Cool Tools for Internet Marketers Resource Center 

Let's face it: As much as you might love Twitter, it isn't the most stable platform. And with more computer services going online to "the cloud" instead of being housed on your desktop, you need an "in cloud" back-up system.

Backupify makes it about as easy as possible to back up both Social Media accounts like Facebook and Twitter and "software as a service" that might not be covered by standard computer backups. It offers a complimentary SocMed-only service and other service plans starting at $9.95 monthly (with a 30-day trial) for up to 10 Google Apps accounts, at time of writing.

To get started, create a Backupify account and click on the Social Media or Google services you want to back up – 16 at time of writing including Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs and Gmail, plus Google Apps backup – and authorize Backupify to access your data once a day. Retrieve and export your saved data from the easy-to-use dashboard as well.

When you're looking for worthwhile sources of business research, turn to this curated list by knowledge firm Information Today. Writers scour the Web or review reader nominations for both free and paid business research services and publish detailed reviews in an easily scannable monthly email newsletter. Reviews categorize the source, note if it's free/fee, assess the content and spell out how you can apply the findings to your own knowledge quest.

Past sources include Duct Tape Marketing's "Twitter for Business" guide, "Funding Universe" (lists of business financing sources such as venture capital firms and angel investors), and a New Zealand guide to international market research.

Although Facebook has its own search service, the Booshaka real-time engine serves up a richer and more current list of results which you can slice and dice multiple ways to find the most meaning.

Click on one of 12 categories that Booshaka uses to parse public wall posts (those viewable by anyone). Next, use the pull-down menu on the right-hand side to rank results, as defined by Booshaka's proprietary PostRank algorithms: "Most Recent," "Most Popular" (number of likes and comments), "Most Buzz" (a "secret" calculation) and "Trending Now," which combines recency, popularity and buzz.

The "Brands" category is especially useful for marketers because it shows which Facebook Pages posts are generating the most action. Refresh the results page and watch the zeitgeist change.

This SEO tool is like a matchmaking service for inbound link-builders. You know you need lots of good-quality inbound links to help build your presence in Google search, but you don't always get responses from sites you contact personally to ask for links.

Tell Linker your site name and the criteria for the sites you want to be matched up with. Be as general or as picky as you want when you specify country or state location, mozRank or Alexa ranking, specific business categories or keywords. Generalities may produce more matches but fewer good fits while being too specific can limit the field for you.

Once you create your ideal date – er, prospective link-trader – Linker will add your site to its database and notify you when it finds matches. Both you and your prospective site must agree to the match before it can happen; but once it does, you're all set.

You know you need to test copy before sending an email offer or posting to your Web site, but are your images on target, too? Get a fast reality check with Five-Second Test, which acts like an online focus group.

Upload your image and choose whether you want to run a classic test (users view the image for five seconds, then list five things they recall about it) or a click test (users click on memorable parts of the image, then describe what they clicked). You'll collect responses as long as you keep your test open.

We experimented with the service by uploading a photo of two football players. We found that, among other things, people didn't agree on the uniform colors. This would be useful information for a retailer uploading catalog photos, for example.

How much of the real estate on your web pages are your visitors really seeing? This tool, from Google Labs, shows you the most common browser sizes, the percentage of people who view web pages at that size and simulates how much of your page is visible at those sizes.

For example, 95 percent of viewers use browsers that are 800 pixels across and 400 pixels deep, a fairly standard measure. If key copy or links on your page fall outside those parameters, 5 percent of your viewers won't see them. That's not so bad. However, if you place key copy below 600 pixels, or past 1100 pixels to the right, at least 50 percent of your viewers probably won't see it.

This is a quick-and-dirty browser check; it won't generate reports or statistics. Use it instead for those times when you need a quick check during a page redesign or when you're creating test pages.

This gratis Web application seeks to reduce much of the manual labor that goes into Social Media management by automating tasks and routing them to channels that work better for you.

After setting up your account, you can create tasks by choosing a channel and then specifying what to do with it. If you offer Foursquare check-in deals as part of your marketing strategy, you can send your check-in notifications to a daily email message instead of having to go to the Foursquare app on your smartphone or the website.

IFTTT covers the major Social Media channels, including Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+ and integrates with online or cloud services such as WordPress, Buffer, Dropbox and Evernote.

Here are some other suggested uses for IFTTT:

• Update your Twitter photo when you change your Facebook photo.
• Synch your Google+ posts to Twitter or Facebook.
• Post blog updates on Facebook.
• Receive automatic weather updates via email or RSS feed.

This application, available at the website or as a WordPress plug-in, can help you sharpen up your blog posts, newsletter articles or Web content and achieve your Content Marketing goals.

Once you identify your key terms, your content strategy and reader literacy level, you can load in a pre-written document or write one in InboundWriter's document creator.

InboundWriter analyzes your content and scores it according to your use of key terms and how well it achieves the goals you have set for it.

Content strategies include:

• Optimizing for search
• Minimizing search competition
• Blend of strategies
• Optimizing for Social Media (coming soon).

Reader literacy levels range from basic to post-grad.

The application is free for up to eight documents a month. After that, you're charged $19.95 a month (at time of writing).

Kred claims to go Klout and other Social Media influence measurement services one better by being more transparent about how it calculates your score and by incorporating more elements, including offline activity, into your total score.

Kred divides your score into two parts:

1. "Influence" (your ability to inspire others to act with retweets, replies and new follows)
2. "Outreach" (your generosity: how you reward actions and how you interact with others).

If you want to increase your score, Kred's analytical dashboard gives you suggestions.

While other services have been criticized for keeping their scoring algorithms under wraps, Kred gives you a scorecard showing how various interactions with your communities cause your scores to go up or down.

Kred was developed by PeopleBrowsr, a Social Media search engine and is in limited beta at time of writing. You'll have to request an invitation to join, but while you wait for it, you can see how Kred works through detailed screenshots and a SlideShare presentation on the site.

Customizing your Facebook fan pages is a snap with this tab-creator tool. Just connect it to your Facebook account, click a few links to create the background, upload pictures or videos and write some copy.

As soon as you click the "Publish" button, you have a distinctive, professional-looking tab that stands out from Facebook's ordinary default tabs.

Lujure is a paid service (fees are $30 monthly for a "Consultant" plan and $300/month for a "Business" plan, which allows unlimited tab creation, access to all applications and to all templates), but you can test the service by creating one tab at no charge.

Note: The Lujure logo appears, inconspicuously, on free and Consultant account tabs.