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Social Media Marketing Tools That Will Rocket You to Success

Social media meets marketing at its best

Seventy-four percent of Internet users are registered on social media.

Interesting, isn’t it? Now, imagine if your business could reach each one of them.

It sounds impossible, but with the right social media marketing tools, you’ll have a better chance of engaging your ideal clients. Whether you’re looking to build new relationships or strengthen existing ones, here are seven tools that will improve your marketing campaign by leaps and bounds.

1) Shutterstock

With so many businesses on the web, how do you make your content stand out? Adding images is one excellent solution.

Shutterstock is one of the best places to find high-quality stock photographs that are royalty-free. The site has millions of photographs to choose from, as well as illustrations, icons, and music samples. You can explore media from dozens of different categories, including wildlife, fashion, and infographics.

Shutterstock’s subscription service is also well-priced, and it’s easy to sign up. Depending on your content needs, you can pay by individual photo or purchase a membership for up to a year. Whatever option you choose, you’re guaranteed to receive a high-quality product from one of the most recognizable and respected image databases on the web.

2) Piktochart

Like Shutterstock, Piktochart emphasizes the visual side of social media. With Piktochart, you can create stunning infographics that are easily shareable on multiple platforms.

Piktochart’s easy-to-use interface was created for the non-designer. To create an infographic, you simply need to drag and drop different pre-designed elements onto your screen. The process is highly customizable, with tons of available themes, icons, and photos.

What’s not to love? Piktochart’s happy customers range from marketing specialists to public school teachers. If you’re looking to create visually appealing infographics to share on social media, Piktochart has everything you need.

3) Google Analytics

Google Analytics takes the mystery out of your marketing efforts by letting you know what’s working and what isn’t.

All you’ll need to get started is a Google account, which can easily be linked to an analytics profile. Within minutes, you’ll be able to see who your visitors are, what they’re searching for, and what type of device they’re using to find your content. This information is crucial for social media marketing, as you can then tailor your campaigns to your audience’s needs.

With Google Analytics, it’s easy to set specific marketing goals, such as receiving a certain number of page views, and you can track your progress in the online interface. For the beginner, the advanced analytics options may seem overwhelming, but Google provides free training resources that will help familiarize you with the application.

4) TubeMogul

Videos are great marketing tools because they’re entertaining, instructive, and easy to share. With TubeMogul, you can promote your multimedia content across dozens of different sites in just a few minutes. Its unique OneLoad service allows you to upload a video directly to the web. TubeMogul will then distribute it to influential media platforms, such as YouTube, Dailymotion, and Hulu.

Once your video is uploaded, you can track metrics like views, comments, and ratings to evaluate audience engagement. These statistics, helpfully provided in the TubeMogul interface, will help you tweak your advertising to reach the right audience. For brands and agencies, TubeMogul also offers packages with more in-depth analytics tools.

5) Latergramme

When it comes to making an impact on social media, timing is everything. If you’re an Instagram user, you’ll want to check out Latergramme, which helps you time your Instagram posts so they reach the optimum number of viewers.

With Latergramme, you can upload files directly from the web or your smartphone. An interactive calendar also helps you schedule images by the day, week, or month. This ensures that your posts will be published exactly when you want.

An integrated analytics tool shows you which photos have the most engagement, so you can plan your marketing efforts accordingly. Whether you’re posting personal photographs or a gorgeous stock image from Shutterstock, you’ll reach more users with your social media blasts than ever before.

6) Perfect Audience

If you notice your popularity on social media is slipping, Perfect Audience can help. It’s designed to increase audience retention and make sure you’re targeting the right clients.

Perfect Audience works by placing a hidden tag on your online content. This tag then analyzes audience data and creates a list of “lost visitors,” or visitors with a poor conversion rate. To entice them back to your content, Perfect Audience targets these users with personalized ads across the web, including networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

You can track the success of these ad campaigns using a built-in analytics tool. Perfect Audience’s clear billing guidelines and seamless integration of site tracking make this an ideal tool for social media marketing.

7) Socialbakers

Socialbakers is a suite of four tools: Analytics, Builder, Listening, and Ad Analytics. These applications allow you to monitor conversations across different platforms, so you can better engage and entertain your audience.

With Socialbakers, you can manage the activity on your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+ profiles. You’ll quickly discover which posts or pages have the most impact, and you can customize your marketing efforts to capitalize on this success.

Socialbakers also allows you to find key influencers, measure interaction levels, and compare your advertising campaign to those of your competitors. If you’re looking for an ideal mix of ad analysis and engagement tracking, then Socialbakers could be the tool for you.

With the right tools, marketing is easier than ever before

How do you launch a memorable marketing campaign? There’s no secret formula, but having a handful of social media tools in your back pocket will give you an edge over the competition.

Not only will your job be simpler, but your interactions with potential clients will also become more meaningful. The next time you log onto social media, remember that powerful tools send a powerful message.

Top 6 SEO Audit Tools

SEO audit tools can help you improve your search engine rankings

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of designing a website so that its webpages appear in the first pages of search engine results. The position of a webpage in search engine results pages (SERPs) is called its ranking, and a high ranking is a great way to attract customers to your website. Most search engine users rarely go beyond the first page of search engine results, so it is vital to use SEO audit tools to check and refine your digital marketing strategy. If you don’t have the time to research all the SEO audit tools out there, don’t worry — this roundup has done the work for you.

1) My Site Auditor

You are most likely to become a customer of My Site Auditor if you run an SEO consultancy. This tool produces a report on the SEO qualities of a particular page. Search engine rankings are based on a page’s relevance to a specific search term. That term, when used in a page, is called a keyword. My Site Auditor evaluates a given page for the presence of a specific keyword, and its report presents the results, either through an instantly downloadable PDF or via email. SEO consultants can integrate the My Site Auditor service into their websites to capture the email addresses of enquirers, which allows them to follow up with a sales pitch to any casual visitor who tries the tool on their site. If you sign up for this SEO audit tool, be sure to enter the Coupon Code REFER603946 to get the best deal.

2) Wpromote SEO Audit Tool

Wpromote’s SEO Audit Tool performs a quick comparison between your website and that of your competitor. One of the best features of this SEO audit tool is that it does not limit its comparisons to a given keyword. Instead, it calculates the keywords for which the two sites rank best. This is useful, since it may show you that your site is not hitting the keywords you think it is. The tool is free, and you can use it repeatedly to compare your site to many other sites, one at a time.

3) Screaming Frog SEO Spider

The SEO spider by Screaming Frog is pretty unique among SEO audit tools because you don’t access it through a website. Instead, you access it through a program that you can download onto your computer for free. This SEO audit tool produces an enormous amount of data, which SEO newbies may find overwhelming. The program emulates a “web bot,” which is the program that search engines use to index and score pages. It will take you a while to get to know this SEO audit tool using the free version, which only crawls up to 500 pages. When you are ready to deepen your analysis, removing this limit costs 99 pounds sterling for a one-year subscription, which is quite cheap.

4) UpCity Free SEO Report Card

If you work through each of the recommended sites in this review, you may find the My Site Auditor’s report a little light and the Screaming Frog SEO spider report a little daunting. If that’s the case, try the UpCity SEO Report Card. It falls slap-bang in the middle in terms of complexity. You can access the SEO audit tool using the UpCity website and compare your own site against others, one at a time. You don’t want to swamp yourself with too much information, so tackling your competitors one by one is a useful strategy. Even better, you are not limited to one free try on the SEO audit tool.

5) Web CEO Technical Website Quality Audit

The Web CEO SEO audit tool offers a comprehensive dashboard of features, which are too numerous to list in this review. You have to create an account to access the dashboard, but this “account creation” just involves entering an email address and a password. The dashboard includes an analysis of the social engagement of your site, which covers Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. You can also request a keyword analysis for your site and see the keywords that your competitors use. The SEO audit tool has a comprehensive range of link auditing tools, including a list of broken links on your site. This is a very extensive SEO audit tool, and it is free.

6) Hubspot’s Marketing Grader

For ease of use, the Hubspot Market Grader wins hands down. You might find some of the SEO audit tools listed in this roundup a little too simple, while others might overwhelm you with their complexity. The benefit of the Hubspot SEO audit tool is that it offers two levels of detail. This is a web-based SEO audit tool, and the analysis output initially shows you a summary. However, each reporting point is expandable. This format caters to two types of enquirers: the casual visitor and the detail hound.

Pick an SEO Audit Tool

It will take time to work through each of the six SEO audit tools listed in this article. However, it is worth the effort because, without analyzing your website’s performance, you don’t stand much chance of improving your rankings. Try the free versions of each of these SEO audit tools to figure out which one is best suited to your business needs.

 

8 Content Distribution Sites You Should Be Using

We know the Internet is endless. As online marketers, we sometimes feel overwhelmed by the ever-growing networks of cyberspace. Staying ahead of the infinite droves of new competitors in a limitless market can seem like a perpetual game of whack-a-mole.

Among the scores of websites accessible to online consumers, how do you know your content sharing strategies are working? Are you reaching your maximum potential audience?

One of the most effective ways to put your mind at ease and increase traffic to your website is to use content distribution sites. To make things simple, we’ve compiled a list of eight content sharing sites to help your posts, articles, and podcasts reach those most likely to enjoy them.

1. Business2Community

What started as a personal blog in 2010 has become a major business community, sharing high-quality, business-related content to 3 million regular visitors via an open forum. Business2Community has received high rankings from reputable tech and business panels, including AdAge magazine and Technorati.

Pros: Huge audience, professional reputation, opportunity to network with marketers and advertisers who might further extend the reach of your product or content

Cons: Highly sought-after membership—only the best of the best may become contributors

2. Scoop.it

Scoop.it is a content curator, meaning it’s a platform to share existing content on a specific topic of interest and match consumers with the information that matters most to them. This tool allows you to find interesting links related to your business and share them easily, which is a great way to diversify your content feed and show that you have authority on a particular topic.

Pros: User-friendly and automated but fully customizable; free and paid membership options; huge time saver

Cons: No direct sharing of your own content (though you will generate interest from the sites to which you link)

3. BizSugar

The Reddit of the business world, BizSugar allows users to submit content for peer review in the small business community. Posts are added to a virtual bulletin board, where members vote on the content they find most interesting, engaging, or useful. The most popular posts make it to the website’s home page, Twitter feed, and weekly newsletter for maximum visibility.

Pros: Potential to have your content seen by 1 million members of the business community (and thus drive real, usable traffic back to your site)

Cons: Audience limited to those already active in the small business community; success requires some effort (frequent, consistent posting)

4. Medium

Medium hit the blogging world not just as a beautiful platform but also as a place for writers, journalists, and bloggers to get noticed. The site began as an exclusive band of pre-selected writers and, as a result, has earned a reputation as a place to read really, really good articles. Basically, if your content shows up on Medium, readers are pre-conditioned to think it’s a cut above.

Pros: Reputation of excellence, design not marred by paid advertising (an aesthetic plus guaranteed to keep more readers on the page)

Cons: Unclear boundaries and limitations (no identified market or audience); paid or pre-selected contributors are promoted over everyday bloggers

5. Storify

Similar to Scoop.it, Storify offers an aesthetically pleasing, easy way to curate social media posts to reach a greater audience. The website is based on the idea that social media makes everyone a potential news reporter—it’s just a matter of having those stories noticed. Storify users have the ability to drag and drop social media posts to create shareable “stories.” Then readers can search the host site for stories related to specific topics, breaking news, or areas of interest. Posts on Storify have even been picked up by news agencies and international media organizations.

Pros: Ability to embed your own content to be shared by other users; a way to diversify content feed while still personalizing each post

Cons: Somewhat limited audience—most users are women aged 25–34

6. Followedapp

Followedapp is a content sharing tool that combines the power of social media with an advanced algorithm to connect readers with the posts they want to see. For you, this means the optimized content you upload will be assessed and recommended to the consumers most likely to enjoy it, rather than to a general (and possibly indifferent) audience. Instead of sharing your content on a separate website, Followedapp allows you to use your established social networks to share relevant content—both your own and other people’s—with your audience.

Pros: Easy to set up and personalize, also great for finding other people’s content to share with your social networks

Cons: Unlike some of the other sites on this list, no free option available

7. Taboola

This is a paid content distribution site that works by displaying a web widget that suggests content users might find interesting. Taboola was originally built to handle videos, so vloggers or online marketers who produce a lot of audio-visual content might find this distribution network particularly effective.

Pros: Best for sharing videos; different pricing options, including a premium option that distributes to the most popular sites on the network

Cons: Difficult to target specific audiences

8. Outbrain

The behemoth of the content distribution world, this paid site is the best known among its competitors, and for good reason. For sponsorship that runs between 25–35 cents, Outbrain displays your content prominently as recommended reading to users browsing popular websites. The distributor upholds strict quality policies, such as not allowing spammy posts that trick readers into clicking on links they aren’t actually interested in, thus protecting the site’s reputation.

Pros: Well-known, solid reputation, affordable pricing, huge network and audience potential

Cons: Limited ability to target specific audiences

Have you used any of the above sites? Did they boost traffic to your site?

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