Like everyone who uses the web for business, time can fly in a blink. There you are, expanding your reach, increasing your online visibility and making new connections.
Stalking your contacts on Facebook is not working...
Before you know it you’ve spent hours doing nothing much of anything…
Well, nothing productive anyway.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in tools and the latest shiny object rather than thinking strategy. I like tools that help increase online visibility and save some time too.
I like them even better if they’re free to use (who doesn’t?!)
Rummaging in my nifty online tool box, I thought I would share some simple browser based tools and not quite so simple scripts that you may not have met yet.
5 Fab tools to help increase your online visibility, connections and reach
1 and 2 shown here together…
Ifttt (If This Then That). A really useful browser based social sharing tool, ideal for those who want to cross post certain updates and not others. It does so much more too. Below is a quick video to show you what it is. Sign up and have a play at ifttt.com.
So, you want to show off your latest YouTube video on your website or blog AND encourage more likes on Facebook, followers on Twitter and subscribers on YouTube (you don’t ask for much do you?)
Player created by Inbound Now – Social Media Tools.
Try out the YouTube Super Embed from Inbound Now as demonstrated by the ifttt video. Simply pop over to their site, enter your details, click the big green button then copy and paste the code into the HTML editor or your website or blog. In WordPress get there by clicking the HTML tab.
Tools 3 and 4 work well together too.
3. Is a nifty script called Tynt. People copy and paste content from websites and blogs all the time. It’s copied to social sharing sites, in emails, via chat messengers and even their own blogs or websites. Often people don’t link back to the source (that’s you in this case).
What the Tynt script does add a code to each page of your website or self-hosted blog that automatically puts a link back to your page. So, you get recognition for the info and a link back too where possible. Yes, some people will remove it again, but many do not. More natural links (and as you know links are important) plus accreditation as the author – a win-win situation. Get Tynt here
You do need to put the script in the <head> section of your site, so you need access to the source code. Again, this is fairly simple on WordPress, many themes have a box to add scripts and if not look for the header section in Appearance > Editor.
4. Team Tynt with Linkstant that emails you when you have a new link pointing to your website. How does that improve online visibility? Well, because you are a considerate person, you pop over to the linking site and say thank you very much – thereby making the linker feel appreciated and opening the possibility of an ongoing relationship. Who knows, beautiful things might happen, at the very least they’re more likely to link to you again.
Linkstant requires two pieces of code, one in the <head> and one above the closing body tag, so you do need access to your websites source. Get Linkstant here
5 is for Twitter lovers. One of the issues with Twitter is finding that elusive target audience and not getting distracted. Follower Wonk is a fab browser based tool that allows you to not only search with local modifier, but do all sorts of fun stuff like analyse other peoples followers too.
Follower Wonk works on a credit basis. Sign up with them free and you get 150 credits that refresh every couple of hours – more than enough for an individual user. There is a premium upgrade for heavy weight users.
So there are 5 of my fav free tools to help your business increase online visibility, connections and reach. Do you have any favourites to add? Leave your suggestions in the comments below.
5 Fab Free Tools To Help You Increase Your Online Visibility and Connections by Jan Kearney
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Hi Jan
Thank you for telling me about those 5 great tools. As someone who is new to blogging but has been a sales and marketing professional all my working life, I totally understand the need to promote myself and my blog, but haven’t the faintest idea of how to do it, although thanks to people like you, I’m learning fast 🙂
I’m now off to read the rest of your blog and see what else I can learn 🙂
Welcome Eddie, thank you for popping in and taking the time to comment. Good luck with your blog too, I’ll pop over and have a browse 🙂
Hi Jan
Please stop finding more toys for me to play with!
But seriously you are always finding new things for me to try, and helpful advice that I should know about.
I have tried IFTTT and it is really great – the only way I have ever found to send a Facebook status update to LinkedIn – (if you want to do that!)
So thank you for doing so much great research for me!
Sue
Hi Sue – oooh I have so many toys! Many I’ll look at and never use again, but several that are very useful. ifttt was first recommended by me in March on my Get Found workshop – need to arrange that one again sometime, with more cool tools 🙂