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Top 5 Content Recommendation Tools for Social Media Managers

August 8, 2015 by Guest Author 2 Comments

By Jessica Davis

With the continuous need to come up with new content to keep your social media audience engaged, curating great content can seem like a challenging task.

As they say, content is king, and its importance in the world of social media marketing cannot be understated. In order to do a good job of sharing interesting content with your audience and keeping them hooked to your page, you need to know and understand their preferences and post content that interests them.

Here are five content recommendation tools that can help you curate unique content for your readers.

DrumUp

DrumUp provides you with free content recommendations through its tool and allows you to schedule your posts too, freeing you from the worries of what you should post and when you should post on your social accounts. All you have to do is insert a few keywords into the tool and DrumUp will process them to give you the most fresh and relevant content suggestions in your stream. It also features an added control of negative keywords to refine your results even further.

DrumUp screenshot

Flipboard

This app brings to you all the recent content published in newspapers and magazines from all over the world. Flipboard offers you more than 34,000 topics to choose from, and you can access all this content through a smartly designed graphic interface that offers easy navigation and even allows you to store articles for later reading.

Flipboard screenshot

Klout

Klout works as a content recommendation search engine. By keying in the topics and keywords relevant to your business, you can unlock Klout’s suggestions in the form of articles and blog posts that will be useful in your social media marketing efforts. You can review and choose the ones that you think will generate most engagement and share them on your social accounts. The app, with its Klout Score feature, lets you measure the success of your social media posts and presents the data in the form of a graph for easy understanding.

Klout screenshot

Scoop.it

Scoop.it recommends articles for you to share in your social media circles based on the keyword search you run. Once you find the articles of your choice you can add a customized message to the article before posting it online for your audience. The good thing about scoop.it is it allows you to post on multiple platforms at one go.

Scoop.it screenshot

Bottlenose

This social media management app brings to you real time news and data. Bottlenose helps you identify new trends and directs you to opportunities that you can explore to create content and share it on your social accounts. It keeps you updated with trending stories allowing you to ride the social media wave with the most relevant and fresh industry stories.

Bottlenose screenshot

With these five topnotch content recommendation tools you will never face a dearth of content options as they will bring you the best and most effective content suggestions for all your social media marketing efforts.

Author’s Bio: Jessica Davis follows the social media and content marketing space closely, and writes about it extensively. She represents Godot Media – a leading SEO writing services firm.

Filed Under: Tools Tagged With: recommendations, tools

5 Social Customer Service Tools You Should Know About

October 31, 2014 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

By Diana Gomez

Gone are the days of customer service phones ringing off the hook.

While some people may still want to use traditional means to connect with companies, modern consumers rarely want to pick up the phone if they experience a customer-service issue.

Instead, they’re turning to social media to voice concerns and ask questions, knowing that a simple tweet is often the best way to address an issue quickly and easily.

Social customer service tools

Did you know that 42 percent of consumers who complain on social media expect a response no more than 60 minutes later?

This may seem unreasonable, but compare that with the time it should take for a resolution via phone. And these days, the advent of social media has not only opened up more communication channels, but it has lowered patience. A recent study showed that people who complain on social media on nights and weekends expect the same service and response time as they would during normal Monday through Friday business hours. How can companies keep up with that? What a beast.

Smart companies are catching on that social media is their strongest customer service tool. KLM, for example, the leading airline in customer service, realized the importance of social media in 2010 when Icelandic ash left tens of thousands of customers stranded in airports everywhere. It was the biggest interruption to European air traffic since World War II.

Those customers turned to social media for solutions to their travel woes, and KLM responded. Soon after, the airline made social media the focus of its customer service efforts. Resolution time was cut to one day, and one social media post is responded to within one hour — and it all happens via social media.

There are several tools out there ready to help companies get their customer service needs under control as efficiently as possible using social media. Here are a few I’ve found to be worthwhile.

Salesforce

Salesforce is the tool that drives the customer-service machine of KLM. How does it work? Its system extracts customer-service requests from over 150 million social media networks, blogs, forums and more using customized keyword identifiers. The tool’s technology works its magic by searching comments and phrases combining, for example, #KLM, @KLM, and any KLM mentions with customer-service trigger words like “help” or “my flight is late.”

The cool part is that the software can then prioritize the results automatically using the purchase history of the customer and their activity level on social media. So if you have a big Twitter following and you’re a frequent flier, you’ll probably be placed at the front of the customer-service queue. Pretty nifty.

LiveOps Social

Another social customer service tool, LiveOps Social, is a cloud-based contact center/virtual call center software. But instead of tickets submitted through voice, online contact forms, or email, it searches requests on Twitter and Facebook and then submits a ticket that way. The concern is then placed in a service queue alongside all the other requests, but it is prioritized according to the customer’s social and service history.

Social Dynamx

This social customer service tool lets companies manage one-on-one, real-time social conversation. The system automatically routes customers to an agent based on his or her expertise, work group, current caseload, average time to respond and service satisfaction rate. Work groups represent different issues, so say a product has a very specific issue — a work group is created to address that particular concern, and they’ll receive all the tweets relating to that issue. If a customer prefers a different agent, or expert, that change can be easily made.

SparkCentral

Companies that handle a high volume of customer service requests are turning to social media helpdesk platform SparkCentral. Formerly known as TwitSpark, the key to its success lies in the response time. This tool provides super fast and efficient follow-up customer service over Facebook and Twitter. From seemingly petty problems to crisis management, it’s all automatically prioritized and attended to promptly.

ConverSocial

Used by big companies like Google, Barclaycard, and Hertz, ConverSocial is a cloud-based social service solution for large-scale monitoring. Using sophisticated technology, the service decides for itself whether or not a social media complaint warrants a response.

Any Tweeter out there can understand that not every tweet deserves an agent to spend his or her time responding to it. ConverSocial totally gets that. Like other tools, it prioritizes a response according to social and customer history. More serious issues of course would go to the front of the queue. If a response is delayed, the system automatically reroutes the issue to a new agent.

Has your company used social media to resolve customer service issues? Please share your experiences in the comments!

Author’s Bio: Diana Gomez is the Marketing Coordinator at Lyoness America, where she integrates social customer service and business marketing strategies for USA and Canada. Lyoness is an international shopping community and loyalty rewards program, where businesses and consumers benefit with free membership and money back with every purchase.

Filed Under: Tech/Stats Tagged With: bc, customer-service, technology, tools

Image App Bonanza: 10 Apps to Spice Up Your Content

July 17, 2014 by Rosemary 2 Comments

According to ContentPlus UK, articles with images get 94% more views than those without. We have become scanners, racing through online posts and sifting for useful information.

Arresting images stop us in our tracks, and pull us into the surrounding text.

Beautiful butterfly image

This is a roundup of apps that I’ve personally road-tested for image manipulation. With the exception of PicMonkey, they are all installed on my iPhone right now.

Go forth and create fun, interesting photos. Just don’t let me catch you putting a “sunset” filter on your plate of salad. Don’t do that.

1. PicMonkey

Web app, Free with premium features
Handy, easy to use app that is great for banners, overlaying text, and resizing images. It covers much of the territory of Photoshop, without the long learning curve and big expense. My 8 year old kids started playing with PicMonkey and were cranking out great stuff immediately. Check out the “collage” feature.

2. KitCamera

Mobile app, Free with 99cent enhanced version
Successor to KitCam, which was acquired by Yahoo, and it’s the Swiss Army knife of mobile image editing apps. Great for live shooting as well as editing after the fact. This one is complex, but includes tons of pro photographer goodies, including filters, high speed shooting, and live editing. Check out the social sharing tools.

3. Vhoto

Mobile app, Free
Have you ever taken a great video, and wanted to pull a still image out for a thumbnail? Here’s your app. Vhoto will automatically find and suggest the best quality still images from a video clip. Use old videos or shoot a new one. Check out the Vhoto user community.

4. Flickr

Web and mobile app, Free with premium
Yes, I know you thought Flickr was gone. It’s not gone, but it’s been revamped, and looks better than ever. The mobile app is very easy to use, and will automatically sync up your photos if you like. Includes filters, pretty strong editing tools, and sharing. Did you know you can also upload videos?

5. Overgram

Mobile only, free
This app does one thing, but does it beautifully. Instantly add cool text to your Instagram photos. Choose font, size, text, and colors, and then save. Check out the beefier, paid Over app for even more editing tools.

6. Bubbsie

Mobile only, free
I had to include one completely fun one. Bubbsie makes it dead easy to create a “meme” image, by placing a thought or conversation bubble overlay on your images. Take a new photo, or overlay on an existing image from your gallery. Check out the picture frame feature.

7. Pixlromatic

Desktop, web, and mobile, free
The cool thing about this one (which I agree is unpronounceable), is that it’s so cross-platform. Use it almost anywhere. Take a photo with your webcam or device, or upload one from your library, and then enhance it with textures, backgrounds, and frames. Easy to use immediately. Check out the fun overlays (bubbles, fireworks).

8. Colorsplash

Web and mobile (special app for iPad), free
An App Store Hall of Famer, Colorsplash is the easiest way to colorize your photos. Turn your image black and white, and then selectively add color back to certain portions. Your colleagues will wonder how you did it. Check out the customizable brush sizes/shapes.

9. PhotoToaster

Mobile, paid app
Touch up, edit, crop, and highlight portions of your images in one app. Combines some of the best bits of ColorSplash and Pixlromatic, in an easy-to-use interface. Great for beginners, with lots of pre-sets. Check out PhotoMotion, from the same company, which lets you turn photos into videos.

10. PopAGraph

Mobile, free with premium upgrades available
Another cool tool for editing your photos, but it has some unique capabilities, including the ability to have separate filters on the background vs the foreground, multi-frames, and captions. Check out the video creator, with music. Share directly to Vine from within the app.

Have fun!

Note: I have zero affiliation with any of the above apps or companies, and no-one solicited these suggestions.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Filed Under: Design, Successful Blog, Tools Tagged With: apps, bc, Design, graphics, tools

5 Resources To Help You Pitch Like a Pro

June 24, 2014 by Rosemary 2 Comments

On the AMC series The Pitch (watched by advertising nerds like me), the pitching team strides into the conference room with a steely confidence that’s equal parts John Wayne and Kanye West. They are super prepared, they’ve done their research, and they have shiny boards prepared by the design team.

Most of the time, you will not have any of these items when you get the chance to pitch. When you’re starting your own business, you need to take advantage of inexpensive tools that will help you “spread your ideas,” in the words of Nancy Duarte.

Pitch with Purpose and Structure

#1 Nancy Duarte’s TEDxEast talk about structure

This little 16 minute video will change the way you think, every time you talk. Although on the surface, it seems to be about making speeches, it’s really about storytelling. A pitch is a story.

#2 Duct Tape Selling by John Jantsch

You can’t tell a story without another person listening. There’s no pitch without a “pitchee.” And John Jantsch is someone who truly understands that successful marketing and sales is all about relationships. Read this excellent book, and arm yourself with the power of becoming a perceptive listener. Sounds counterintuitive, but it’s not. A crucial aspect of the successful pitch is the ability to listen first.

Pitch from Anywhere

#3 Join.me

Join.me has a free and premium service that allows you to easily share your screen (with audio) with anyone, anywhere. Share your personal URL or a special code, and the other person simply has to click the link. Audio can be done via Internet or via a call-in number (and they do have International numbers available). It’s well worth paying for the premium service, as you can then record sessions, make notes directly on the screen, and change presenters on the fly.

#4 Pinstriped

Have you ever been in the middle of a pitch or presentation when your IM pops up with a random message from your colleague? Or you need to browse past your Grumpy Cat photo collection to get to that image you need to pull in, in front of your prospect? Pinstripe is the elegant little solution to this problem. After you install it, you can present a clean, controlled desktop behind your deck or screenshare. You can even put up a logo/branded image instead of the clutter you usually have on your desktop. Pinstriped is in free beta right now.

Know Who You’re Pitching To

#5 Nimble

I’ve spent a lot of time researching CRM platforms, and Nimble has consistently impressed me. Its “secret sauce” is the 360 degree view of each contact’s social streams, pulled into one interface. If you’re about to meet with someone, you can easily pull up their profile and see what they’ve published recently. If you integrate your email account, you can also have a consolidated viewpoint of all past communications with that person. There is a free personal option, as well as premium business accounts, well worth the investment.

Pitching is an art form that requires practice and discipline. Surround yourself with tools and resources that will help you become a pro and close the deal.

What’s your favorite resource for pitching clients?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, pitching, Selling, tools

Tools For Writers: Save Time, Work Better

April 1, 2014 by Rosemary 3 Comments

By Angela England

I have a ton of projects at any given time. In fact, as I was just offered the position of Organic Gardening Guide for About.com I will be busier than ever! I wouldn’t survive all of that with five homeschooling kids, if I didn’t have some great tools under my belt to make it easier.

Tools for writers

Here are some of my favorites.

Steno Pads and Pencils

This seems so…so…eighteenth century, I know. But I carry half-sized steno pads with me everywhere for those times when I need to scribble something in analog. Don’t think that high-tech is the ONLY way to go. When it comes to brainstorming and outlining it is often faster for people to “think out loud” on paper and then translate that to digital once you’ve had that initial brain dump. I buy steno pads in bulk at Sam’s Club so I can easily scrawl in them whenever I want and they fit easily in the side pocket of the car, in the diaper bag, in my purse or laptop case, glove box, etc.

Poster Board or Big White Board

Large brainstorming sessions need bigger amounts of space. I have a technique I will use periodically to brainstorm about a hundred blog post ideas in less than an hour. I taught a workshop about it and you can watch the video here: Brainstorming Blog Post Ideas With Ease

The key is to write quickly and not be worried about how it looks or whether it makes sense. Or is spelled correctly. Get all the ideas out of your head and THEN focus on working them into a logical semblance of order.

Evernote

Speaking of working things into a logical semblance of order – Evernote is one of my favorite tools for capturing ideas on the go. I can clip a website, photo, screenshot, email, type a quick idea, etc from any connected device. My Evernote accounts link my phone, iPad, computer, laptop, etc., so I can easily grab that inspiring phrase from Facebook and plug it into Evernote to explore later. I can also gather research notes and materials and place them into “notebooks” according to website or book project to help me find it easily later. Evernote’s robust tagging and search functions make it one of the best online filing systems I’ve ever used. For more tips on using Evernote, I love this post by Alli Worthington – 10 Way to Use Evernote Like a Pro.

Scrivener

Whether I’m writing non-fiction or fiction, Scrivener is my favorite place to write now. And not only books, but other long-form projects like courses, blog series, feature articles for magazines, and more. The features Scrivener offers writers make it the perfect tool for any professional writer. Call it a cross between Word, Evernote, and your favorite Moleskine. It’s the best online writing tool I’ve come across yet and highly recommend it for anyone who writes anything bigger than 500 words in length.

Dropbox

Writers often have to send large chunks of material. Whether you’re sharing a project with a reviewer, sending your book to an editor, or working collaboratively with several people on a project, Dropbox is a great solution for storing and sharing large files. I especially love the ability to access Dropbox files while NOT connected to the internet (on the road with my laptop, for example) and update files (i.e., write more on my book or course or blog post series) and then have Dropbox automatically sync those changes with my main Dropbox account as soon as I’m connected again. I can store a file in Dropbox and access from any of my other connected devices (including mobile) and from public computers by logging in temporarily at dropbox.com. Keep folders private or share as desired for easy-to-control privacy levels.

These are the main tools I use on a near-daily basis when it comes to writing. Some are free, some are paid, some are high-tech, some are as old as time. All impact the work that I do in profound ways. What are your favorite tools as writers?

Author’s Bio: Angela England is a mother of five living in rural Oklahoma but more, she’s also a problogger, speaker, and author of several books including Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less) and Getting Prepared. Her most recent projects are helping people transform their blogs and business by publishing amazing books and producing multiple books this year under the Untrained Housewife brand.

Filed Under: Content, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: bc, tools, Writing

Can Logging In Be Fun? Clef Says Yes.

March 6, 2014 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

It was all fun and games until my purse got stolen.

We were on a great vacation, and visiting the Arizona Memorial on Oahu. In the parking lot, there was a sign that warned “High theft area, do not leave valuables in car.” So what did I do? Put my purse in the trunk of the rental car and went in to see the museum. A couple of hours later, you can guess what happened. Vacation ruined, checkbook and credit cards gone. Prescription glasses gone. Plane tickets home, gone.

It was a supremely painful lesson, but I took heed. Being smart about my personal security moved up several notches in my priority list.

Do you see the daily warnings about changing your online passwords frequently, not using your pet’s name, remembering to change the default? Are you taking heed?

The proliferation of sites that require a login has forced us all to find ways of remembering a tornado of passwords.

And it’s not fun.

Yes, there are good services like LastPass and 1Password that will help you generate random passwords and retain newly created logins. But still, not fun.

Enter a new service called Clef.

For now, it’s primarily a free WordPress add-on. Once you download the app to your smartphone, it allows you to log in to your WordPress site by waving your phone in front of your computer screen.

Clef password app

When you click “sync” on your normal login page, Clef generates a cool animated signal wave. Open Clef on your phone (there’s a PIN) and it generates a similar animated wave. Hold it up for a second, and it syncs, giving a haptic buzz when it succeeds. You can choose to stay logged in permanently, or set a time frame. Clef will log you out automatically when the time runs out.

What if you lose your phone? Clef has a remote “lockdown” key. Just let them know the phone isn’t in your possession, and they will disable Clef on the phone.

Looks like the team at Clef is expanding into payment systems and additional platforms (it works with Hootsuite and a few others right now).

The only drawback I see is that you currently have to manually open the Clef app on your phone. It would be super cool if the mobile app automatically launched when you clicked login on the desktop screen.

Give it a spin and tell me what you think! What are you currently using to help you deal with your tornado of passwords?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Disclosure: I have no affiliation with Clef, and received no consideration for this post. It represents my unvarnished opinion.

Filed Under: Productivity, Successful Blog Tagged With: app, bc, security, tools, WordPress

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