Marketing tools to boost your online influence
There’s no substitute for a good marketing campaign. After all, it’s what makes your business stand out from the crowd.
A recent survey showed that most companies spend 20 hours on marketing per week. How do you know if you’re using this time wisely? Having the right data is the best way to evaluate your marketing strategies.
Here are five tools that will boost your productivity and effectively measure your online impact.
1) Moz
Moz offers a complete set of tools to synchronize all your marketing campaigns. From traffic stats to social media shares, Moz tracks the data you need to get the right customers.
Moz not only provides top-notch analytics tools but also offers actionable advice on how you can improve your marketing. One of its best-known features is Open Site Explorer, which tracks inbound links to your website. This is essential information for any marketer because it can help you build connections with key influencers.
Ever wondered who’s talking about your business? Moz’s Mentions tool scours RSS feeds and URLs to find out where your brand appears on the web. Moz also features an on-page ranker that helps optimize your content, allowing you to rank higher for a specific keyword.
2) Passpack
Chances are, you use multiple passwords to run your business. Since 2006, Passpack has been making it easy to remember passwords by storing them all in one application.
Once you’ve installed Passpack in your browser, you can securely log in to any website with just a click of a button. The type of data you can save is diverse, from email passwords to log-in credentials for online banking. With Passpack, you can safely share your passwords with anyone in your network, including employees and family members.
Passpack offers different subscription plans to suit your business needs. While its free account allows you to save up to 100 passwords, purchasing a subscription gives you more passwords, shared users, and disposable log-ins.
3) Klout
Klout provides an ideal way to measure your marketing reach and grow your influence. The company has a stellar track record and has run campaigns for some of the most influential brands in the world.
Once you sign up for Klout, you can link your social media profiles, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and Instagram. Klout will then give you a “score” based on your social media activity.
Klout digs deep, looking beyond superficial statistics such as your Twitter follower count. It tracks how often users actually pay attention to what you post. For example, your Klout score will increase when you receive comments, retweets, and likes on your content. The built-in reporting tool makes it easy to track your activity on a daily basis, so you can easily tweak your marketing efforts.
4) Raven
Like Moz, Raven combines multiple pieces of software in one easy-to-use package. With dozens of available tools, Raven streamlines the work so you don’t need to spend hours doing marketing research on your own.
Raven focuses on five different categories: social media, content marketing, reporting, PPC, and SEO. One of its most useful tools is the Site Auditor, which crawls your website to figure out which SEO issues need improvement. Raven can also check search engine rankings for keywords, improve backlinks, and monitor your brand on social media.
Raven’s content marketing tools help push your content out quickly across multiple platforms. Using its metrics, you can discover which content is most profitable and keep tabs on the topics that industry leaders are talking about.
5) MailChimp
Smart businesses know the power of email marketing. With MailChimp, you can build your subscriber list and send more great content to the clients who matter most.
If you don’t already have a subscriber list, MailChimp helps you create a sign-up form. Once your list is ready to go, you can begin a new email marketing campaign using the service’s customizable templates. Your emails can be plain text, graphics rich, or pulled from an RSS feed. MailChimp lets you target specific subscribers with your emails so that clients receive only the most relevant information.
After your marketing campaign has launched, you can track it using MailChimp’s analytics tools. Here you’ll learn helpful information, such as how many subscribers actually open your emails. MailChimp can also recommend the best time to send marketing emails based on the activity level of your subscribers.
If you have fewer than 2,000 subscribers, you can use MailChimp for free. However, there are more advanced features, such as automated emails, that are restricted to the paid versions.
Marketing tools put your business on the map
It’s a common refrain in the marketing world that content is king. However, not all content has a built-in audience.
To get the exposure you want, you’ll need to share your message on multiple platforms and connect with the top experts in your industry. Having the right tools is the key to building your online brand and growing your business.