5 Tools to Make Managing Inbound Marketing Easier

For most business owners, the problem with inbound marketing isn’t that we don’t want to do it. Instead, it’s an issue that there are only so many hours in the day. Without the right tools, it seems impossible to get the job done. There are tools out there, though, that can help make managing your inbound marketing efforts.

1. Website Grader: Not sure how your website ranks in terms of social media? This tool from Hubspot will tell you how you’re doing on optimization, content and other criteria. The analysis it offers provides you with actionable information that you can use to decide how to improve upon your website. Hubspot also offers Blog Grader and Twitter Grader, as well as numerous resources on how you can create an in-depth inbound marketing plan.
2. Cotweet: Twitter can be difficult to manage if you’re trying to use it to connect with potential customers. However, Cotweet offers a set of tools you can use to interact with Twitter, such as posting tweets in advance, managing multiple accounts and maintaining standing searches for certain keywords. There are a variety of similar tools out there, including HootSuite.
3. WordPress: A blog is considered a necessity by many inbound marketing experts and there are plenty of reasons to use WordPress to set up a blog. There are a variety of plugins that make it much easier to implement your strategies, such as the All in One SEO Pack, which allows you to optimize your posts for search engines as you write them.
4. Facebook Ads: Even if you aren’t ready to start advertising on Facebook, it’s worthwhile to try out the advertising tool on the site. That’s because you can take a very close look at your target demographics. You can see numbers on how many male 20-to-24-year-olds that live in your area list paintball in their interests, along with other, equally specific groups. Not everyone is on Facebook, of course, but taking a look at how the 400 hundred million users of the site break down can offer some insight that you can use locally.
5. Google Alerts: Getting an immediate email whenever someone mentions your company’s name online can come in handy. Google Alerts can provide you with that capability, but you can also use it for a variety of other automatic research. Setting up alerts on your competition can give you up to date information on what they’re up to. You can also set up alerts that will bring you industry news, which you can immediately turn around and use in your own marketing efforts. There are also a variety of tools that can give you alerts if your name is mentioned within a specific social networking site. Cotweet, for instance, can provide you with that information for Twitter.

These tools are just a starting point. Depending on the specifics of your marketing strategy, there are thousands of other tools out there that can help you make sure that prospective customers can find you online.

Image by Flickr user Fran Pregernik

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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