The Social Media World Can Be Scary. After all, you’re right up on center stage, with everyone’s eyes

right on you. Everything you post can be scrutinized to no end, and shared infinitely. For many business owners that just can’t wrap their heads around it, social media may be seen as a liability, not a benefit.

However, once you fall into the groove of social media, you’ll likely find that it gets less frightening – and if you have the right tools to get you there, you might even find it fun!

Here are some tools that can help you make the most of your social media messages.

#1: ArgyleSocial

ArgyleSocial wraps Facebook and Twitter management together around a veryimportant service that often gets looked over – link shortening. If you use Twitter, you are likely aware that characters are at a premium. Link shortening helps you make the most of those 114 characters. However, link shortening using most services impedes your ability to track link activity.

ArgyleSocial solves this problem since it also tracks the the activity that goes through these shortened links, so you can see exactly where your click traffic is coming from.

Want to learn more?www.argylesocial.com

#2: Crowdbooster

This service is another social metrics tool, but it measures raw engagement rather than click-through rates. Crowdbooster will let you see how many times your Facebook and Twitter content gets shared, reTweeted, liked, and so on. It will also show you which followers are the most engaged with your content.

Crowdbooster can even help you figure out what time of day is best for you to post. Since social media moves so quickly, Crowdbooster is a great way to get another pair of eyes watching how your content performs.

Want to learn more?www.crowdbooster.com

Top Twitter Tools

#3: TweetReach

This is a great way to measure the potency of your Twitter campaign easily. TweetReach can help you see how much mileage your Tweets get. It can be useful to know which of your Tweets get the most attention.

Having the information that TweetReach provides will let you know what your best Tweets look like, how successful your Tweets are at generating traffic to your site, and how well your Twitter efforts are contributing to your bottom line.

Want to learn more?www.tweetreach.com

#4: HootSuite for iPad

Of course, this one only applies to those Tweeters who have iPads at their disposal, but if you happen to be on the tablet track, this is a must-have app. It combines the already indispensible features of HootSuite with the highly robust mobile features of the iPad.

Don’t save your ideas for later – Tweet them now with this app!

Want to learn more?http://hootsuite.com/features/mobile-apps/ipad

Easier Ways to Keep Up With Appearances

#5: Bo.lt

Any blogger knows that collecting content is key to having excellent blogs. The trouble is that even if you copy and paste your favorite links, there’s always a chance of a domain expiring or something else happening to get between you and your painstakingly bookmarked content.

Not with Bo.lt. On first glance this looks like Pinterest, but Bo.lt goes the extra step to actually save your website in the cloud. That way, no matter what happens to the actual site itself, you’ll always be able to access the content.

Want to learn more?https://bo.lt

#6: Google Alerts

Any business owner wants to keep abreast about what is being said regarding their business across the internet. Of course, the internet is a vast place and it can be difficult to monitor all of it all of the time. This is where Google Alerts is your best friend.

Google Alerts provides a service that will monitor Google for you and send you a digest of where your company’s name (or your industry, or whatever you’d like) was mentioned so you can keep abreast of the buzz.

Want to learn more?http://www.google.com/alerts

Alerts

Do More in Less Time With Email

#7: Posterous

Posterous is a blogging platform unlike any other – it allows you to write blogs directly from your email client. The way it works is that you write your content in the body of an email and send it to your Posterous address. Within moments your blog will be online and readable.

This is a great way to keep from switching between email client and browser windows while working. If you can write an email, you can start a blog – and you don’t even need to leave your email to do it.

Want to learn more?www.posterous.com

#8: NutshellMail

If you have multiple social media accounts, you’ll love working with NutshellMail. Basically, NutshellMail will track the performance of all your social media avenues and send you one condensed email at the end of the day which will track your likes, shares, reTweets and so on so that you can keep on top of your social media performance with less effort.

Want to learn more?www.nutshellmail.com

Social media doesn’t have to be scary.

What are your favorite social media apps, and why?

With the right tools in hand, you’ll find that managing even multiple social media accounts can be easy - and dare we even say it – fun. We hope that you’ve found this quick primer on social media apps helpful – but this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these programs.

Content Equals Content Equals MoneyMoneyContent Equals Money is a content writing

service that serves a wide variety of clients with top-shelf, sharable content. Our goal is to work with small companies in order to help them reap the same results from content marketing as the Fortune 500 companies. Content marketing is truly scalable and can work for all businesses and business sizes!