14 Social Media Tools Used by Marketing Pros

Are you looking for social media tools to get more out of your marketing?

Are you wondering what tools marketing pros are using successfully?

We asked fourteen well-known marketers to share the latest social media tools they’ve been using.

Discover how you can use these tools to help you to get more out of your social media marketing.
#1: Mention


Todd Wheatland

Mention was developed as a user-friendly replacement for Google Alerts. They’re a textbook example of how to build a platform by doing one thing better than anyone else.

As well as being an absolute joy to use, it captures so many more, ahem, ‘mentions’ online than any other platform I’ve used that it’s become my #1 go-to social mention reference tool.

There are many clever things behind the way Mention is set up. They’ve taken the Apple approach to clean and simple UI to give you great functionality as a default and the power to modify settings to really hone in on what’s important to your circumstances.


Mention provides clean and simple functionality.

Apart from doing a fantastic job of identifying online mentions, some of my favorite features are:
Simple controls to turn specific sources off—but still be able to monitor them in the spam folder in case you mis-classify something.
Default alert emails that take you straight to source, rather than forcing an extra step by taking you to the Mention platform.




You can see how many online mentions you have in the left-hand column.

Of course, with success, they’re quickly adding features—including an enterprise-level offering—that will make them seem increasingly like a lot of the more established players in the social tools space. So far though, they’ve done a great job of maintaining simplicity and delivering on their core offering.

Todd Wheatland, head of thought leadership at Kelly Services.
#2: Addvocate


Jay Baer

My favorite new social media tool is Addvocate. I like it so much, I invested in the company and joined their board.

Addvocate solves a very common problem in social media, which is the need to decentralize your messengers. Almost always, the employees in your company have more social connections (combined) than the company does for its official social media outposts.

Thus, smart companies need to find ways to ask employees to occasionally share relevant information on their personal accounts. Amber Naslund and I wrote about this in The NOW Revolution, and recommended a “message of the day” email that is sent to all social media–active employees.

Addvocate takes that concept and makes it much, much better. Employees install a simple browser plugin that enables them to receive content recommendations from a centralized marketing team, while also enabling them to recommend content to the marketing team and to one another. The marketing team then gets detailed statistics showing which employees are sharing content on social, how many clicks and engagement actions each employee is generating, etc.


Addvocate enables you to share content with colleagues.

It’s an incredibly easy-to-use, remarkably inexpensive (just a few dollars per month) social media tool that removes the pain of teamwork and content sharing/distribution. I use it constantly to share potential topics for inclusion in our daily email newsletter.

Jay Baer, founder of Convince & Convert.
#3: Swayy


Jamie Turner

The best new tool I’ve seen in many months is called Swayy. It’s a platform that drops interesting content into a dashboard where you can scan or read the most interesting articles.

The best feature isn’t the fact that the articles are dropped right in front of your nose. The best feature is the sharing.


Swayy finds you the best content to share with your target audience.

At the bottom of each article, you can click the “share” button and it automatically opens up your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

With the click of a button, you’re able to share articles across multiple platforms. Plus, you can schedule your sharing times well in advance. That way, you’re able to share multiple articles across multiple platforms multiple times a day. Brilliant!

Jamie Turner, founder of the 60 Second Marketer.
#4: eGrabber’s Account-Researcher


Viveka Von Rosen

One of the reasons LinkedIn works so well is that it tells us exactly how we’re related to the people in our network and the best ways of communicating with them (messages, invitations, introductions and InMails, in that order).

LinkedIn’s limitation is with the folks who fall outside of our network; especially if we don’t have $10 for each InMail we want to send. Another limitation is that LinkedIn is increasingly hiding our connections from us. First taking away last name, then whole name and picture altogether!

Let me start by saying eGrabber Account-Researcher is NOT a free tool. You can get a free trial, but it’s so incredibly powerful for researching prospects that it’s absolutely worth the $80 a month fee. Can you eventually find the same info on Google with the right algorithms? Yes. Will it take you hours and hours to yield results that aren’t as comprehensive? Yes. Is your time worth more than that? YES!

Essentially, Account-Researcher gets through LinkedIn’s restrictions to betterresearch and find a prospect’s contact and company information.


Account-Researcher helps you research a prospect.

It cuts prospect research time down to a few minutes and will help you:
Find missing emails and phone numbers of prospects when you have only their name and company.
Quickly qualify a company and build a list of key decision-makers that includes name, title, email, phone and social media footprint.
Get talking points from news, patents, blogs, press releases and other sources for pre-call prospect research.




A quick way to find decision-makers within a company.

LinkedIn isn’t about selling your stuff. It’s about finding and engaging with people, developing that feeling of “knowing, liking and trusting.” And once you’ve established a relationship with the person, you can move to the next stage in the game. The more you know about prospects, the better your chance of getting to that next stage.

The power of LinkedIn is that it helps us connect with real people in real life. We need to go old school. Do searches, do research and then pick up the phone! Account-Researcher makes that MUCH easier.

Viveka von Rosen, author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day, host of #LinkedInChat and co-moderator of LinkedStrategies.
#5: Compfight


Rich Brooks

Photos are a great way to engage people on your blog and draw them into your post. They also grab attention when someone shares your blog post on Facebook or another social media channel. Unfortunately, good photography can cost a lot of money, and with regular blogging, the investment can add up fast. Enter Compfight.

Compfight searches Flickr’s photos that have the appropriate Creative Commons license for Commercial Use.


Compfight is a great tool when searching for an image for a blog post.

Do a quick search for ideas, objects, emotions—whatever will best represent the idea in your blog post. Compfight will even provide you with the HTML code for proper attribution. (Yes, you need to give attribution to the photographer, but that’s a small price to pay!)

If you’re blogging regularly but working on a shoestring budget, be sure to give Compfight a try!

Rich Brooks, president of flyte new media, a web design and Internet marketing company that helps small businesses succeed online.
#6: Tagboard


Kim Garst

Tagboard is my new cool social media tool. To describe it simply, Tagboard is a way to monitor keywords (a.k.a. hashtags) across multiple social media channels.

To monitor conversations that revolve around specific hashtags on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and Vine, Tagboard pulls in content from all of these sites based on a specified hashtag and creates a custom board filled with content from all platforms.

Why Is it Useful?

1. Brand monitoring. It’s useful to anyone who monitors their own brand or other people’s brands as a part of their business. It is especially useful for small business owners who do not want to invest in social media monitoring.

2. Content Curation. It’s a great way to find content around a specific topic. For example, if you want to find out what others are saying about breaking industry news, search by keyword(s) and find articles, conversations, etc. Once you conduct the search, narrow the focus to a single social media platform. In other words, view just tweets with that specific hashtag. You can even reply to the conversations right from within Tagboard!


You can reply to the conversation.

3. Real-time Leads at Your Fingertips! Suppose you’re a realtor in Miami and you’re looking to connect with people who are moving to Miami. Search for real-time conversations that are taking place on multiple social media platforms using targeted keywords such as #MovingToMiami. Connect, share some valuable info and start working on building a relationship that will lead to a potential sale.


Search for real-time conversation around targeted keywords.

Best of all, it’s a free tool! Check it out!

Kim Garst, CEO of Boom Social.
#7: ManageFlitter


Stephanie Sammons

A cool social media tool that has helped me get a better handle on effectively managing my Twitter account is ManageFlitter.

As you’re probably aware, Twitter can be very noisy! A tool that can help you manage your account while growing your following with the right people is very valuable. The ManageFlitter motto is “Work Faster and Smarter with Twitter.”

ManageFlitter integrates with your Twitter account to help you effectively:
Find relevant people to follow and connect with by searching Twitter bios, locations and keywords
Unfollow inactive accounts, spam accounts (you can force them to unfollow you as well) or accounts with no profile images
Schedule and post tweets at optimal times when your followers are most likely to see your updates
Monitor keywords, hashtags, usernames and even websites mentioned on Twitter
Get analytics on your Twitter account

Although some of the above features are paid, you can sign up for a free account and get access to basic features for testing the service. The Pro Plan for more robust individual users is $12/month.


ManageFlitter has several price plans to choose from.

One caveat with ManageFlitter or any Twitter-based tool that can help you manage your account is to understand Twitter’s following rules and best practices. Ultimately you’re responsible for adhering to these rules. ManageFlitter has been working with Twitter for over 3 years and they’ve helped almost 2 million users.

I would recommend using ManageFlitter to build a more relevant following, keep your account cleaned up and prioritize quality over quantity!

Stephanie Sammons, founder and CEO of Wired Advisor.
#8: Socialbakers


Stephanie Shkolnik

Socialbakers has an effective tool called Analytics Pro, which provides an understanding of how your brand stacks up against your competitors, specifically across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube—for now.

The simple interface allows you to input a social media channel and gain insights into engagement rates and channel growth, and understand which contributors from your social communities are most active, providing an opportunity to build relationships and enable continued advocacy.


Check out how your brand compares to others in your niche.

An otherwise painfully manual process, this tool also allows you to see how you’re performing against your competitors to learn which campaigns, content and influencers are driving the most effective conversations.

While Socialbakers is a paid tool, a trial period will impress you and show decision-makers how much more effectively your time will be spent on reporting, gaining insights and informing social strategy.

Stephanie Shkolnik, social media director at Digitaria.
#9: Post Planner


Ian Cleary

Post Planner is a content management tool that runs as an application within Facebook. What’s great about Post Planner is that in addition to providing the ability to schedule content, it also provides fantastic facilities for sourcing and adding content to your queue for later posting.

You can search a database of thousands of status updates on a range of general topics, find content that’s trending in your niche or add Facebook pages, Twitter accounts or blogs and easily add content to your queue from these sources.


You can easily add content to your queue.

It also provides real-time analytics on posts, so you immediately see what’s working and not working.

Post Planner is a time saver, enabling you to plan and manage your Facebook content in advance, rather than doing it off the cuff.

Ian Cleary, founder of RazorSocial.
#10: Komfo


Neal Schaffer

There are a lot of Facebook page analytic tools and social media dashboards that include Facebook analysis.

A problem with some of these tools is that they try to do so much that it’s hard to gain simple-to-understand, meaningful insight about your Facebook content strategy from them. Others just provide a lot of data, some in better-looking forms than others, without offering any other handholding as to how that data can be utilized to improve your Facebook engagement.

That’s why it was refreshing to discover a new free Facebook page analytics toolfrom Komfo—a company claiming to be “the leading tool provider in the Nordics within the Social Media Marketing space.”

Komfo provides analysis with additional handholding to help you analyze your Facebook content based on the following types of analytics:
Fan Penetration: In essence, this is EdgeRank—a figure that shows what percentage of your fans you’re reaching with each post. If the average EdgeRank on Facebook is said to be 16%, you can easily see an average from your last 30 days’ posts up to a maximum of 100. Of course, you can drill down into each post to see which is working for better or worse.
Viral Amplification: Don’t be fooled by comparing this to the “viral” analytics provided by Facebook Insights. That number only looks at the percentage of People Talking About This compared to your total fan base. While that’s a nice number to know, wouldn’t you like to know the viral reach of each of your posts as compared to its organic reach? This is exactly what this data shows you for each post, with anything over 1.0 being considered “viral” (i.e., more people saw this post in a news feed via viral reach as compared to organic reach).
CTR: Once again, although the total number of click-throughs are provided in Insights as “Engaged Users,” Komfo takes it one step further and gives you a click-through ratio for each post as a percentage of how many people saw the post.
Spam Score: We all know that negative feedback from your fans can have a heavy impact on your EdgeRank. Unfortunately, with the current implementation of Insights, you need to dig deep into seeing the “Engaged Users” for each post to check for mention of negative feedback. Komfo’s tool conveniently shows the ratio of negative feedback as a percentage of total clicks.




Komfo is a great tool to help you analyze your Facebook content.

The tool also includes the “People Talking About This” number, which they call “Stories,” as well as overall Reach. Another welcome feature is the ability to send an email and give others access to your report online without Facebook authorization. This is a nice touch that makes the tool even more useful for large and distributed teams.

Neal Schaffer, founder of Maximize Social Business.
#11: Rignite


Andrea Vahl

An interesting tool I recently discovered is Rignite, which helpsmonitor several social media platforms—including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube—from one place. It was just launched in April and they will be adding features and other social networks.

The best thing about the tool is the team aspect of this product. You can have forums and chats within the tool, and assign tasks to people on the team. So this works well for teams of 3-6 people who are managing the same accounts.

They have tracking and insights incorporated into the dashboard.


You can monitor your fan base within the dashboard.

This tool will become even more valuable as they add some of the features they have planned to help monitor your social media contacts more closely. While the tool works well right now for monitoring and posting to your accounts for a team of people, I think this will be one to watch as it evolves!

Andrea Vahl, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies, uses her improv comedy skills to blog as Grandma Mary, Social Media Edutainer.
#12: SocialOomph


Jeff Bullas

One of the coolest social media marketing tools that I’ve discovered and used is SocialOomph.

The challenge for most bloggers and social media marketers is not just creating the content, but also distributing it. Twitter is a great social media network to assist you with sharing your content to your followers, but having to tweet constantly is time-consuming.

SocialOomph (professional edition, which costs about $25 a month) allows you to not only load and schedule tweets, you can also make them recurring, saving you the onerous and time-consuming task of ongoing scheduling.

Load your tweets once, then set and forget.


SocialOomph is useful for scheduling evergreen content.

SocialOomph lets you load up to 500 unique tweets and the major benefit is that it saves me about 25-30 hours a week, or 100-120 hours per month, of ongoing tweet scheduling!

Jeff Bullas, blogger, author, strategist and speaker.
#13: Zapier


Paul Colligan

Zapier has changed the social media marketing game for me in the most dramatic of ways. This service connects systems in ways once only possible with a massive programming budget.

You can say things across the social networks like “text your email to (503) 405-4415 to get the free video (or just leave a message if you don’t have texting)” and have that sync automatically with whatever email system you’re using (from MailChimp to AWeber) and/or with any CRM you run (from Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Salesforce).


You can automate tasks among online services.

Zapier also automatically generates a Google spreadsheet for you that tracks every time a certain keyword is mentioned in Twitter and makes it possible for you toautomatically send selected Facebook Posts to your blog. In addition, when you do a webcast (paid or otherwise) through Eventbrite, all of the information collected is integrated into everything else you’re doing (I leverage everything they offer to make my event as social as possible).

The possibilities are endless, and you should see the running list of integration ideas I have.

At the time I write this, Zapier brags of 233 web services integrated. I’m sure they’ll add more before this piece is published. With Zapier, social is now one big ecosystem, and I’m thrilled to play in it.

Paul Colligan, director of content marketing at Instant Customer.
#14: FixYourFunnel and Mobivity


Beth Hayden

Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to attend a live workshop given by the fabulous Pam Slim (author of Escape from Cubicle Nation, and a world-renowned business coach). At the end of Pam’s talk, she told the audience that she had a handout for us.

Pam surprised me by announcing a phone number and saying “Text your name and email address to that number, and I’ll send you the handout.” I could see people whipping out their phones so they could text her. There were no messy sign-up sheets and people could follow her instructions on the spot—and she got their email addresses right away, so she could follow up with possible leads.

I had never seen anyone utilize text messages for that purpose, and thought it was a great idea, so I followed up with Pam later and asked her how she pulled off this cool process. She recommended two tools: FixYourFunnel (an Infusionsoft-specific tool) and Mobivity.


Utilize text messages for your business.


Avoid messy sign-up sheets and use a text messaging service instead.

As a consultant and author who does regular public speaking and training, I can’t wait to integrate these smart mobile marketing tools into my sales process and see the results I get!

Beth Hayden, author of Pinfluence, a speaker and social media expert.
Who are these social media pros?




The social media marketing experts who contributed to this article are all speaking at the Social Media Success Summit.



Social Media Success Summit 2013 is a live online conference that will empower you to use social media to gain more exposure, increase traffic, cultivate loyal fans and grow your business. More than 45 of the world’s leading social media pros will show you how. The event is spread over four weeks in October.

Join nearly 3,000 fellow marketers at the online mega-conference designed to empower and inspire you with social media marketing tactics—brought to you by Social Media Examiner.
Why should you attend Social Media Success Summit?

You’ll hear from 45+ of the world’s top social media marketing pros as they reveal their newest social media marketing tips and practical, real-world, proven examples.

You’ll be able to take your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, blogging, podcasting and video marketing to an entirely new level.

What do you think? Do you use any of these social media tactics? What’s working well for you today? Please share your thoughts in the box below.

The Future of Social Media

In the past decade we have seen many changes in the world of Social Media and business. Twitter and Facebook have adapted to the world of business better than anyone could have imagined. In 2009, we saw the realisation of the influence that listening to consumers had on Social Media and in the ending of 2011, media went from being a simple broadcast platform to a sophisticated network of connections and rewarding engagements.

In 2012, we saw Social Media as a way of connecting with potential consumers and building brand awareness, and 2013 will be no different.

Looking at findings from various companies, it seems the Facebook is on the decline. It has been suggested that around 34% of Facebook users say the time they spend on the site has decreased over the past year with only 3% saying they will spend more time on the site in the coming year. Facebook need to re-evaluate their standing as a social network and focus on this rather than the many other things that have been reported in recent months.

Despite Facebook declining, it seems social media overall, will continue to rise. Social Media usage is up 38% over the previous year and is likely to increase to around 50% by the end of 2013. The increase in social activity is mostly down to smartphone users and we all know the mobile market is booming.

People’s expectations are changing. Social media is now more than just networking, its a way of successfully building a brand. There’s an old saying that all human behaviour is goal directed. We need a purpose that has to be obvious and in the absence of this behaviour, the task itself will not happen. This applies to Social Media and how are are going to act in the future. Without a direction in the form of a social media strategy, a business will suffer online.

A lot of companies will be weighing up the benefits of spending their time on social media because as well all know time is money. As said by a famous philosopher, all human behaviour occurs to gain pleasure or avoid pain. In the beginning, the purpose served by using social media was just the pleasure of connecting with people in a new and unique way. This soon had its difficulties when it comes to how much time one can devote to social networking activity and how to communicate online. Looking to the future, networking has to have some kind of tangible benefit otherwise it may not be worth it which is a very uncertain thing.

When looking to the future of Social Media, you will need to consider the following:

• Tribes – We as humans, by nature, are social despite the many years spent relying on mass marketing. We will be using social media as a way to have conversations and build a community or tribe that share the same interests.
• Relevancy – Something that will always be crucial to social media is how relevant the content is that you are sharing.
• SoLoMo – We are in a new era now where being Social, Local and Mobile are an important part of being on social media.

So, where is Social Media going? This, I cannot answer. Social media depends on its users, so really, the future of social networking is down to us!

Why Brands Should Be Human on Social Media

The success of any social program is ultimately determined by its ability to connect on a one-to-one, human level. But what does it actually mean to be human in social media?

Is it having a fun and engaging brand? Speaking in everyday, colloquial language? Establishing a more relatable — even intentionally non-corporate — online presence?

To an extent, but these are surface symptoms. The core issue lies much deeper, in the nuances of how we interact with one another.

Specifically, there's a phenomenon in linguistics known as "code-switching." It refers to when a person alternates back and forth between multiple languages in a single conversation. Recently, a team at NPR dived into this concept, elevating it beyond linguistics and identifying its prevalence and significance on a cultural and sociological level.

One writer, Gene Demby, points out how most of us do this every single day at work. We adopt a corporate tone when speaking to our superiors or coworkers. Then a friend or family member calls and we morph into an entirely different — perhaps even seemingly completely opposite — persona.

The key, though, is that both voices are still inherently us. As Demby writes: "Many of us subtly, reflexively change the way we express ourselves…hop-scotching between different cultural and linguistic spaces and different parts of our own identities - sometimes within a single interaction."

The implications of this in social media are massive. Social already blurs — and is on the way to obliterating — the line between professional and personal. Combined with our nature to code-switch, that means two huge shifts in how we need to approach social as brands.

Users Don't Approach Corporate Content Solely as Corporate People

Code-switching not only illuminates the fact that we express various aspects of our personality at different times, but it also reveals that all of these aspects are - at all times - fundamental parts of our makeup. By extension, all of these components of our personality come together to affect our decision-making, preferences, and actions.

In other words, when a user comes across your Twitter handle or Facebook feed, she doesn't suddenly transform into a "professional-only" mode that consumes, filters and reacts to content based 100% on her company and career.

No, her professional persona may take center stage, but her entire thought process is also influenced by the less apparent parts of her personality: the fact that she's a parent, enjoys rock climbing, is coming off a rough week or lives in a city.

As marketers, we need to embrace this fundamental nature of user behavior; namely, that people act, engage, and respond not solely as professionals, but as nuanced human beings. Users are not simply — and absolutely cannot be solely treated as — potential sales. Our campaigns, programming and offers must be built to connect with users on that human level — which encompasses, but is not wholly defined by — their professional status.

Learn the Art of Authenticity

Understanding the complexities of code-switching users and the need to connect on a human level doesn't mean we abandon our marketing objectives, though. We still have businesses to run and revenue to generate. But it does mean we rethink how we communicate and present our brands.

Think about it: If connection needs to take place at a human level, then our brands must also become human. Connection only occurs when there is a convergence between two parties who find something in common. If the user is approaching from a professional-and-personal perspective, and we only approach from a professional one, we've already limited how effective our engagement can be.

Being a humanized brand means learning the art of authenticity. It means being genuine, being passionate about whatever it is your brand is and does. Just like in everyday life, people respond most to others who are perceptibly and consistently real. And that's why it's an art, not a formula. Authenticity, in the long run, can't be manufactured or faked.

Every corporation, no matter how buttoned-up, no matter its product or service, has a unique personality. Being human in social media, then, involves identifying all aspects of that personality — even the less obvious or less corporate ones — and embracing them as a whole. From there, the surface symptoms we referenced at the beginning of the column — tone, language, aesthetics — will be easier to define.

The beauty, though, is that there's always room for a brand's personality to expand and express itself in new ways. Just as various parts of our individual personalities can evolve, brands can similarly introduce concepts and experiences that reveal more of what they're passionate about, without deviating from their key values, objectives or principles.

It won't happen overnight. It may even be painful. But discovering how to be authentic, to be genuine, is an exercise that will only help a business in the long run. At the end of the day, people connect most with real. And social allows us to connect easier and more frequently than ever before, making it the perfect place to start.

Image by Mashable

8 Tips to Get the Most Out of Running a Giveaway

When running a giveaway, either through your own website or through a 3rd party, you need to have a set of predetermined goals in mind so that you have a clear roadmap to success. Here are 8 tips to help you get the most out of running a giveaway.

1. Set Goals to Determine an ROI
First and foremost, what are you looking to get out of running a giveaway? Do you want more exposure for your brand, more sales, more likes on Facebook, or followers on Twitter? You must go into your promotion with predetermined goals, so that when it ends you are able to measure its success. I see way too many companies running giveaways with no predetermined goals in mind. When all is said and done, they end up feeling like they got nothing out of it, aside from it being some “fun” marketing ploy.
To set goals and track them, you can do something as simple as opening an excel spreadsheet before you run the giveaway, creating a list of the goals you want to set.



2) Sales? Probably not...
When running a giveaway, it is important to understand that you most likely won’t see sales pouring in. You may get a few sales, but don’t make sales your number one goal when running a giveaway. I’ve worked with many companies that measure the success of their giveaway based on the number of sales they received. If they did not get as many as they were hoping for, they are usually unhappy and feel as if their money was not well spent.

The problem with this train of thought is that no marketing tactic can ever really guarantee sales; giveaways are fantastic for lead generation, where you foster a relationship with your new customers, leveraging them for sales at a later time. Running a giveaway is just another marketing tactic and there will always be a cost associated with it.

If you have ever used Google Adwords or Facebook Ads you know that you have to spend a good chunk of change to get enough people to click through to your website. Even after they click, it is still JUST a click – nothing more. Your job isn’t done even after you have paid for a click; you still need to make sure those people are able to make it through your sales funnel to make a purchase. The same goes for a giveaway: you need to make sure that you have structured it correctly so that you are able to reach your goals, whether that is to capture leads, get more likes, followers, etc.

But of course, if you’re really itching to get more sales out of a giveaway, then...

3) Offer a Discount 
Providing entrants with a discount that they can redeem for products/services on your site is a great way to increase sales. Most companies either run a giveaway, or just offer a coupon, but from my experience, combining the two is more powerful.

Offering a coupon without a giveaway means that the coupon is out in the wild for anyone to see and use. People may see the coupon and say “Sweet! I’ve been wanting to buy something from them, now is the time!” Then, they get distracted. A few days go by and they completely forget about using your coupon to make a purchase. In fact, they don’t purchase at all. Unfortunately, you have no idea who this person is, or how to reach them.

However, when running a giveaway, you can offer a discount once the user has entered. This means that you have captured them as a lead, usually by collecting their email address, and you can effectively re-market to them to remind them about the coupon if they don’t end up making a purchase. A good rule of thumb is to provide a coupon for the duration of the giveaway and have it expire a week after the giveaway ends. This will encourage people that didn’t win to make an impulse purchase.

4) Interact on Facebook
Interacting with your current and new users on Facebook is especially important during a giveaway. Remember, these platforms are not meant to be used as a one-way form of communication; do less pushing, and more pulling. When you get those 500 new facebook fans, your first post shouldn’t be “HEY NEW FANS BUY OUR PRODUCTS NOW!”

Instead, engage and build a relationship with them. Much like going on a first date, you want to make a good impression in order to keep them as a fan and to eventually convert them into a customer.

For example, let’s say you run a company that sells mattresses -- start out with something like “Welcome to all of our new fans. Are there any problems that you have with your current mattress that keep you up at night? Let us know, and we’ll see if our certified mattress experts can help find a solution to your problem."
This opens the floodgates for your fans to start leaving comments talking about their sleeping problems as a result of their mattress. You then chime in and respond directly to each customer, helping to find a solution to their problem. Remember, building the relationship with them first is the key to turning them into customers who are likely to buy from you in the future.

5) Interact on Twitter
The same goes for Twitter – use it as a platform to interact with your new users, not as a platform to constantly push out tweets about your products.



Another great way to take advantage of Twitter is by using search.twitter.com. This allows you to search for any keyword or phrase that people are currently tweeting. So, if you run a mattress company, you can run a search for “I hate my bed’, and you will see results from people that have recently tweeted that phrase. You can then reach out to them, let them know about your mattress giveaway, and start building a relationship by asking why they hate their mattress and what you can do to help.

6) Promote to Your Own Audience
This one is simple and should be a no-brainer. Promote your giveaway to your email list and to your audience on social media. Put a graphic on the homepage of your website linking to the giveaway.
What is the point of running a giveaway if your current audience doesn’t know about it? Sure, you may just want to bring in new people for your giveaway, but you would be foolish to ignore the fact that your current audience could bring in more of their own friends and family which you would be missing out on.

7) Promote on Giveaway Directories
Adding your giveaway to a directory can bring in a lot of traffic, but keep in mind that it is mostly non-targeted traffic and sweepstakers just looking for freebies. However, if your goal is to get as much traffic and as many leads as possible, you’ll want to submit to these sites.
Here is a great list of giveaway directories to submit your giveaway to.

8) Utilize Facebook Comments 
Utilizing the Facebook commenting system in your giveaway is a great way to continue the conversation and bring in more people. Many 3rd party giveaway tools have Facebook comments built right in, but if you’re building a custom giveaway page, use the Facebook comments plugin.



If you structure your giveaway correctly, you should be able to ask users a question that they can reply to using Facebook comments. For example, if you’re giving away a mattress you can ask: “Which mattress would you choose from our selection if you win?”

This simple question will drum up hundreds of comments because it encourages people to browse your website to find the mattress they want.

Another great thing about Facebook comments is that when you reply to people your comment will show up with your company name. Don’t forget, when a user leaves a comment, Facebook usually displays that in the newsfeed for their friends to see, which brings in more people.

Recap

• Set goals to determine an ROI. Do not go in blind hoping for the best when running a giveaway.

• You most likely won't get many sales from a giveaway, if any at all. You should be capturing leads and interacting with your new fans to convert them into future customers.

• Discounts when combined with a giveaway can help to drive sales.

• Promote the giveaway to your current audience, and if you're looking to get as many leads as possible, submit to giveaway directories.
• Use Facebook, Facebook comments, and Twitter properly to increase engagement and interaction with your audience. Remember, less pushing more pulling.