’t a replacement for your social media channels – it’s really an aggregator that saves you time and improves your ability to connect with others. Oh, sure, I still use Twitter and I still go to LinkedIn and other social media platforms to check in on things. But if you’re looking for a great way to catch-up with people and stay current on what’s happening in your social media-sphere, then Nutshell Mail is what you’re looking for.

Check it out for yourself. You can visit their page on the Constant Contact website by clicking Nutshellmail.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer, the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response. You can download a free chapter from Jamie’s soon-to-be-published book by clicking, “How to Make Money with Social Media.”

CategoryGeneral Marketing | CommentNo Comments »

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April 9th, 2010

Top 52 Social Media Platforms Every Marketer Should Know

In my book, Go Mobile, written with Jeanne Hopkins from HubSpot, we point out that the vast majority of social media platforms can be accessed via mobile devices. That should come as no surprise since, by 2013, the number one way people will access the internet will be via their smart phones.

Whether you’re accessing your social media platform from a desktop or a smartphone, it’s important to be familiar with all of them. With that in mind, below is a list of the top 52 social media platforms. They’re broken into 3 categories — social media platforms that help you network (like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.); social media platforms that help you promote (like YouTube, blogs, etc.); and social media platforms that help you share (like Digg, Delicious, etc.).

Ready? Here goes.

Social Media Platforms that help you Network:

Classmates: An easy, simple-to-use site that can help you track down former classmates. Great for high school and college reunions. Strengths: Simple, uncluttered user-interface. Ease-of-use. Weaknesses: Since it’s a site set-up to connect former classmates, it would be wise to be cautious about using it for business purposes.

Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook out of his dorm room for his fellow students at Harvard. Today, toddlers to grandmothers can be found on Facebook. Strengths: Widely-adopted by large segments of the population. Weaknesses: Will the younger generation stay on Facebook once Grandma has “friended” them?

Google+: This is the new kid on the block, but poses a serious threat to Facebook and other platforms. Why? Because it’s just so darn easy to use — the clean, simple interface makes connecting with friends, family and business associates a piece of cake. Google+ was the fastest-growing social network in history and looks as though it’s here for the long-run. Strengths: Ease-of-use and uncluttered environment. Weaknesses: Competition from other well-established social media platforms.

Friendster: A way to stay connected with everything that’s important to you — hobbies, interests, causes, business, etc. Strengths: A simple web-interface makes this easy-to-use. Weaknesses: Not as widely adopted as some other platform-runs. Might have peaked.

hi5: This is a social networking platform that skews a little younger than LinkedIn. Members can play games, watch videos, flirt, give gifts or just hang out. Strengths: It’s a great alternative to MySpace and/or Facebook for the younger crowd. Weaknesses: It may not be the best social networking platform for business.

LinkedIn: This is the Grand Pooh Bah of them all. They’ve been around since 2003, which, in social media terms is also known as “since the beginning of time.” Strengths: Everybody’s on LinkedIn. Weaknesses: Most people have trouble knowing what to do with LinkedIn after they upload their business information.

MyLife: A clean, simple site that helps people connect with family, friends and other relationships. Over 750 million profiles. Strengths: The easy-to-use interface is one of the site’s great strengths. Perfect if you’re looking for an engaging, simple way to connect with old friends. Weaknesses: Not as widely adopted as some other sites.

Ning: This site connects groups of people who are passionate about particular interests, topics or hobbies. Co-Founded by Marc Andreessen, who helped launch Netscape. Strengths: Great for connecting with others who are interested in your area of expertise. Weaknesses: The user interface is so simple and uncluttered that getting started can be confusing. But once you’ve figured it out, it can be a good tool.

Plaxo: Currently hosts address books for more than 40 million people. Helps people stay in touch with “Pulse,” which is a dashboard that lets you see what the people you know are sharing all over the web. Strengths: Graphical user interface makes it easy-to-use. Weaknesses: It’s not as widely-adopted as some other platforms such as LinkedIn.

Twitter: A surprisingly-successful tool that is widely-adopted and used for everything from business to fun and games. Strengths: Used by large segments of the population. Weaknesses: Can be a distraction, especially if you have Attention Deficit Disor … wow, look at that bird outside my window!

XING: XING has more than 8 million subscribers worldwide. It has over 34,000 specialized groups and over 150,000 live networking events each year. Strengths: XING adds new developments to their platform on a regular basis. Weaknesses: Not as widely-adopted as some other platforms such as LinkedIn.

Social Media Platforms that help you Promote:

Bing: Bing, Google and Yahoo aren’t technically social media platforms, but they are tools that can be used to promote your product or service, so we’re including all three in this overview. The technique for using any search engine to promote your product or service is the same so you’ll want to optimize your website so that the search engines see it. By doing so, you’ll drive traffic to your website from the people doing searches on specific topics. Strengths: Bing uses “intelligent search” to make searches even more relevant for the user. Weaknesses: It’s fighting against Google, which is a tough battle.Social Media Tools

Blogging Platforms: These are tools that are used to create blogs. Some of them, like Blogger, Tumblr, Vox or Xanga are straightforward platforms that are great for people who want to do a simple blog about their vacation, their company or their family reunion. If you’re ready to create a more robust blog that adds a lot of SEO value for your website, you’ll want to use Joomla, Drupal, Typepad or WordPress. These are the blogging platforms used by serious bloggers.

Discussion Boards and Forums: Are you interested in creating an online forum where members of your community can engage with each other and offer each other advice? Then a discussion board or forum is for you. The best-known platforms for forums include Lefora, Zoho, Drupal, PhpBB, Simple Machines, Vanila, JavaBB and vBulletin. Strengths: Forums are a great way to build a relationship with customers and prospects. Weaknesses: They require regular, ongoing time and energy to keep them running properly.

Google: Google is technically not a social media platform, but can be used as a social tool to drive visits to your well-optimized website. Strengths: Ease-of-use and pervasiveness. Weaknesses: Are they spreading their brand across too many channels? Does this confuse people? (Answer: Probably not, but we’re struggling to come up with any weakness for Google. They’re just so darn nice, it’s hard to figure out what they’re not good at. They’re even good at not being evil, you know?)

Email Marketing Platforms: Email can often get overlooked in the world of social media, but if you define social media as tools that help you have a dialogue with your customers and prospects, then email falls into the social media category. Popular email marketing tools include AWeber (affiliate link), Constant Contact, iContact, ExactTarget and others. Strengths: Email is a highly measurable way to connect with customers and prospects. Weaknesses: Email marketing requires a concerted, ongoing effort if you’re going to do it right.

Flickr: This is a photo-sharing site that can be used to build awareness and drive traffic to your product pages. If you’re selling hunting rifles or tennis rackets or widgets, you’ll want to use Flickr to a) build awareness for your product and b) drive people from Flickr to your website. Strengths: Flickr is easy-to-use and has a clean user-interface. Weaknesses: Photo-sharing sites are important, but they’re not the very first thing you’ll want to work on in your social media campaign.

Howcast: Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a website where you could watch “How To” videos on the topic of your choice? Well, there is and it’s called Howcast. It’s an extremely worthy-competitor to YouTube. Strengths: A great place to upload high-quality content. Weaknesses: The default is still YouTube. Most people are conditioned to automatically type “YouTube” into their browser.

iLike: If you’re a musician, you’ll want to upload your work to iLike. It’s the dominant music application on Facebook, Orkut and hi5. Strengths: Over 50 million music lovers use iLike via Facebook, Orkut, iGoogle and other platforms. Weaknesses: iLike is a crowded venue, which makes it difficult for musicians to break through.

iTunes: This is not the only podcasting site, but it’s the best-known and most popular. If you’re doing interviews with industry experts or if you’re creating mini-radio shows, iTunes is the place to be. Strengths: It’s a well-known, well-respected platform. Weaknesses: If you don’t create scintillating content, people won’t come back for more.

MySpace: Ahhhhh, MySpace. They arguably started this whole social media thing to begin with. Today, MySpace is primarily used as a congregation point for younger people interested in pop culture. They’re evolving and seem to be finding a niche. Strengths: A well-known social media platform that most everybody has visited at one time or another. Weaknesses: They’re not the ubiquitous social media platform they once were.

More and more people are accessing their social media platforms via smartphone. To learn how to dive into mobile marketing quickly and easily, check out my book, “Go Mobile.”

Picasa: This is a photo organizing, editing and sharing site that’s owned by Google. You can tag photos to enable quick searches by users. Strengths: As with most Google services, Picasa is easy-to-use and loads very quickly. Weaknesses: Photo sharing is important, but it’s not the very first thing you’d want to work on in your social media campaign.

Vimeo: Think of Vimeo as a high-end YouTube. It’s perfect for people interested in sharing their videos with a community of positive, encouraging creative professionals. Strengths: You gotta love a site that oozes upbeat, optimistic, life-affirming energy that Vimeo does. Weaknesses: It’s not a default site the way YouTube is, but that may change in the near future.

Yahoo: Like Google and Bing, this is not technically a social media platform. But it is a tool that ultimately can drive traffic to your website. Be sure to optimize your website so that search engines like Yahoo can see it. Strengths: Yahoo is one of the work horses of the search engine world, so it’s always a good idea to keep it on your radar screen. Weaknesses: Is Yahoo a search engine? An online portal? A web magazine? Perhaps it’s all of these things. And perhaps that’s not a weakness after all.

YouTube: Of course, YouTube is one of the better-known platforms used to promote businesses. The key to YouTube is to keep the videos short and sweet. Make sure they solve the “what’s in it for me” equation. YouTube is perfect for “How To” videos, but it’s not a good place to upload the CEOs annual speech to shareholders. Strengths: YouTube is ubiquitous. Weaknesses: It’s a cluttered environment that can sometimes have some pretty racy videos on it. (Or so we’ve heard.)

Social Media Platforms that help you Share:

Buffer: This social media management tool allows you to schedule Tweets and Facebook updates quickly and easily from your web browser. It’s perfect for people not interested in using TweetDeck or HootSuite. Just sign up, install on your browser and the next time you’re at a web page you want to share, hit the Buffer button and schedule it for sometime in the future. Strengths: An easy way to schedule updates on Twitter and Facebook. Weaknesses: Other platforms offer the same functionality.

Crowdstorm: If you want to get the inside scoop on digital cameras, DVD players, televisions or other products, Crowdstorm is for you. The Crowdstorm community is built around the idea that when people share information about products, everybody benefits. Strengths: An easy-to-use website that leverages the power of ratings and reviews for the benefit of users. Weaknesses: Since the site crowdsources reviews, it’s not necessarily an effective tool for marketers. But it’s always good to check with sites like these to see how your product is being perceived in the marketplace.

Delicious: This is a social bookmarking service owned by Yahoo. When someone tags your article, video or blog post with a Delicious bookmark, it’s the equivalent of a “vote.” The more votes you get, the more visibility your content has on the Delicious website. Strengths: It’s everywhere. Weaknesses: You have to have a lot of traffic and a lot of votes to show up on the radar screen.

Digg: Similar to Delicious in that people vote for articles, videos and blog posts they like. If your content receives enough Diggs, it’s promoted to the front page for millions of visitors to see. Strengths: Like Delicious, Digg is everywhere. Weaknesses: You have to have a lot of traffic and a lot of votes to show up on the radar screen.

Feedback: This is a social media platform that allows people to provide feedback to companies as diverse as Starbucks and Chipotle. Members of the Feedback community can read reviews and make additional comments. Strengths: An innovative use of “crowd-sourcing” for information. Weaknesses: Since the site crowdsources reviews, it’s not necessarily an effective tool for marketers. But it’s always good to check with sites like these to see how your product is being perceived in the marketplace.

HootSuite: This is a tool that allows you to manage multiple social media channels through one dashboard. If you have a company with more than one contributor to your social media program, HootSuite is a good solution. Strengths: A very easy-to-use interface. Simple set-up, yet still powerful. Weaknesses: If your social media program is no more extensive than updating a Twitter account, then HootSuite would be over-kill.

Instagram: A surprisingly fun photography app that’s sweeping the globe. Install Instagram on your smartphone and, next time you take a photo, use it to enhance, stylize and share the photo with others in your network. Strengths: A fun, easy-to-use app. Weaknesses: Other apps provide a similar experience.

MarketMeSuite: This is a social media dashboard that’s similar to HootSuite and TweetDeck. It’s perfect for people who are interested in drilling down a little deeper than either HootSuite or TweetDeck allow you to do. You wouldn’t want to use MarketMeSuite in addition to the others, but instead of. If you need a more in-depth experience, MarketMeSuite may be just what you need.

Path: A location-based social sharing app that allows you to share photos, memories, music, thoughts and other moments with friends in your social media circle. Strengths: A fun way to share your life journey with friends. Weaknesses: Heavy competition from intrenched competitors like Facebook, Google+ and others.

Pinterest: We live in a visual world and Pinterest leverages that. Tired of reading long blog posts (like this one) but still enjoy skimming through images that are worth 1,000 words? If so, then Pinterest is for you. Just visit the site, sign up and start sharing images by re-pinning them to your profile. Strengths: A visually-appealing way to share information with followers. Weaknesses: Competition from a wide variety of other social media platforms.

Quora: This is the perfect place to go if you’re interested in asking a question that requires an expert answer. Just type in a question you have about any topic and Quora will provide answers from other users. Quora is frequented by smart, well-educated users, so the answers tend to be very helpful and well-thought-out. Strengths: A simple, easy-to-use platform. Weaknesses: A simple Google search can sometimes offer the same quality of answers.

Reddit: Similar to Digg and Delicious. Reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web. Users can vote articles up or down on the site, so readers can check out the hot, trending topics from blogs, newspapers and other sources around the globe. Strengths: Like Digg and Delicious, Reddit is everywhere. Weaknesses: You have to have a lot of traffic and a lot of votes to show up on the radar screen.

Scribd: This is the largest social publishing and reading site in the world. You simply upload your speech, ebook or PowerPoint presentation to the site so that others can be awed by your wisdom and expertise. Strengths: A great way to potentially get your content in front of thousands of readers. Weaknesses: There are a lot of other people competing for the same eyeballs.

SlideShare: One of the better-known places to upload your content for sharing with others. Take your PowerPoint, your ebook, your Podcast or just about any other content and share it with the SlideShare community.  Strengths: Like Scribd, SlideShare is a great way to get in front of a large number of visitors. Weaknesses: There are a lot of other people competing for the same eyeballs.

StumbleUpon: Very similar to Digg, Delicious and Reddit. When you rate a website that you like using StumbleUpon, it’s automatically shared with like-minded people. And it helps you find great sites your friends recommend. Strengths: StumbleUpon helps spread your content to people not regularly exposed to your products and/or services. Weaknesses: Competes with several other well-established tools, like Digg, Delicious and Reddit.

TweetDeck: Like HootSuite, TweetDeck provides a way to track many of your social media channels on one dashboard. It can be a time-saver and a productivity-enhancer, assuming you’re not easily distracted. Strengths: It’s very easy to set-up and get started. Weaknesses: Like all dashboard tools, it can lead to distractions for employees who are easily … Whoa! Is that a fly on the ceiling or just a speck of dust?

Wikipedia: It still amazes us that this user-generated encyclopedia is run by just a few dozen employees (along with hundreds of thousands of contributors around the globe). It’s a great tool for legitimate entries. Don’t try to game the system by adding overly-promotional posts. But if your entry will be helpful to the Wikipedia community at large, have at it. Strengths: It’s a great tool for uploading legitimate, helpful content about your product, service or company. Weaknesses: If your target market is over the age of 40, they might struggle with Wikipedia’s miniscule type.

Yelp: This platform offers user-generated reviews on cool places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play. Yelp has an augmented reality Smart Phone application that makes using it on the run a blast. Strengths: User-generated reviews are a great way for customers and prospects to find out about your business. Weaknesses: Some people try to game the system with faux reviews, but Yelp does a pretty good job of keeping those faux reviews at bay.

Again, the list we’ve created  is for our book, How to Make Money with Social Media, which is available just about everywhere. It’s not intended to be exhaustive, but it is intended to be helpful. So, given that, let us know your feedback.

Do we accurately describe the platforms? Are there any important platforms that we’re missing? Are there any that should be deleted from the list?

Do tell.

Thanks!

About the author: Jamie Turner is the Founder of the 60 Second Marketer and co-author of “How to Make Money with Social Media” and “Go Mobile.” He is also a popular marketing speaker at events, trade shows and corporations around the globe.

Social Media Platforms

CategorySocial Media | Comment76 Comments »

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