Social Media Tools and Techniques

The Basics

• LinkedIn – Start the practice of connecting with every business card you receive from contacts.
• Facebook – Consider a “Facebook Movement” – creating a topic or trend in Facebook outside of your personal or brand fan pages.
• Twitter – A staple for all of us. Here’s a must read basics of Twitter article. 
• Google Profile – This is a Gold rush here.  Secure and verify your personal name  before someone else gets it.
• Plaxo – organizes business contacts via the web 

Conversations and Listening

• LinkedIn Answers – Listen and answer.
• LinkedIn Groups – Find groups that make sense for your business.
• Yahoo! Answers – Listen and answer questions. Position yourself as the expert.
• Google Alerts – Get updates on who’s talking about you, your industry, your customers.
• Google Groups – Find the group relevant to your job and get active.
• Alltop – The digital magazine rack. Find the alltop for your industry – here’s content marketing.
• Google Reader – Organize RSS feeds from media sites and blogs 
• Backtype – Follow and share comments on the web (courtesy Andrew Davies).
• Ning – Create your own social networking site 

Twitter Management

• Tweetdeck – The ultimate Twitter management system.
• Hootsuite – Manage multiple twitter accounts from one dashboard.
• Twitterfeed – Set your RSS feeds to post automatically on Twitter.
• Twitter Search – Find anything on Twitter real-time. For tagging, use the # (hash) tag (#magsu event)
• Tweetmeme – Find what’s hot on Twitter.
• Twilert – Twitter search alerts via email.
• Yammer – It’s Twitter for inside the company walls (courtesy of Paul Dunay)
• Tagalus – Directory of Twitter hash tags (courtesy of Kyra Reed)
• MyTweeple – Manage tweets and followers. Especially good for managing multiple profiles (courtesy of Laurie Dunlop).
• Twitter Facebook App – Updates Facebook via Twitter (courtesy of Greg Padley).
• Selective Twitter Facebook App – Updates Facebook only when you use #fb (courtesy of Greg Padley).
• Seesmic – Managing with multiple accounts (courtesy Brad Hays).

Content Sharing

• delicious – Share your content through bookmarking. Great way to share with teams (courtesy Michelle O’Hagan).
• Slideshare – Upload your PowerPoint presentations for all to see.
• YouTube – The #1 video sharing site.
• Vimeo – an alternative to YouTube
• Tubemogul – Distribute your video to them and they’ll spread it to other video sharing sites for you.
• StumbleUpon – Randomly generates content for users by interest area.
• Digg.com – Content sharing site (great for tech and news).
• Marketwire/PRWeb – Distribute your content using social media online news releases.
• Google Custom Search – Set up your own niche search engine on your site or blog.
• Scribd – Share original writings with others (courtesy Andrew Davis).
• Squidoo – Set up your own targeted vertical content lens (courtesy Ambal Balakrishnan).
• Flickr – Share/upload/find photos (courtesy Wendy Boyce).

Blogging/CMS Tools

• WordPress – My recommendation for a blog CMS platform.  Our custompublishers.comblog uses WordPress. I also recommend using this CMS for any small-business website (also courtesy Tina Bentley).
• TypePad – Set up and blog in just a few minutes. This blog uses TypePad (also courtesy of Britton Manasco).
• Joomla – Another option for blogging/CMS platform.  Joomla users praise it.
• Drupal – Extremely versatile CMS platform (courtesy of Dan).
• Technorati – Blog directory.  Find the blogs in your industry so that you know which ones to listen to.
• IceRocket – Search for blogs and blog posts by category. IceRocket’s Trend Tool will tell you how “hot” your keyword is.
• Google Blog Search – First rate blog search tool.
• Tumblr – Post anything quickly and easily.
• Zemanta – Great for adding additional content and links (courtesy of Drew McLellan).
• Posterous – Post to a blog by sending an email (courtesy of Richard Shatto).
• Tipjoy – Simple social media payments (courtesy of Greg Padley).

Measurement

• Google Analytics – I recommend using Google Analytics even if you have a paid analytics service (courtesy Cim Buser).
• Hubspot – I’m a customer. I use Hubspot to track the performance of my keywords and competitors’ keywords (courtesy Gretel Going).
• Website Grader – Hubspot product that will grade your website on a number of analytics and social media indicators.  Great free tool!
• Alexa – Some high-level information on website traffic for any site.
• Compete.com – Excellent comparison tool for web analytics-type information.
• Quantcast – Provides good overview of analytics and site demographics (courtesy of Kyra Reed).
• Woopra – Analytics on steroids (courtesy of Kyra Reed).

Operations

• Google Apps – Runs all email and calendar functions through one place.  We use it and love it. Basic option is free.
• Google Docs – Share Word documents, spreadsheets and presentations via secure invitations. Great for editing a document with multiple people involved.
• Microsoft Live Workspace – Like Google Docs but with Microsoft. 5GB free space (courtesy Kate H).
• Teamwork Project Manager – Easy-to-use project management tool.
• BaseCamp – An alternative to Teamwork Project Manager. Also very easy to use.
• aMember – Handles paid memberships for websites (courtesy Simon Payn).
• Junta42 Match – Finds expert providers for web content projects.
• Freemind – Open source mind-mapping software.
• Mindmanager – One of the best mapping software programs around (courtesy Kavita Jhunjhunwala).
• Mindmeister.com – It’s like Google Docs for mindmapping (courtesy George Kao).
• Box.net – Save everyday work files…access from anywhere (courtesy Michelle O’Hagan).
• Xobni.com – Outlook plugin that helps track down files easier (courtesy Craig Hodges).
• ExpertMagnet.com – Free service to find professional service providers.

Other Cool Online Tools

• Blinkplan – Creating flatplans for magazines (courtesy Kevin Lund).
• Jing- To create screenshots for clients when something needs to be explained (courtesyTom Deeter).
• Gimp – Quickly edit images from Flickr (courtesy Tom Deeter)
• VisualCV – Online social media resume (courtesy Michelle Corsano).