Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Marketers Cruise Capt. Lou Edwards shares a collection of 101 cool tools and technology used and recommended by the biggest names in marketing.

The tools include the following categories: audio, video, communication, social media, management, automation, productivity, content marketing, scheduling, task management, books, and tips. A very useful reference.

Communications on the Internet started out as simple email conversations. Then came social media, offering new ways of interaction among people from across the world. Email is still the primary mode of professional communication. Yet, over the course of time, one does look for building up (both personal and professional) connections with other people, on social media as well.

Say you have a business email contact, with whom you wish to connect on social media. He or she could be an active user on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or even Google Plus. How do you find out your contact’s social profiles from that? Of course, the easiest way is to just ask. But “asking” might not be convenient in every situation.

Or, maybe you just want to check out a sender’s social profiles before taking any further action. In which case, you have to manually search them on the Internet and also validate whether those social profiles you find are genuine or not. Well, there’s an easier and more definitive way to find out.

Most people have a primary email address, which is used to sign up on all the social networking sites. And thus, in a way, that one email address links all the respective social profile.

Taking advantage of this fact, ManyContacts is an online service that reveals respective social connections based on the email address provided. It is also available in the form of a Chrome extension, and works with Gmail, Google Apps, and other email providers as well....

For all of the greatness that the internet affords -- cute animal videos, GIFs, and interesting blogs -- I think its biggest downside is how distracting it can be. How many times have you sat down to work and been pulled into a pit of procrastination?

Perhaps you get absorbed in updates on social media, or maybe you click through Wikipedia trying to determine what exactly Gina Rodriguez’s first TV role was (it was on Law & Order).

No matter where you click online, it’s easy to be pulled into a black hole of distraction andlow productivity.Enter Google Chrome browser extensions. The Google Chrome web store offers a variety of different tools that help you be more productive with just one click.

We can’t guarantee that they will make YouTube videos less tempting to watch, but we recommend them for busy marketers who want to make their time online more efficient.

We’ve broken them down into different categories if you want to jump ahead:...

In the past, I’ve discussed a variety of ways for businesses to improve their reach through social media. From step-by-step marketing guides to advertising-based posts, I have done it all.

This time around, I want to discuss 13 tools that can make or break your social media marketing strategy. With the right tools on your side, the sky’s the limit. Without these, however, you will be facing an uphill battle.

Here are 13 tools you need to learn before going “all in” with your social media strategy...

Staples today announced the launch of its Quick Wins app to help small businesses succeed and grow in the New Year. The Quick Wins app offers business-specific ideas, metrics and community support in one easy-to-access place.

Most small businesses (72%) want assistance getting their business metrics on track, yet two in five (41%) are not sure what business metrics they should focus on in order to ensure their success.

Through Staples Quick Wins app, small businesses will sync their most important business metrics such as Facebook and Twitter engagement, site traffic, sales and tools such as Google Analytics and QuickBooks to pull in key financial, website and marketing metrics that can be tracked daily and weekly. Instagram and MailChimp will be available at a later date....

But how on earth would you ever know whether the brand you are choosing to buy has equality in mind or even gives a damn about women in general? Good news, there’s now an app for that! It is called Buy Up Index and we predict it will be a game changer and keep brands accountable to the majority of the consumer market.

The app rates a company or a brand from A to C and using a proprietary rating method, they assess companies based on four major factors: women employees, women leadership, corporate citizenship and marketing...

Twitter is a fascinating adventure of relationships, entertainment, education, and fun. Now imagine layering on a few dozen power-ups.

That’s how it feels sometimes when you find just the right Twitter tool. And there’s a tool for practically every desire or whim.

Tools for productivity, for efficiency, for research, and so much more. With such a generous API, Twitter tools have become legion—and we social sharers are better off for it.

At Buffer, we tend to come across a fair share of social media tools. We’ve collected a great bunch to share with you!

Here are all the tools we’ve found helpful and many more that we’re excited to try. If there’s a free Twitter tool out there, you’re likely to find a mention here in our list. ...

That little computer in your pocket has come a long way over the years, huh?

Here are 25 incredibly useful apps that can help you run your business a whole lot smarter than ever before. And every one of them is free, at least in basic form.

Ideas come to us in all shapes and sizes, in all levels of importance, and at all different times of day. Sometimes, we get inspired by something we read online and want to capture it and comment on it. Other times, we come up with an idea out of nowhere and want to jot it down, or say it out loud into our phones before we forget it.
When we have these ideas, it's far too easy to forget them or let them slip through the cracks -- especially if we don't have a system for organizing them. Thankfully, there are some amazing tools out there that can help us track and organize ideas in all different situations.

Here are the best tools out there for organizing your ideas -- including note-taking tools, visual organization tools, collaboration tools, and general organization tools....

You know you need to track your social media efforts, but there are a lot of tools out there. Which ones are the best fit for you?

This infographic from the Social Media Strategies Summit comments on 25 popular social media tools from Sprout Social to Engage Sciences to Spredfast.

The infographic includes information about each of the 25 tools, including brands who are already using them, whether they are free or not, the best thing about them and their ideal user.

This infographic divides social tools into five categories: Social Listening, Social Conversation, Social Marketing, Social Analytics and Social Influencer. “In each category, there are 5 different applications or services that could impact your brand’s success heavily,” according to an article on BitRebels....