47 Top social media tools, tips and resources

        Great Tips & Tools

While surfing the web waves, whenever I come across what I think is a good tip, tool and resource, I always copy and paste the URL onto a Word .doc to later post. Below are several of those links I have collected. Because I believe in the Golden Rule, I want to share my sacred tool list with you.

I have listed the items as "Tips" and "Tools" under nine categories:

1. Analytics/Measurement
2. Blogging
3. Micro-Blogging
4. Miscellaneous
5. Mobile/Telephony
6. Articles

7. PR/News Releases
8. Search/SEO
9. Social Bookmarking

Analytics/Measurement

Tips: Google Analytics Videos on YouTube
These videos are a great source of insight into how you can continually improve your web analytics practices.

Tips: Web Analytics Demystified
This is a wonderful post outlining the basic ways to use web analytics.

Tools: Feed Analysis 1.1
Great tool for analyzing Feedburner trends over time.

Tools: Feedjit
Show off your live web traffic.

Tools: RobotReplay
RobotReplay lets you record and watch your website visitors in action. View recorded sessions of every mouse movement, click and keystroke.

Tools: The BuzzMonitor
Aggregation tool produced by the World Bank.

Tools: Websites As Graphs
Chart your website's social graph.

Blogging

Tips: RSS Specifications
All about RSS feeds.

Tools: CoverItLive
A hosted service for blogging events in real time.

Tools: Great Places to Find WordPress Plugins
Resources for finding excellent WordPress plugins.

Tools: Top 10 Template Generators for Blogs and Websites
Does what it says on the tin.

Micro-Blogging

Tips: Six Signs That Twitter Isn't For Your Nonprofit
In reality, this is a great list of pointers on how to -- and how not to -- use Twitter.

Tips: The 10 ways I learned to use Twitter in 2007
Dan York lays out how and why he uses Twitter.

Tips: Twitter: Crisis Case Studies, Useful Applications and a Beer
Some great examples of ways to use Twitter and tools to use it more effectively.

Tips: What the Web Strategist should know about Twitter
Great post by Jeremiah Owyang introducing Twitter, outlining benefits & limitations, and explaining ways to use it.

Tools: Buzzter
Twitter search tool (also available in Japanese).

Tools: JTL
Tool that pulls out the 50 most recent links from your Twitter feed. Requires Google Gears to work; doesn't work in Flock.

Tools: Snitter
One of the most popular desktop apps for Twitter.

Tools: Terraminds
Another search application for Twitter.

Tools: Tweeterboard
Conversation analytics for Twitter. Still a little buggy and not comprehensive, but very useful nonetheless.

Tools: Tweetscan
Real-time Twitter search. Great tool for filtering through your Twitter feed.

Tools: TwitDir
A Twitter users directory.

Tools: Twitter Karma
Who are you following? Who is following you back?

Miscellaneous

Tips: Black belt scheduling with Google Calendar
Useful Google Calendar tips.

Tips: Google Embeddable Calendar Helper
Useful help page for embedding Google Calendar in your webpages.

Tips: Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive
Fantastic introduction to web 2.0.

Tips: Simplifying Ajax For Marketers
Neat 101 post explaining the benefits of AJAX for marketers.

Tools: 11 Open-Source Projects Certified As Secure
List of open-source projects that have been certified as free of security defects.

Tools: AnchorFree
Free, reliable Wi-Fi security. Can use to access US-only sites too.

Tools: My Office 2.0 Setup
A thorough list of leading online office applications.

Mobile/Telephony

Tools: Eye-Fi
The Eye-Fi Card is a wireless memory card. It automatically uploads pictures from your digital camera to your PC or Mac and to your favorite photo sharing, printing, blogging or social networking site.

Tools: Large-Scale Conference Calls With *Better* Voice Quality Than The PSTN (using Skype)
Dan York highlights a Skype extra that allows high-quality, large-scale conference calls over Skype.

Tools: Spinvox
Voice-driven posts to blogs, twitter, jaiku, facebook and more.

PR/News Releases

Tools: PR Web
Online, socially-enabled news wire service.

Tools: PRX Builder
Awesome social media news release creation tool.

Tools: Social Media Newsroom
A template for a social media newsroom from SHIFT Communications.

Tools: Social Media Press Release
Todd Defren & SHIFT Communications' original SMNR template.

Tools: Social Media Press Release: The Next Step
HTML template for a social media news release.

Articles

Tips:  15 essential social marketing free Ebooks

Tips:  23 top social media tips, strategies and techniques from corporate America

Tips:  Free Stuff For Internet Marketers

Tips:  Twitter talk: Qwest Launches “Talk to Qwest” on Twitter

Tips:  Tweet the friendly skies for a cheap Twittertware

Search/SEO

Tips: How to Generate Web Site Traffic: The Meta List
I'm linking my list of links to a list of links. Shoot me now. I haven't checked all of these out yet. This is a list of free resources to increase your web traffic.

Tools: Searchmash
Non-advertised testing area run by Google - some interesting new Ajax features integrating results with images, video, and Wikipedia.

Social Bookmarking

Tips: Become A del.icio.us Power User
Pointers on how to use del.icio.us effectively.

Tools: Social Bookmarking Submission Tools
Tools to make social bookmark submissions easier.

Dr. Dave Hale, aka The Internet Marketing Professor, is a nationally recognized internet marketing expert, business coach, professional speaker, and author of over 40 books and training manuals. He is widely regarded as one of the top coaches today assisting businesses with integrating social media into their marketing mix. For more information go to http://www.DrDaveHaleOnline.com