Free and Affordable Tools for Marketing Your Blog Through Social Media

Social media includes all online content and conversations that are two-way in nature. Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, online forums,Pinterest, and more are all ways you can expand your reach across the social web audience and grow your blog.

Be sure to take some time to learn more about social media marketing and content marketing. If you're serious about growing your blog's audience, social media and content marketing can help you do it.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="696"] Use social media management and monitoring tools to streamline tasks, monitor your online reputation, and more.[/caption]

However, managing your various social media activities is time-consuming, and monitoring your online reputation across the social web every day is challenging. As you get more involved in social media, you'll need to find ways to streamline tasks so you can work smarter, not harder. Following are a number of free and affordable tools that you can use to manage your social media activities and monitor your online reputation more efficiently.

• Promote Your Blog and Increase Traffic with Twitter Chat

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is an application that enables you to better manage your Twitter account by displaying columns of tweets, mentions, direct messages, and so on. It's free to use and you can manage multiple Twitter accounts through a single TweetDeck account. You can access TweetDeck from your desktop computer, from the online tool, or via a mobile app. TweetDeck is owned by Twitter. More »

• Tips to Get More Twitter Retweets

HootSuite

HootSuite offers a free account that's adequate for most bloggers. You can manage multiple Twitter accounts, Facebook Profiles, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn Profiles, and more all from your online HootSuite dashboard or mobile app. Like TweetDeck, you can create columns to keep better track of your various account activities. You can also upgrade to a paid account to access additional features such as Google Analytics integration, team members, and more. More »

• Be A Twitter Pro Practise These Twitter Hacks

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is another online social media management and monitoring tool that can be used online or via a mobile app. The platform allows you to manage multiple Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook accounts. It's easy to find people to follow, manage your followers, and your activity, your content, and your reach. Social Sprout is not free, but you can choose between a few different price points with more advanced features offered for a higher price. More »

• Use free blogging tools that can make your life as a blogger easier and better

Google Alerts

Visit the Google Alerts site and complete the form to receive emails when Google finds content related to your defined keyword phrase (such as your name). It just takes a minute to set up a Google Alert, so it's a great way to keep tabs on content Google finds that's important to you. More »

• Free SEO tools to improve your marketing

Social Mention

Visit the Social Mention website and enter a keyword (such as your name) into the search text box. Select the types of sites you want to search (for example, blogs, images, social networks, social bookmarks, and so on). You'll instantly get a list of matching results. You can also set up email alerts for your chosen keywords. More »

• Learn the many ways bloggers can use Twitter

Twilert

Twilert is a Twitter application that enables you to create email alerts for the keywords of your choice. When Twilert finds your keywords used on Twitter, your next email alert will include information about that tweet. More »