Digital Marketing Blog

Favorite FREE Social Media Tools for 2010

Share

 

It seems that there are more Social Media Tools on the market today than there are Starbucks, so it's more important now than ever to save time (and money) to find the tools that excite even most experienced Social Mediaphiles.

That's why ymarketing would like to share some of our favorite (and free!) Social Media Tools for 2010, in no particular order. Some of these tools have been out for some time, while others are brand spanking new. The purpose of this blog is to promote Social Media tools that will make your life easier and more fun, thus the categories will be somewhat random, but their effectiveness will not. Enjoy!

Great all-in-one comprehensive browser for real-time and social web. Tweetdeck allows users to open their Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace accounts all in one directory.

  Productivity enhancement service for Social Media users. Hootsuite Helps organize, schedule, and deliver content through Facebook and Twitter.

  bit.ly is one of the first, and still our favorite, URL shortener for tracking and analytics.

  Voice interface technology that let's you instantly acces your Facebook and Twitter accounts simply by speaking into your phone. Vlingo is a great hands free option for mobile tweeting on the go.

Allows multiple people to communicate through corporate Twitter accounts and stay in sync while doing so. No dropped balls with CoTweet, no stepping on each other's toes.

flickr creative commons search is a great place to find free photos (under a creative commons license) that you can use in blog posts, presentations, etc.

Great competitive intelligence for twitter is what Topsy gives you. Keep your social media ear to the ground with this excellent tracking tool. 

Want to see how popular you are on twitter? Wefollow allows you to view categorical rankings of who's hot on Twitter. 

For those of you who are interested in everything social media tools, and want a few suggestions of some great paid tools, here you go:

  Flowtown is a super cool tool allows you to take a random person's email address and quickly determine what social networks that person is on, as well as name, age, gender, and occupation. (I believe it costs $15 a month)

Dashboard program for your Social Media account, Swix promote it as Google Analytics for Social Media. We love the scorecard aspect of it. ($10 a month)

Lead Capture for just the Cost of a Click: Google Adwords Contact Form Extension

Share

 

The ymarketing Paid Search Team recently read an update to the beta for Google Lead Generation Forms in paid search ads at SEOroundtable.com. Have you ever wished you could easily increase leads for just the cost of a click? Google is testing it out with Google AdWords Contact Form Extensions to normal AdWords ads. The current leads are phone number based with three custom fields. Delivery of these ads is via email as a moment and clients are committed to contact the lead within 24 hours.

We have noticed the Mortgage and Entertainment Industries testing In the new Contact Form Extension. We have also seen other bloggers and paid search companies mention these ad format updates such as this blog post from DailyRadar.com

Things to know about the AdWords Contact Form

• It will only associate with ads in the #1 position.
• The Leads will be priced with the Max CPC Bid during beta test.
• About the form: Requires Phone Number Collection, up to three custom questions, questions shown will be determined by Google quality algorithm.

Get whitelisted into the Program through your AdWords Account Manager at Google and start getting your phone leads from Google AdWords!

Here are some sites that like the new Google Contact Form Adwords Feature: searchengineland.com, insideaffiliates.com, seroundtable.com

Here's a site that dislikes the new Google Contact Form AdWords Feature: blog.hubspot.com

SEO specialist ymarketing thinks:
This is worth testing. We want to see the results of the beta ASAP!
Do you have "real experience or results to share about your experience with this beta?"

What do you think?
Contact Us or Leave a Comment!