Guest Post by Neil Jones. Small businesses operate on very small budgets, preferring to avail of free services rather than having to spend on them, in their struggle to survive alongside business bigwigs. With limited resources, they understand the need for marketing initiatives but can at most times, spare only a small amount for it. Marketing then has to be smart and savvy, and above all, low cost. It is here that small businesses can begin their use of social media and social networks. Social networking sites open doors to global reach with millions of members and word about the products and services they offer spreads like fire.
Twitter is one such social networking site that offers marketing channels at no cost and all that it entails is some investment of time. For those unaware about Twitter tools, this networking site can take away hours from other productive activities, but a bit of knowledge about these tools can cut the number of hours spent to a minimum, while the results and rewards remain the same. Some of these are listed below.
Twitter tools for Marketers
Follow Friday Generator – This tool provides the easiest way of expressing gratitude to people who have supported your business at any point, with its #FollowFriday recommendation. It is easy to use and takes only a few seconds. On entering the Twitter user name in to a field, the system returns 20 well formatted #FollowFriday shout outs to 200 of the most loyal followers. When the Tweets have been generated they can be sent immediately through the Twitter tag or pasted into a Tweet sending system like Social Oomph.
TwitCleaner is the best anti spam, Bot Finder and time saving tool that helps in retaining only the best followers in your niche . Running TwitCleaner helps to clear a long list of undesirable Tweeters and simply un-follow them. It has the ability of finding all the unwanted bots, quotes of the day, spammers, and any dead users in the following. This service is available for free if the number of followers in the list of followers in your Twitter account is less than 1000. Irrespective of the size of the account the report is sent through the Twitter direct messaging for free.
Buzzom Friend Flusher – This is another Twitter tool that helps to cut the list of people being followed to include only those who follow you in return. Thus who do not follow you can be flushed out to keep only the meaningful ones in your list.
TweepML – is a format that simplifies the process of sharing the list of Twitter users called Tweeps. It can be added to websites and a single click helps to follow everyone on the list. A single click on the “follow” button helps to track the people marked in the list, and users can continue other jobs while the marked list of people are “followed”. It is possible to have up to 500 people in the list to follow, out of which many will follow you in turn.
Social Oomph – This program is packed with a host useful tools, some you will find you use more than others but combined they make it one of the most useful tools available today. It comes with a friend finder that can be easily configured, allows Tweet uploads in bulk, provides drip feeds, parameter tracking, shortening of URLs, clickthru analytics and complete blog integration. The free trial is definitely worth considering and can be registered without divulging any credit card details, and the weeks free trial also includes a list of 300 highly qualified new friends just to help get you started
All these prove to be a boon for the small business marketer who wants to save money but achieve the desired results of reaching out to a very large clientele.
This is a Guest Post by Neil Jones, head of marketing for eMobileScan. One of Europe’s leading providers of handheld computers including the Symbol MC9090 or Motorola MC75
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