As social media marketing has become ubiquitous (88% of marketers say social media is important for their businesses), hundreds of new tools have developed just in the past few years: tools for social media management, monitoring, measurement, automation, identifying influencers, creating graphical content, and more.

No one has time to put every one of those tools through its paces. Which are most worth investigating and investing in?

In the posts highlighted below, 20 (or so) social media marketing pros review more than 200 tools, ranging from popular, widely used tools like Buffer, Hootsuite and Feedly to intriguing but lesser-known apps.

Dark marketing clouds ahead? Let marketingIO help you see clearly. 

It’s not quite paralysis by analysis, but a recent report seems to indicate that a shortage of technical aptitude is putting an undue burden on the folks in your IT department to support some pretty basic social media management tools.

The VB Insight report, Social Media Management: Tools, tactics . . . and how to win, finds that more than 22 percent of social media managers rely heavily on IT to support their use of SMM tools, and another 39 percent can’t get by without some regular help.

At a time when social media managers in San Francisco are earning an average of $83,000 — and many are earning more than $100,000 — is it really acceptable to employers that social media managers need regular IT support for simple tools like Marketo or HootSuite?

According to the report’s author, Stewart Rogers, it shouldn’t be.

“Our experts feel these tools, on average, are easy to use,” Rogers wrote. “Pareto’s Principle applies (the famed 80/20 rule). 20% of the users need 80% of the support.”

Not having a fun time with IT? Contact us: we can act as your buffer to get the job done.

Digest...

"So few people actually see posts from top brands on Facebook and Twitter that focusing heavily on those networks can be a waste of time, money and resources, Forrester vice president and principal analyst Nate Elliott concludes in the report titled “Social Relationship Strategies That Work.”"

"The issue according to Elliott is anemic reach and engagement. In February, Ogilvy reported that top brands’ Facebook posts reached only 2% of their fans. That has likely fallen further and with last week’s Facebook announcement that it will further throttle promotional posts, the trendline hasn’t yet hit bottom. Organic reach on Twitter is just as low, the report says, citing “multiple industry sources.”"

"The Forrester report isn’t entirely down on social media. It recommends turning to social networks that generate higher brand engagement, like Instagram and Pinterest. Forrester data shows that top brands’ Instagram posts receive a per-follower engagement rate 58 times higher than Facebook and 120 times higher than Twitter.""

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Digest...

If you read the business press, you could easily assume that proficiency in social media or online data analytics now determine business success. But consider:

-- >  According to a Gallup survey, about 62% of U.S. adults who do use social media say these sites have absolutely no influence on their purchasing decisions.

-- >  Even within the active-user segments, there is evidence that comprehension and retention decline significantly when information comes online.  There is other evidence that the reported clicks and other alleged user-data on many social media sites are simply unreliable.

-- >  Another McKinsey survey, conducted in 2011, found then that the average company with more than 1,000 employees already had more data in its CRM system than in the entire Library of Congress. Those firms undoubtedly have even bigger data now. But is that how growth occurs or, in the absence of measures and objectives, how yet another garbage-in-garbage-out cycle gets going in many firms?

-- >  If you peek behind the server farms of online firms themselves, you will find face-to-face and inside sales groups as the engine of profitable growth, and you might be surprised to know the bigger percentage of total employees at firms like Facebook, Google, and Groupon that work in sales, not technology or data mining.

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