Now that you have set up accounts at a few (or several) social media profiles, you will want to use it to its full potential. Of course, maintaining a social media listing takes time, so learning how to get the most of your efforts is important. Fortunately, making your company’s social media profile profitable can be done through the effective use of tools and applications that can increase your business while decreasing the number of hours you spend on your Facebook, Twitter, Buzz or other social media profiles.

7 Facebook Apps to Improve Your Business

As one of the most recognized social media sites, Facebook has massive potential for increasing your number of customers. Recognizing that a number of applications have been designed to assist businesses in customer services and product promotion. Some of the most useful are:

  • Contests, promotions and polls are a great way to support your business and encourage interaction with your fans, just be sure to follow the Facebook guidelines for using contests.
  • SocialToo  allows users to update their profile pages and promote Twitter from their Facebook status update box.
  • SocialOomph provides update tools for Facebook, Twitter, and StatusNet.
  • Network Blog makes it easy to promote your blog on Facebook and connect with others.
  • JobMagic is a recruiting application that expands a recruiter’s range through Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
  • Social Store Builder enables a store owner to sell and display product from their Facebook page.
  • IAnalyst– This new Facebook app allows you to integrate HTML into your page. It is especially helpful for small business owners.

6 Twitter Management Tools

Depending on your business, you may have opted to set up a Twitter account. However, as you are limited to 140 characters per tweet, you will want to make the most of your text and Twitter time. Here are some tools to enhance your Twitter business account:

  • HootSuite.com offers a free tool to help manage multiple social media accounts. You can personalize columns, view multiple feeds, and create messages then select what social media accounts to post to. You can even schedule when tweets go out and have custom searches for topics that interest you.HootSuite
  • CoTweet allows you to manage as many as 5 accounts with a single login; there are workflow management tools and the ability to take notes on Twitter for co-users to view.
  • EasyTweets is a low management tool for multiple Twitter accounts. It allows you to post and track RSS feeds in Google Analytics, set up continuous searches for brand mentions, and follow those users who mention your brand.
  • TweetDeck keeps track of multiple social media accounts. You can follow topics with saved searches, manage conversations and records, and share or watch video clips, YouTube and photos.
  • PeopleBrowser allows a visual browser based dashboard view of social activity and to create and manage groups by adding public/private tags.
  • Twitterfeed.com  takes RSS feeds from a blog and posts them as a Tweet linking them back to your site.  However, be careful not to overuse this automation tool as it can then be seen as spam and people may stop acknowledging it.

With the growing popularity of Facebook and Twitter, you can expect to find more and more tools to take advantage of these services. With the speed at which social media platforms are being developed, having tools to help automate and simplify things are almost essential! Stay tuned in for the next post where we will be exploring more tools for social media research and also tips for building a social media network!