5 Online Freemium Tools for Start-Ups and Agencies

Freemium tools are the basics needed to get things going for free – here are five to help start-ups on their way.

Do you want tools that will grow as your business does? If so, freemium is the way to go. Freemium tools allow start-ups to use the basics needed to get things going for free, while also offering paid plans. This way, as businesses evolve and needs change, the tools can grow and adapt too. In this post, we're going to look at five of the top freemium online marketing tools businesses can use at every stage.

Choosing the Right Tools

Before we get started, here are a few questions to ask when choosing freemium marketing tools for your start-up:

• Will the tool save you time in your day-to-day marketing efforts?
• Does the tool help you do tasks that have a direct result on your bottom line?
• Does the free version of the tool offer all of the features you need to get started?
• Will the free version's limitation lead you to paying for the premium version? If so, would you be better off going with a non-freemium tool?

These are good questions for any business to ask before choosing a tool. They are especially important for start-ups so you don't end up investing time into things you may not necessarily need.

Now, let's look at some of the top freemium tools that marketers use in businesses of all sizes. I have selected these tools based on popularity, freemium or free usage options, and their unique applications throughout your marketing campaign.

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a powerful social media management tool that allows you to manage various aspects of your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, and WordPress accounts. Through the app directory, Hootsuite offers even more solutions to connect with additional social networks and platforms beyond the defaults. This allows you to manage your accounts in easy-to-browse columns all in one place.

Hootsuite's freemium model allows you to start with three social media accounts and basic features for free, which is more than enough to get your start-up's social media presence moving on the top social networks. Paying for The Pro Level Plan increases your account to 50 social profiles and includes more advanced features, such as team members, advanced scheduling, unlimited RSS feeds, and additional security. Companies that need more can request a demonstration of the full-feature Enterprise Level Plan. 

2. SEMrush

SEMrush is a powerful search marketing tool that allows you to research your competition's paid search tactics, organic keyword visibility, and much more. You can use it for a variety of tasks, including backlink research, keyword research, search engine traffic volume, and previewing paid search ads.

While SEMrush does not have a freemium pricing model, I think it is an important tool because it still allows guests to perform a limited number of searches that increases once registered for a free account. A paid account gives businesses access to full reports and additional features. Larger businesses can consider a more substantial paid plan that includes access to unlimited projects, broader data, branded reports, and a larger number of users.

3. Fruition's Google Penalty Check

Whether you know you've been involved in shady search engine optimization practices in the past or not, it never hurts to keep an eye on your website's health, as far as Google is concerned. Fruition's Google Penalty Check lets you to see how various Google search and algorithm updates have affected your website.

Fruition's freemium model lets start-ups review the effects of Google search and algorithm updates over three months old and add up to two domains for free. Paid accounts have access to more recent data, or an option to analyze more websites.

4. Zapier

Want to connect the social networks, apps, and tools you use for marketing and general business tasks all together? Zapier offers a service that allows you to do just that. It has the ability to integrate over 400 platforms to create custom, automated workflows. These tasks, referred to as zaps, allow you to do things like save Twitter search mentions to an SQL server database - a relational database management system. Additionally, you can post a user's tweet to Yammer and other automations, as shown in the image below. 

Zapier's freemium model allows you to create five tasks, also known as "zaps," for free. From there, you may buy a plan based on the amount of additional zaps you may need. If your business needs more automated tasks, you can also request more information about large corporate level plans.

5. Cyfe

Cyfe is used to track analytics and data from a variety of sources. This all-in-one business dashboard solution enables you to bring your website analytics, social media analytics, SEO metrics, and more into one shared and easy-to-read dashboard. In the example below, you can see widgets pulling in data on year-to-date revenue from Salesforce, website visitor locations and funnel paths from Google Analytics, tweets from Twitter, keyword rankings from Google, and email marketing analytics from MailChimp.

Cyfe's freemium model allows limited usage of their platform, and you are allowed up to five widgets. To earn additional widgets, you can refer friends to Cyfe - one new widget per referral. Purchasing a premium package provides unlimited usage and complete functionality of all features, like exports and regular email reports. Enterprise level users can contact Cyfe for additional features like white labeling.

The key to finding great tools that will go the distance for your business is to ensure they cater to everyone, from small businesses to large enterprises and agencies. This means you never have to worry about outgrowing your favorite tool and start from scratch as your business scales in size. Begin by identifying areas in your marketing strategy where you think a tool might be beneficial for saving you time. From there, you can research the options to find the program that best compliments your professional needs.

*Homepage image via Shutterstock.

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Ways to Increase Your Social Media Presence through Blogging

Remember the days when social media was a novelty? Today it is an important part of your online marketing campaign. We are living in a media conscious era where a brand’s survival is dependent on its social media presence. That is one reason why we see companies hiring social media consultants, and some have even hired people for digital media marketing specifically.

There are tons of posts online that guide you improve your social media presence by actively posting pages and responding to your audience, but this is not one of those posts.

Blogging plays a vital role in improving your brand’s social media presence. If you haven’t looked in to blogging yet, go through some good reasons why you should be blogging and how to start a blog at InspireBlogger.com.

In this post, I am going to discuss how blogging can breathe life into your social media campaign and do wonders for your social media presence.

In this post, I am going to discuss how blogging can breathe life into your social media campaign and do wonders for your social media presence.

Creation of Valuable Content
Creating content of value in your blog is a must among blogging practices and it has a huge impact on your presence on various social media platforms, even if you are a design oriented business. If you create content that is of use and delivers value to the reader, he/she is more likely to share it with their circles. This will attract new audience to your blog.

Moz.com is a one brand who does that all the time. They create valuable content on their own website and then share it on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc. When a person finds something interesting, he ‘likes’ it, and shares it with his circles. By adopting effective blogging techniques, not only will you attract more audience, but you will also increase your popularity on social media platforms.

Easy Social Media Integration System
Blogging and RSS formats facilitate easy social media sharing for readers, and as a result better business branding and audience.

Like Moz.com, almost all serious custom blogs use social media buttons on their blog posts (usually at the end of the post), so that visitors and readers can easily share their content with their circles by easily clicking there and then only instead of logging in to their social account to share.

Blogging can actually help you strengthen your social media presence if you have share-worthy content and have an option to easily share the content to multiple social media platforms. 8out of 10people will not share the content (even if it is share worthy) if they don’t see clear and easily to use social media sharing buttons on the post.

In order to improve your social media presence, writing on a fresh, interesting topic is not enough, but you have to give your readers visible, easy access in order for them to share your post.

The Blog Comment Game
This may sound funny to you but if I recall the early days when I started blogging this technique actually helped me increase my social media presence and also introduced me to various influencers in the industry.

You can comment on blogs and appropriately reply to someone who comments on your blog. It is important because if your comment delivers some sort of value, people will tend to see your social media profile and follow you there or try to get in touch with you.

You write a blog and when people share their views about it, welcome them, thank them, but above all listen to the criticism and consider it. They comment on your blog (or vice versa) people usually tend to follow you on your social media accounts, hence your social media presences grows ultimately though blogging.

The Image Magic
Talk about SEO, link Building or even social Media, images play its part and help the whole system get a little more powerful. Blog images are usually likeable and open sharing opportunities to new social media networks like Instagram and Pinterest.

I am a big fan of an interior design blog called Freshome.com and one thing I see they mainly focus on their blog is attractive, eye candy images that people share on other platforms (other blogs and social media platforms).As a result their overall brand image and traffic improves gradually on image based social media networks.

Blogging Increases Social Value
If you are not into blogging then you are seriously missing out. The power of blogging is immense and it has a significant effect on website traffic, conversions and sales. Back in 2012, I wrote an article about the real benefits of guest blogging and right after I published it, I witnessed tons of quality traffic on the website and on my social accounts too.

Blogging not only offer links, traffic and possibly conversions on the website, but it also helps you strengthen your social media entities and brand page. It means more people are linking to your social profiles and sharing your content.

Social media is powerful, if you are in need of a strong presence blogging can accomplish that. Follow the tactics I’ve discussed in this post to improve your social media presence through blogging.

Happy blogging. :-)

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