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What are the most useful social media tools for small business?

Ross Dawson, October 28, 2009 3:04 AM US PT

Most business owners recognise that there are many social media tools that can help them run their businesses more effectively. The problem is sorting through the plethora of tools that are available today to work out what to use, and how to use it.

Mashable has come out with a useful list of 10 of the Best Social Media Tools for Business, mentioning:

1. Google Apps for Domains
Online email, calendar and office software
2. LinkedIn
Professional social network
3. Basecamp
Online project management tool
4. Facebook
Social network with fan pages, apps and other tools
5. Twitter
Micro-blogging for relationship building
6. Get Satisfaction
Customer self-support forums
7. MailChimp
Web-based mailing list manager
8. UserVoice
Tracking customer feedback
9. YouTube
Hosted videos for marketing, education and advertising
10. Monitter
Monitor Twitter for relevant conversations and comments

I can think of quite a few other applications that would be strong contenders for this list, including Salesforce, the Zoho application suite, Wordpress, SocialMention, and Evernote.

What would you include on the list? What tools to you find useful in running your business?

There will be far more on the best online tools and how to use them to run your business better at the SME Technology Summit in Sydney on 1 December.

Read the original post on the SME Tech Summit blog, together with other useful content and resources for small and mid-sized businesses.

For the most current insights and trends in the living networks, follow @rossdawson on Twitter!

1 Comments

Jake Down said:

I would suggest some other names, pretty successful in the small business domain:-

HyperOffice
Evernote
Tungle

October 28, 2009 1:23 PM

Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-up Repyoot.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.