For any small business or freelancer, jumping head first into the social media jungle can seem a little daunting – and there’s a good reason for this. The popularity of social networking is explosive. The more users that discover it, the quicker word gets round and so the potential for tapping into this valuable resource grows.
It’s a runaway success that everyone needs a piece of if they’re to put their stamp on their niche in this new marketing battlefield.
As a marketer myself, I’m always looking for ways to keep a good social networking reputation in an active, healthy and ethical flow while juggling every other aspect of running a small business – some of us can’t hire a social media team to tweet and post non stop, 24/7…
So how do you grab a piece of the social networking action and run with it while avoiding the spammy traps of shady systems to promote you and your business? It doesn’t take a lot of brainpower to understand that being a spammer isn’t cool, and as soon as your crowd figure it out, it’s curtains on your campaigns.
I have reviews a number of tools and found MarketMeSuite, a tooled up goliath of a social media dashboard.
So what? There’s plenty of Twitter and Facebook dashboards around.
That’s right, there are a lot, and they are great at management. What you can’t do however, is to transform the concept of social media management and turn it into the ultimate social media tool. This really tears the lid off any aspect of social marketing you could ever imagine.
Take a look how I’m building a business rep to rival the big players in just a few weeks.
I’m Making Noise
It’s easy to fire off hundreds of tweets to random users about what you do in the hope that some will return with anything relevant to say outside of ‘lol’, ‘who is this?’ or a suspension for being a spammer. That’s the equivalent of streaking through a fancy party – it’s inappropriate, embarrassing and will only leave a hideous dent in your reputation.
Using MarketMeSuite to channel this enthusiasm is quick, simple and very rewarding.
Known as ‘Reply Campaigns’, you can set up a set of keywords and pre-written replies, which the clever mechanics behind MarketMeSuite will find relevant for Twitter users by the content of their own tweets. MarketMeSuite will be sure to include any positive keywords (I often look for users talking about ‘web design’), while ignoring any that it finds in the same context as negative keywords like ‘hate’. When it’s found a match – it’ll let you select one of your replies and you’re done. You’ve just sparked a great network connection that is totally focused on your own niche.
With a little time invested in this one corner of this swiss-army knife of an application, you could have hundreds and eventually thousands of truly valuable contacts, customers and outlets to tweet about your own services.
“I Tweet With My Eyes Closed.â€
Now we’re all armed with a few hundred outlets to tell our followers and their own network about what we do. The problem is that we have a lives. Nursing a bunch of tweets in a text file and pasting them into a Twitter dashboard every hour isn’t going to work.
A friend told me he uses MarketMeSuite to “tweet with my eyes closed.†He schedules his tweets. After writing up a set of tweets he thinks will get his followers excited, he adds a few simple tags to them, pastes the whole lot into MarketMeSuite and hits send. If hes’ going to be away from the computer for a few day, weeks, months, or perhaps even years (Well, the latter is unlikely) he schedules an unlimited amount of tweets into the future for as far as he deems relevant. Once it’s uploaded, he can turn everything off, content that his gospel is reaching his crowd when the time comes. Job done.
If you are a blogger with a number of blogs, thanks to MarketMeSuite, you can automatically be promoted to followers every time you write and publish new content to it. It really is that easy.
Are you starting to see how easy it is to manage a killer social media setup?
I Brand Everything I Say
A real winning feature of this media monster is the branding. You know where on each tweet you’re told what tool sent it? It usually reads as ‘via web’; well, thanks to MarketMeSuite, now I get to choose where my tweet comes from. And that’s from my business: users can now click on that ‘application’ and will be send straight back to MY site, complete with MY services and MY skills.
The greatest part of all? This link goes on every tweet that leaves MarketMeSuite, all of which grow the backlinks leading to my little business which was before lost amongst the competition.
I Don’t Just Tweet
Nope. In one mighty click, you can tell multiple Twitter accounts, multiple Facebook accounts, multiple Facebook Fan Pages AND any other outlet featured on Ping.fm , thanks to the ‘Send-to-All’ button.
Bam.
In a week you have saved hours of going backwards and forth between sites to tell everyone what you are cooking up. And you can get back to life.
You can be automatically Polite
People come and go in life, and the same principle applies to Twitter. Thankfully, MarketMeSuite once again points you in the right direction though a great bunch of following tools. This kit creates a tidy and efficient following and unfollowing package used everyday if you’re online or not. If someone new begins to follow you, you can set MarketMeSuite to automatically follow them back.
It’s a win win situation, everyone’s happy.
Going the extra distance with MarketMeSuite is very easy and I find it really hits home with this feature. When adding a new user to follow, you can send out a quick direct message saying hello in private. This is a way of showing each and every user that you value them as a contact. It’s good Twitter etiquette.
And, if someone unfollows you or doesn’t follow you back, then let MarketMeSuite deal with this too. You can simply call a list of users who aren’t following me – and therefore not seeing my tweets, and unfollow them
I’m More Productive
Perhaps the greatest use of MarketMeSuite is the time that you can free up to do whatever you wish, be it work harder spend more time away from the screen. It’s the ultimate solution to any social media direction you could want to take your business towards. But don’t take my word for it, head to http://www.marketmesuite.com and take a tour of what it can do for you.
This was a guest post by Murray Newlands.