In terms of tools, the Social Media Revolution (as it will be referred to in history lectures 100 years from now, lectures probably conducted at the University of Facebook) has given us two types: 1. Tools to make the new things we do with social media easier and more effective and 2. Tools that make the things we have always done easier and more effective. Here I give 5 tools from either type and best of all they are completely free.
1. Screenr
Screenr lets you easily record & share ‘screencasts’. With one-click recordings it provides a much more convenient way to create quick & practical presentations that are easy to follow, avoiding the hassle of screenshotting individual pages and assembling everything into a PDF or PowerPoint with comments.
2. Timely
There is probably a book to be written about what the ideal time to Tweet is but luckily Timely bypasses the theory for the busy Tweeter. Timely is a tool that evaluates your Tweets and works out the ideal time to Tweet to have the biggest impact. As well as telling you these times you can also connect your account to Timely and it will schedule your Tweets to be published at the most effective times.
3. Yammer
Self-styled as an internal social network for businesses, Yammer is a brilliant way to conveniently share articles & files and discuss ideas with relevant co-workers. The speed & ease of use of Yammer makes group emails look clunky.
4. Polly.IM
Aimed at the small business owner, Polly.im lets you conveniently track all mentions of your business/brand on Twitter and even automate replies to them. This simple service makes engaging those who talk about your brand much easier.
5. Klout
Knowing your influence on social media and being able to track changes would be a very useful thing. Unfortunately, influence on social media, just like influence in any medium really, is to a large extent ineffable. Just because you’re being followed by 1000 people doesn’t mean any of them are listening to what you’re saying. Having said that, it is not an entirely futile pursuit and while measuring your true influence may be out of the reach of a simple web tool, Klout does give a nice overview based on the things that can be measured.
Tags:free social media tools, free social tools, Klout, polly.im, screenr, social media monitoring, timely, yammer
