Budget Friendly Social Media Tools For Start Ups

For start ups and small businesses without a staff hundreds, social media can seem intimidating. There’s an overwhelming array of social media tools that are rolled out almost everyday, let alone getting to master the most popular social media platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook. Startups, just as much as household brand name companies, need a good handle on what’s being said about their brand. Below are three user-friendly social media tools start ups and SMBs can use to monitor what’s being said about them that won’t kill a tight budget.

Hootsuite Pro: Hootsuite Pro is great for brands wanting to build their social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and LinkedIn. It has a very basic interface-letting users schedule posts and track activity with their Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn accounts. Multiple profiles on all of these platforms can be maintained with individual streams under one account. Future posts can be scheduled days or even weeks in advance. Customized social media analytics reports let users measure viral Facebook posts, trace web conversions to social outreach, and see how many times your brand is mentioned.

The cost is a mere $9.99/month for a basic Pro account.

Facebook Insights is an analytics tool that’s integrated within a Facebook page. Admins can access these free analytics of a brand’s Facebook page at any time. Facebook Insights gives admins important insights into which kinds of posts are more successful (more photos versus articles for example), how many people became engaged by the post (70 people clicked and viewed that cool cat photo), and how viral that cat photo became (the percentage of unique viewers who have created their own story, or “shared” the story on their own wall). All of this valuable information can help admins determine which types of posts (contest,photos, articles, videos) to post more of, so that they can draw in more Facebook fans.

Twitscoop: Twitscoop is a Twitter tool that integrates users’ Twitter accounts, so users can combine regular features of sending/receiving tweets and finding friends along with more specialized features: tracking mentions of their brand, receiving automatic updates, and ability to background search favorite topics. Twitscoop is an easy, cost-effective way of being able to track mentions of your brand as well as other brands, topics and friends you’re interested in on Twitter.

There are plenty of viable yet cost effective social media tools that are available at your fingertips. Don’t feel pressured to use an expensive service simply because your company has the budget or because “everyone else is.” Explore these tools mentioned and others to make sure that your company’s social media needs and image are maintained in a way that you have control over.

For an even better, detailed article on nearly every social media monitoring service out there, bookmark Jason Falls’s comprehensive article on Social Media Explorer.

By Courtney Lee