Social networking applications, or apps, are allowing marketers to connect with clients for very little cost. They offer a variety of features that allow you to see what your customers are doing and saying, along with statistics about who’s visiting your social networking sites. By helping to manage customer information and data, these apps can also save you time and duplication of effort, freeing you up for the important business of marketing your brand.
Here are some of the more popular apps for smartphones. All are free, although some do offer premium services for a fee.
- Echofon: This app allows businesses to manage @earlybird, which provides exclusive offers from Twitter advertising partners. You can also use it to manage photos, videos, locations, and links, and it makes it easy to share these with your customers. It will notify you when a customer mentions you in their tweets, and it manages your unread tweets between your iPhone, your computer, and your iPad, which means you’ll save time by not reading the same tweets more than once.
- Loopt: This app lets you keep up with contacts and see what customers are saying about you and your business. This is a GPS-based app that uses a map to show where your clients are, and it allows you to view their ratings on the review site Yelp. You can use Loopt to offer discounts and special deals, too.
Source: http://www.allbusiness.com
