Facebook is the hottest social media network online with over one billion users. The runner-up is Twitter with over 500 million registered users. Pinterest is quickly becoming just as popular with over 25 million and growing by leaps and bounds.

Why is this so important to know?
Your target audience is most likely using these social media networks. They are talking about products and services they’ve tried and loved. People are recommending businesses left and right. And when these social media users want to use a new service or product, they are turning to social media to find out what others are saying about it.

In 2013, the number one marketing resolution for many businesses is to maximize the benefits of the social media world. Is it on your list?

If you’re not on social media yet, it’s time to get started. If it all seems overwhelming, you may not be using the right social media marketing tools. Luckily, you’re about to learn about the best ones to start infiltrating the social media empire with your services and products.

HootSuite – Social Media Management and Statistics
Over three million people use HootSuite to manage their social media marketing. Hootsuite’s easy-to-use dashboard allows users to look at all of the networks at once, side by side. The feature of scheduling posts gives users the opportunity to work on their marketing campaign only a few times a week rather several times a day. The statistics feature isn’t the most powerful out on the market today, but it does provide insights into your marketing efforts enough to know when the best time to schedule posts is and what type of posts are the most popular among your target audience.

SlideShare – Visual Slideshows for User Engagement
SlideShare gives users the ability to create informative, attractive images. It’s a powerful tool because people want to learn about the services and products they purchase, but most of these people don’t want to spend hours reading articles. Instead, they’d much rather have the information given to them in short, quick bursts – just like SlideShare does with its tool.

YouTube Audience Retention Report – Know What People Want to Watch
Sixty percent of all web traffic comes from online videos, and according to ComScore, 181 million U.S. Internet users watched videos online – with YouTube being the most popular among all video-watching sites. Videos online give watchers the information they seek in a fun, easy, engaging way, but not all of them are created in a way that interest Internet users. This how YouTube’s Audience Retention Report is valuable to your marketing efforts.  Knowing how much time people watch your videos and what they do after watching them can help you understand what engages your target audience the most.

Sprinkl – Research and Content Promotion Management Tool
To know what interests a target audience, you must conduct research. Sprinkl provides consulting services to research social media users. Gauging which social media networks have the largest audience your business targets will enable you to maximize your marketing efforts in the right direction. Along with researching your target audience, it also researches what types of posts are most popular among your target audience and tailor them accordingly.

Cloze – Aggregation and Curation System
Cloze is for those overwhelmed by social media networks. It will organize your networks by date, identify people in your network that are most valuable to you, and allow you to like, retweet, or respond to them. Simply go down the list of influential people and check them off as you interact with them. It’s that simple.

Crowd Factory – Customer Acquisition Tool
Marketers target their audience for lead generation and then turn those leads into customers. Crowd Factory helps with this process. It enables users to create a social campaign. Within this social campaign, you can use simple social gestures on multiple social networks to bring in customers. This tool also assesses your marketing efforts by tracking your return-on-investment.

SocialTalk – Content Creation and Marketing Tool
If you wish there was a way to create content, publish it, and market it all in one place, SocialTalk is the tool for you. Use the tool to create articles, photos, and videos. If you have a team behind you creating the content, you can manage the content coming in with this tool. Once the content is approved by you, you can then publish and share it. You can also track how well your content does on social media networks with its user-friendly aggregated analytics dashboard.

Maximize the Benefits of Social Media Marketing in 2013
With social media being so popular in 2012 and only growing in 2013, it’s time to get it all under control with the tools mentioned here. Make 2013 the best business year ever by maximizing the benefits of marketing on social networks with the right social media tools.