Archive for June, 2009

Had a great time yesterday at the MagsUworkshop on “Opening the Emedia Toolbox”. In the session, we reviewed numerous online tools on how to develop social media strategies for personal branding, new revenue streams, search engine optimization, new content initiatives and more for content providers/publishers.  Here’s a taste.  If you have some social media tools you’d like to add, post them in the comments. Special thanks to those who made recommendations.

The Basics

• LinkedIn – Start the practice of connecting with every business card you receive from contacts.
• Facebook – Consider a “Facebook Movement” – creating a topic or trend in Facebook outside of your personal or brand fan pages.
• Twitter – A staple for all of us. Here’s a must read basics of Twitter article.(Courtesy of @mike_stelzner).
• Google Profile – This is a Gold rush here.  Secure and verify your personal name (i.e., Joe Pulizzi - Content Marketing Expert), before someone else gets it.

Conversations and Listening

• LinkedIn Answers – Listen and answer.
• LinkedIn Groups – Find groups that make sense for your business.
• Yahoo! Answers – Listen and answer questions. Position yourself as the expert.
• Google Alerts – Get updates on who’s talking about you, your industry, your customers.
• Google Groups – Find the group relevant to your job and get active.
• Alltop – The digital magazine rack. Find the alltop for your industry – here’scontent marketing.
• Google Reader – Organize RSS feeds from media sites and blogs (courtesy Andrew Davies, Simon Henault).
• Backtype – Follow and share comments on the web (courtesy Andrew Davies).
• Ning – Create your own social networking site (courtesy of Kyra Reed).

Twitter Management

• Tweetdeck – The ultimate Twitter management system.
• Hootsuite – Manage multiple twitter accounts from one dashboard.
• Twitterfeed – Set your RSS feeds to post automatically on Twitter.
• Twitter Search – Find anything on Twitter real-time. For tagging, use the # (hash) tag (#magsu event)
• Tweetmeme – Find what’s hot on Twitter.
• Twilert – Twitter search alerts via email.
• Yammer – It’s Twitter for inside the company walls (courtesy of Paul Dunay)
• Tagalus – Directory of Twitter hash tags (courtesy of Kyra Reed)
• MyTweeple – Manage tweets and followers. Especially good for managing multiple profiles (courtesy of Laurie Dunlop).

Content Sharing

• delicious – Share your content through bookmarking. Great way to share with teams (courtesy Michelle O’Hagan).
• Slideshare – Upload your PowerPoint presentations for all to see.
• YouTube – The #1 video sharing site.
• Vimeo – an alternative to YouTube
• Tubemogul – Distribute your video to them and they’ll spread it to other video sharing sites for you.
• StumbleUpon – Randomly generates content for users by interest area.
• Digg.com – Content sharing site (great for tech and news).
• Marketwire/PRWeb – Distribute your content using social media online news releases.
• Google Custom Search – Set up your own niche search engine on your site or blog.
• Scribd – Share original writings with others (courtesy Andrew Davis).
• Squidoo – Set up your own targeted vertical content lens (courtesy Ambal Balakrishnan).

Blogging/CMS Tools

• WordPress – My recommendation for a blog CMS platform.  Ourcustompublishers.com blog uses WordPress. I also recommend using this CMS for any small-business website (also courtesy Tina Bentley).
• TypePad – Set up and blog in just a few minutes. This blog uses TypePad (also courtesy of Britton Manasco).
• Joomla – Another option for blogging/CMS platform.  Joomla users praise it.
• Technorati – Blog directory.  Find the blogs in your industry so that you know which ones to listen to.
• IceRocket – Search for blogs and blog posts by category. IceRocket’s Trend Tool will tell you how “hot” your keyword is.
• Google Blog Search – First rate blog search tool.
• Tumblr – Post anything quickly and easily.
• Zemanta – Great for adding additional content and links (courtesy of Drew McLellan).
• Posterous – Post to a blog by sending an email (courtesy of Richard Shatto).

Measurement

• Google Analytics – I recommend using Google Analytics even if you have a paid analytics service (courtesy Cim Buser).
• Hubspot – I’m a customer. I use Hubspot to track the performance of my keywords and competitors’ keywords (courtesy Gretel Going).
• Website Grader – Hubspot product that will grade your website on a number of analytics and social media indicators.  Great free tool!
• Alexa – Some high-level information on website traffic for any site.
• Compete.com – Excellent comparison tool for web analytics-type information.
• Quantcast – Provides good overview of analytics and site demographics (courtesy of Kyra Reed).
• Woopra – Analytics on steroids (courtesy of Kyra Reed).

Operations

• Google Apps – Runs all email and calendar functions through one place.  We use it and love it. Basic option is free.
• Google Docs – Share Word documents, spreadsheets and presentations via secure invitations. Great for editing a document with multiple people involved.
• Microsoft Live Workspace – Like Google Docs but with Microsoft. 5GB free space (courtesy Kate H).
• Teamwork Project Manager – Easy-to-use project management tool.
• BaseCamp – An alternative to Teamwork Project Manager. Also very easy to use.
• aMember – Handles paid memberships for websites (courtesy Simon Payn).
• Freemind – Open source mind-mapping software.
• Mindmanager – One of the best mapping software programs around (courtesy Kavita Jhunjhunwala).
• Mindmeister.com – It’s like Google Docs for mindmapping (courtesyGeorge Kao).
• Box.net – Save everyday work files…access from anywhere (courtesyMichelle O’Hagan).
• Xobni.com – Outlook plugin that helps track down files easier (courtesyCraig Hodges).

Other Cool Online Tools

• Blinkplan – Creating flatplans for magazines (courtesy Kevin Lund).
• Jing- To create screenshots for clients when something needs to be explained (courtesy Tom Deeter).
• Gimp – Quickly edit images from Flickr (courtesy Tom Deeter)
• VisualCV – Online social media resume (courtesy Michelle Corsano).