Do you want to widen your social media footprint without consuming any more of your valuable time? Whether you are a web profits or internet marketing professional, or if you simply want to organize your Facebook, Twitter and Blogging messages, posts and uploads efficiently to save time, there are a number of management applications that can help you. So far, none of these applications can qualify as the complete one-stop-solution for every service. So you have to often purchase and run two or more of them. How do you choose which application will give you the ideal functions and services that you want?
There are at least four of these top solutions now available – Hootsuite, Socialoomph, Tweetadder and Tweetdeck. Each of them aim to offer all that you need. But, in practice, it does not really turn out that way. You need to carefully select which of the functions you need the most, from each application. So we put forward the functions from each applications that we have found can work well, for you to then decide who to manage the key elements of your social media activity.
And why not extend your footprint with a number of tools? This also stops you from too much reliance on one application provider. Plus it gives you the all-important patient spread of programmed tweeting, which always needs a prudent approach to avoid the dreaded Twitter De-Activation. So let’s look at how to get the best from each tool?
1. Tweetadder. This let’s you program Twitter direct messages, but their real USP is a search for multiple targets to follow, based on those keywords that you have selected. Some great exclusive programming into the Twitterland API gets you thousands of targets. Then you can program how and when you follow, and at what daily levels. There can be an easy temptation to create a large list of targets, unless you are restricted and smart with your keywords. It’s actually much better to do this for just one keyword, in a small burst of a few hundred targets at a time. Then see the relevance of whom you are following and who follows back. There is also a neat app to decide how long you should wait to be followed – and then unfollow, if you are not then followed back within a certain period that you have selected.
2. Tweetdeck – this let’s you display a number of your social media accounts together and then select the contents and fields that you want to view. Not that innovative in our opinion.
3. Hootsuite – let’s you display multiple accounts like tweetdeck, but across more social media. Easy to retweet and track your direct messaging. But there are two points of difference we absolutely love about Hootsuite. First is the ‘Hootlet’ that you paste into your browser bar. This allows you to capture a web page that you want to tweet out to your followers, onto your Facebook pages, etc. It is very simple to add the page title, heading, reduced url and often a thumbnail visual too – all with one click on your hootlet button. Then you can select the accounts in your Hootsuite lists that you do or don’t want to send details of the page to. It even let’s you add some of your own text. And it has a box for you to add a secondary url that you want to highlight to the viewer. It’s great for multiple tweeting of news or new insights. But beware of two things that can get you banned from Twitter – one is using that secondary url to a direct affiliate link or cloak. Better to use your own web page urls and then re-direct. The second thing to beware of is re-editing a hootlet to highlight a high profile @username. And if you put this in a re-edit at the beginning, Twitter’s virtual police monitors will ban all your accounts in that hootlet. In a heartbeat, without appeal. So better to use hootlets to spread a broad level of new content to your audience. And give due credit to the sources of the pages. Second, Hootsuite lets you run programmed distribution of tweets. It’s not easy to manage using excel columns and differing the dates, but it can let you run important messages when you choose.
4. Socialoomph – this is our favourite. It does not give you very good search, or much of an account-viewing interface, but it has a wide range of innovative functions, including multiple blogging. And it let’s you run large lists of tweets and Facebook message programmes, for far longer than Hootsuite. The text files are easier to set up too. And they will compress long urls for you in their software. Beware of using the same url (even if it is shortened), in programmed tweets for more than one account however. Twitter will block that tweet across all your programmes and, again, you put that account at risk to de-activation. We love the cool Socialoomph function to shorten urls, because you can select your own new codename to use across your entire web footprint and therefore stay close to your brand or subject. But once again, use it for your own web pages and not to just cloak those volatile affiliate links. You can also set up email monitors so you know when your accounts are favourited, re-tweeted etc.
So we believe that it’s worth investing in more than one service, under their monthly subscription rates. Be prepared to need a few more hours per week to stay on top of your programmes, but it will merit accelerating your whole social interaction strategy up to an entirely different level of impact and coverage.
Try these different applications for yourself and take advantage of the HootSuite Special Free 30-Day Trial. To get all the professional consulting advice you will ever need for online internet business with several special offers go to Web Profits Masters. This article, Tweetadder or Socialoomph? How To Make Best Use of Social Media Management Applications has free reprint rights.
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