With the vast array of social media tools out there, it’s easy for some useful ones to get lost in the mix. Here’s a few that might be flying below the radar, but can be valuable tools for B2B marketers.
1. Social Mention
Cost: Free
For those of you that use Google Alerts you may want to take a look at Social Mention. Social Mention is a real time search platform that will allow you to search on a keyword/phrase and see its social mentions across 100+ social media properties. It offers a strength score, sentiment ratio, a passion score and reach. This stream of information can be fed into your RSS feeds or be delivered to your inbox. It also displays Top Users, Top Hashtags, and Sources. It’s a great addition to your listening toolbox.
2. Flowtown
Cost: Free trial, monthly fees based on imported contacts and email volume
When all you have is an email address, Flowtown can give you a name, age, gender, occupation, location and all the social networks that person is on. It’s a great resource if you need to append your customer file with social network profile information, learn more about the social habits of your database or if you want to target them on social networks.
3. Compendium Blogware
Cost: Varies depending on number of keywords
You should consider Compendium if you rely on your blog for SEO results. Compendium’s Blogware product helps you target keywords because it automatically organizes your content in a way that’s ideal for search engines to crawl. It also has great administrative tools with a step-by-step approval process so you can manage your blog content within your organization.
4. Trackur
Cost: Free for 1 saved search, plans for multiple saved searches
Trackur is a social media monitoring tool that provides an impressive set of features at very reasonable costs. You can save searches which are updated every 30 minutes, receive alerts via RSS or email, bookmark and save discovered items and track sentiment and trends. You can try it for free which includes one saved search, so its easy to give it a test run to see if its right for you, and if so just upgrade into one of the paid plans.
5. Swix
Cost: Free (for now)
Swix is your social web index. It allows you to create pods, which is a way to see your metrics for a particular social media property (Twitter, YouTube, your blog, Flickr, MySpace, etc.) Then for each property, you can enter your amount spent, your cost per unit and then see your return on investment. It’s simple to use.
6. Addictomatic
Cost: Free
Addictomatic instantly creates a custom page with the latest buzz on any topic. Pick the channels where you want to source your information then save your search as a bookmark. It’s a helpful way to determine the buzz about your product or service, find potential audience and to see what channels are sources of content for your keywords/phrases.
7. Spiral 16
Cost: N/A
Spiral 16 offers 3D Visual Mapping. Their visualizer displays the relationships between unique URLs in dynamic 2D and 3D maps. This enables users to quickly identify key influencers who are spreading a positive, negative, or neutral message about a topic across the Internet. It can help you discover trends, identify targets, measure campaigns and sentiment and increase customer loyalty.
Are there any other tools you find useful in your B2B marketing research, monitoring or ROI calculations? Leave us a comment with your favorites.
