What’s new in social media marketing? We asked several QuickBooks ProAdvisors® for their advice on "what’s new or different," and here are their responses:

Rachel Barnett – Gentle Frog:

MeetEdgar is one of the tools I use to run the social media aspect of my business. It allows me to manage my firm’s various social media accounts in a very hands-off “set it and forget it” manner. I can easily schedule a variety of posts, such as promotional content, blogs I’ve written and articles I’ve enjoyed reading, and have those posts shared across the spectrum of social media platforms utilized by my business.

The app pulls suggested content from feeds and sources relevant to the interests of my audience, creating a stream of shareable content I can control and tweak. I can approve suggested posts to add them to my library for future scheduling and sharing. MeetEdgar’s content curation frees up time from having to invest in finding engaging content, and helps streamline the process by building a library from which I can share. It also keeps my social media fresh for a low monthly fee, all without requiring a massive time commitment or much oversight and management, giving me time to work on other aspects of my business.

Carla Caldwell – Caldwell Consulting & Training:

I love Hootsuite because of its social media monitoring and scheduling. I can easily monitor all my social media accounts, while also having other (internal) users post content for me easily across all the outlets, and decide when/where to post. Additionally, I can easily track particular feeds that I want to watch and see all interactions (likes, reposts/retweets, direct messages and comments), all in one place.

Tanya Hilts, CFB – Cloud Business Services:

There is a new networking program called Alignable that we are having great success with in our firm. It is geared towards connecting within a local community or region, but you can connect across regions as well. It works partially like a social media app, in that you can share events and promotions out to your network like you would on any of your newsfeeds.

It works by first developing a profile based on your business. You can also start conversation threads to encourage discussion on any topic, such as asking those in your network who they are using for print materials. You can welcome new businesses, which starts the engagement. Then, you can connect by letting them know if you have done business before, or just want to connect since you are both in the same area. You can email directly in the app, or reply right from your email, which is useful when you can’t log in.

We find that individuals on this media are very interested in connecting and meeting, and we just signed our first client. I would highly recommend it for anyone looking to reach small businesses, and it’s perfect for B2B connections.

Stacy Kildal – StacyKAcademy.com:

I use Digg. It can be a great place to find and curate content to share on other channels, or trigger an idea for your own blog. You can submit a link to your content and people can vote on it. If you get enough votes, you show up on the front page.”