21 Social Media Marketing Solutions for Small Businesses

(Sara Angeles) Social media marketing is an art form, and with the right social media marketing solution, business owners can master it.

Although social media platforms offer their own marketing tools — Twitter targeted ads, Facebook Pages, Google+ Local and Pinterest Promoted Pins, to name a few — social media marketing solutions streamline the process while helping businesses avoid alienating followers. Constantly pushing advertisements and sales copies no longer works on today's increasingly social-media-savvy consumers, which means businesses need to take on a more strategic, relationship-building approach. Here are 19 social media marketing solutions to help you get there.

1. Moment.me — Location-based social media marketing

Location-based marketing is the next big thing in social media marketing. Leverage this technology with Moment.me, which recently launched its 'Places' feature to help restaurants, hotels, stores and other brick-and-mortar businesses discover nearby leads and drive consumer engagement. Just input your address or name of business and the service will instantly aggregate all the social media posts within proximity. From there, you can find mentions of your business on status updates, photos, videos and other content that reflect what customers are thinking and their experience at your establishment. This allows you to find and approach the best customers with special offers, for instance, by sending them a thank you message for dropping by and including exclusive discounts for their next visit. Moment.me is free, and paid plans are also available for more advanced features. [10 Social Media Selling Solutions for Small Businesses]

2. SocialCentiv — Find customers on Twitter

Twitter is a gold mine for finding new customers. People don't just tweet about events and random nothings, but they also tweet looking for advice, products and services. Find them with SocialCentiv, a Twitter intent-based marketing Web app that helps small businesses turn conversations into customers. This self-serve platform lets users comb Twitter for potential customers using highly targeted metrics, such as those in their neighborhood or those seeking their specific product and services. For instance, a coffee house can search for tweets containing the terms "caffeine fix" or "need coffee," then flag them to directly reply to the customer. Try SocialCentiv with a free 7-day trial.

3. HashAtIt.com — Hashtag search engine

Knowing what's trending is key to reaching the right audience, but ask 10 different social networks and you'll get 10 different answers. HashAtIt.com streamlines the process by providing a way to find out what's hot across multiple social networks in real time. Dubbed as "The Social Search Engine," HashAtIt.com collects status updates, tweets and other posts, allowing users to search for the most popular hashtags on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest — all in one place. This hashtag search platform also offers a user-friendly interface that includes customizable hashtag boards to filter and organize hashtag searches, as well as the ability to mute irrelevant search results.

4. Guides.co – Transforming resource webpages

Guides.co creates an ongoing interaction between your business and your clients. This resource takes a social media-like approach to connecting writer and readers. Your online resource center will transform from static, white pages and PDFs to an interactive, evolving method of informing and serving your clients by allowing them to comment, ask questions, share the information, bookmark specific parts, as well as rate the usefulness of the information. Guides.co also tracks client information while also collecting data on what parts of the information are most used and shared. This easy-to-use monthly service can be self-managed or Guides.co can provide professional, tailored content for your business.

5. Sparksfly — Social media consolidation

Social media engagement can be complicated but Sparksfly, a new app, simplifies the process by allowing the you to consolidate all social-media feeds into one application. Designed for both consumers and businesses, the proprietary Fuzzy Logic Engine finds connections across networks and flags them to the user as it learns your routines. For businesses, Sparksfly offers meaningful, targeted consumer engagement based on user-generated data.

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