11 (mostly) free social media tools to try in 2011

It’s hard to keep up with all the tools available to help maximize Twitter and other social media platforms. But, over the last few months I’ve been testing some of the new ones to get a feel for the ones that have the potential to be the most useful.

Here are the ones I’ll probably use more next year. Most of them are free to use or have adopted the “freemium” model.

1. Twoolr – complete Twitter statistics

If you are familiar with TweetStats.com you’ll think that this is similar, but Twoolr provides some additional metrics and insights that TweetStats doesn’t.

Twoolr will tell you how your account is being used, when you are most active, what you are tweeting about and which links you are sharing most frequently.

Best bit: The network tab tells you who you are communicating with the most and in what context i.e. @ replies, RT’s and #FF’s.

MentionMap provides a live analysis of what a particular person is talking about on Twitter and who they are talking to. When you take a look at a blogger or journalist’s MentionMap you can get a clear idea of what they have been tweeting about of late.