Sales Lessons From Best Buy: Embrace Your Quirks And Turn Competitor’s Asset to a Weakness

What I love about content marketing is that there are so many tools and apps out there to help small businesses do more with less effort. We’re all strapped for time and cash, so any tool that can maximize marketing results is worth giving a second look.

When it comes to trying to spread your content to a wider audience and tweak your message so it’s most effective, these tools make it simple.

Facebook Insights

If you haven’t looked at Insights for your business’ Facebook Page in a while, you might be surprised at how much better the details are. Now you can not only see how many people are “talking about” a post you published, but also what actions they’re taking, such as liking, sharing, clicking, or commenting on it.

You also get a scorecard that measures positive actions (like the ones I just mentioned) and negative ones, such as someone hiding your posts or unliking your page. You can see which posts generated the most interest and plan your update schedule accordingly.

mention

Google Alerts is great and all, but sometimes it falls short when it comes to mentions on social media or even blog comments. That’s where mention comes in handy. Set up keyword alerts and find out whenever anyone mentions your name or brand, be it in a blog post, the comments section, on a website, or on a social platform. You can even respond to a tweet or update from within the mention platform.

Vine

You can’t deny that video is taking a bigger presence in the content marketing world these days. As a small business owner, maybe you’re not sure how you can effectively use video to engage with your audience.

Vine allows you to make 6-second looping videos. It’s a fantastic place to start. Making short videos requires virtually no investment (you probably already have a smartphone, so that’s your video camera). You don’t have to involve a professional videographer, and sometimes the simplest, roughest videos are the most successful.

MessageBuilderâ„¢

Even if you don’t consider yourself design-savvy, you have no excuse for not creating professional-looking and appealing email campaigns. You don’t need HTML or design experience to use the iContact MessageBuilder™  built into the email marketing platform. You can choose from a variety of email templates and images, and then customize to match your company colors (and if you do have design or HTML experience, you can use the MessageCoder™ to get the job done).

BizSugar

You’ve probably heard of Digg and StumbleUpon. But did you know there’s a social bookmarking site dedicated to promoting small business content? If you want to get your blog posts and articles in front of business owners, BizSugar does the job. Submit content you want others to read, and they can give a “sugar” to those posts they deem worthy. If your post makes the “hot” list (that happens after you reach a threshold of sugars) it gets even more exposure. It’s also a great tool for discovering useful content for yourself.

I could update this list every week with new and innovative tools that help me market my business more smartly. But for now, find the ones that work the best for your company and use them to maximize your reach.

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.