Writing Prompts

New social media management tools can help you gain customer loyalty

If you have ever tried digital marketing for your business, you have heard of social media marketing. This is a method of promoting your brand and products through social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. You may have heard of companies who have posted a single tweet that caused their stock to be cleaned out by enthusiastic customers. Unfortunately, this scenario almost never happens. Getting a social media marketing campaign to deliver sales requires special skills, in-depth analysis, and highly specialized social media management tools. There is no magic trick in digital marketing, just plain old skills and tools, the same as any other marketing avenue. This review details seven of the best social media management tools currently available.

1) CoSchedule

The first of the social media management tools that you might consider using is CoSchedule. The aim of this tool is to help you time publicity for the content you post on your website or other blogs. When you write a new post, you get CoSchedule to post messages about it on social media sites. You might not want every outlet to display messages about that post all at once, so you can adjust the schedule of your social media postings to draw the attention of your followers on different platforms on different days. This will enable you to monitor traffic and work out which social media site draws in better customers. This is a stand-alone application, but it can also integrate with WordPress. The pricing for this social media marketing tool is US $10 per month, per WordPress blog. If you pay up front for a year, you get a US $20 discount.

2) Crowdbooster

Analyzing the value of your social media marketing efforts can be difficult. It is not always easy to track which visitors were driven to your site by which social media outlet. Crowdbooster aims to fill that knowledge gap. This social media management tool analyzes and reports on your social media marketing and tries to marry the sales results to each digital marketing campaign. This information will help you understand where your markets are and what methods are best at reaching them and getting them to follow through a visit with a purchase. Crowdbooster only monitors marketing on Facebook and Twitter. It has a range of plans that start at US $9 per month and go up to US $119 per month.

3) Buffer

Buffer has the message scheduling capabilities of CoSchedule and the analytical tools of Crowdbooster. However, it is a lot more expensive than the combination of both CoSchedule and Crowdbooster. The cheapest Buffer plan costs US $50 per month. You can get a free trial for seven days, so that facility will help you decide whether it is worth paying for this social media management tool or whether you can get by with the cheaper combination of CoSchedule and Crowdbooster. The Buffer website has a blog with some handy tips on social media marketing. If you decide not to subscribe to their services, you can still benefit from the advice of the company’s experts by checking the new posts on the blog.

4) Hootsuite

You might say you couldn’t give a hoot what people are writing on the web about your business, but if reputation management is a priority for you, you might need Hootsuite. This social media management tool is all about monitoring what others say about your company and your products. Bad reviews may arise from faulty products or poor customer service, from blackmailing clients who want something for nothing or from sneaky rivals. Whatever causes negative comments about your business, you need to identify and deal with it, because such comments can get indexed by search engines and appear on results pages when people are searching for your products or services. On the positive side, good reviews are worth more than the most expensive advertising, and you should locate them and draw the public’s attention to them. On top of this monitoring capability, Hootsuite also includes message scheduling and analytical tools. Hootsuite monitors 35 social media outlets for you, including Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. You can get a 30-day free trial of the Pro price plan, which costs US $9.99 per month thereafter. The Small Business Plan costs US $49 per month, and there is a 30-day free trial for that, too.

5) Tweepi

If you focus your social media marketing on Twitter, you could benefit from the services offered by Tweepi. This social media management tool extends the (negligible) reporting capabilities of a Twitter account so you can analyze your hits and misses from your digital marketing campaign. Tweepi has a free plan and two paid plans. Before you spend any of your hard-earned income, however, it is worth remembering that Twitter’s market share seems to be in freefall at the moment, and focusing all of your digital marketing there is probably a mistake. As Tweepi only allows you to manage your Twitter account, the value of its service is closely tied to Twitter’s performance.

6) IFTTT

This social media management tool is pronounced like “gift” without the “g.” This is an acronym that stands for “if this, then that.” That phrase is a standard construct in programming, so the name of the service and its minimal use of presentation show that this social media management tool is run by very techie geniuses. The IFTTT methodology is based around a “recipe,” which is the “if this, then that” statement, where “this” is a trigger and “that” is an action. Your social media messages will be posted if a given condition is met. For instance, creating a new blog post can act as a trigger to send out social media messages about that blog post.

7) SocialFlow

The key feature of the SocialFlow social media management tool is that it can monitor the posts and comments of your followers on LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. This enables digital marketers to tailor content to the current interests of followers and then schedule its release and promotion to feed into current conversations. Promotion takes the forms of both messaging and paid advertising. This social media management tool includes both scheduling and analysis tools.

Managing social media marketing

Social media marketing is a complicated field, and the novice practitioner should gain a thorough understanding of the topic before investing in complicated social media management tools. Fortunately, most of the companies offering these tools also have blogs on their sites that explain the methodology and purpose of social media marketing. Take time to visit these blogs, and get to understand the techniques this marketing channel requires by visiting each of the sites in this review. Once you feel comfortable with the topic, you will be better able to assess which of these tools would suit your marketing strategy. Take advantage of the free trials that most of these social media management tools offer so you can be sure you can get the best returns for your money.

Homophones and the Philosopher’s Stone

Harry and Ron taught you about the bumpy roads that even the strongest of friendships sometimes must travel—even if you happen to be driving a flying car. Dumbledore taught you that you must be foolish to become wise, Voldemort taught you the meaning of the phrase “self-fulfilling prophecy,” and Hermione taught you the importance of paying attention in Herbology class if you ever plan to escape from a tangle with Devil’s Snare. I could go on for days about the valuable life lessons I’m sure you learned from reading Harry Potter, but instead, I think I’ll teach you yet another lesson.

Learning grammar through reading is a great way to pick up on the nuances of the English language while also learning about the culture of English literature. The Harry Potter series was originally written with a young adult audience in mind, which means that it is easy to read but still contains mature themes and a fantastic story arc. With that in mind, this seven-week-long series will use quotes from all seven Harry Potter books to unpack some common English grammar and punctuation rules. After all, what better way is there to learn grammar than with a little bit of magic?

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the Harry Potter series, bookmark this page and come back after you’ve done so. I’m serious. Read it. Go. Now. Then come back. I’ll miss you.

Introduction to Homophones

We start our grammar quest at the beginning, with the first book in the series: Harry Potter and the Philosopher‘s Stone, or—if you’re in the US—Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Today we will use the story of Harry’s first year at Hogwarts to learn more about homophones. Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings. Some homophones are spelled the same, while others aren’t. An example of a pair of homophones is the words witch and which. Hermione Granger is a witch. Hermione must decide which is more important: following the rules or helping her friend defeat the Dark Lord. Homophones with different spellings are often mixed up by people who have trouble with spelling and grammar. In particular, there are three groups of commonly confused homophones.

Group 1: Their/There/They’re

He couldn’t know that at this very moment, people meeting up in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: “To Harry Potter—the boy who lived!”

Their indicates possession. It means that something belongs to someone. In the above quote, wizards all over the country are holding up the glasses from which they are about to drink—their glasses—in honor of Harry.

There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.

There is a somewhat tricky word to define, as it has several meanings. It can act as an adverb that indicates a place or a manner, or it can be used as a pronoun to introduce sentences in which the verb comes first, as in the above quote that begins with There are and explains just exactly how Hermione becomes friends with Harry and Ron. If it does not indicate possession and is not a contraction of they are, there is the correct spelling.

“Don’t worry, the Weasleys are more than a match for the Bludgers—I mean, they’re like a pair of human Bludgers themselves.”

They’re is a contraction: it is a combination of the words they and are. In the above quote, Gryffindor’s Quidditch captain, Oliver Wood, is talking to Harry about both Fred and George Weasley and how they are akin to Bludgers.

Group 2: Your/You’re

“Miss Granger, you foolish girl, how could you think of tackling a mountain troll on your own?”

There is nothing more embarrassing than getting in trouble with Professor McGonagall—except, perhaps, using the wrong your. Like their, your is a pronoun that indicates possession. In the above example, Hermione has told Professor McGonagall that she tried to take on the troll alone—that is, all on her own.

“I hope you’re pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed—or worse, expelled. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to bed.”

Just like they’re is a combination of the words they and are, you’re is a contraction of the words you and are. If you’re ever in doubt about which spelling of your/you’re to use, simply replace it with you are to determine if the sentence still makes sense. In the above quote, Hermione hopes that both Harry and Ron are pleased about their encounter with Fluffy, the three-headed dog. She’s a very smart girl, but I think her priorities are a bit off sometimes.

Group 3: To/Too/Two

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that.”

Like there, to is a difficult word to concisely define, as it has many definitions. It can act either as a preposition or an adverb. In the above quotation, Professor Albus Dumbledore imparts some of his famous wisdom, advising Harry to leave the Mirror of Erised behind. A word to the wise: if Albus Dumbledore gives you advice, you listen. If Albus Dumbledore tells you to hop around on one foot wearing a tutu, you do it. He’s Dumbledore, guys. He’s Dumbledore.

“There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.”

Too is an adverb with two possible meanings: it either means additionally or as well, or it refers to an excess of something, as in the above quotation from Professor Quirrell. Quirrell is paraphrasing Lord Voldemort here when he explains that an excess of weakness—or too much weakness—is the only thing stopping some people from pursuing and acquiring power. Remember what I just said about listening to Dumbledore? Yeah, the opposite rule applies to Voldemort. He’s Voldemort, guys. Voldemort.

“Oh, honestly, don‘t you two read?”

The definition of two is simple. This spelling refers to the number 2. In the above quotation, Hermione is questioning Harry and Ron for not knowing what the philosopher’s stone is. She is asking whether the two boys read, hence the spelling of two. This is something I often ask pairs of people who say they’ve never read Harry Potter.

Conclusion

This concludes our look at Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Don’t forget to check out next week’s post, where we’ll take a look at commas using Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Learning Grammar through Reading: What Harry Potter Can Teach Us about English Grammar Rules (Week 1)