Today marks the fifth day of our 10 in 10 series and today is all about free stuff.. If you missed the rest of the first week you can find the links here.

Everyone talks about how the new year allows each of us to start with a clean slate.  We can make a resolution to lose weight, get in shape, or become a better person.  The same can be said for our social media activities as well.  The new year brings the opportunity for us to change some things about our online identity in much the same way as we do offline.  In that spirit we have compiled a list of the top 5 free social media tools:

  1. Seesmic Desktop - This is my go to desktop application for Twitter useage.  A really simple interface (and coming soon: The ability to link up a TON of different social networking sites.)
  2. Wordpress - The most robust and most respected blogging platform in the world.  Completely kills Blogger by giving you the power to completely customize for SEO.  What are you waiting for!?!?!
  3. TwitterGrader - We all want to know how we stack up in the Twitterverse.  Well look no farther, this site provides a lot of valuable information about where you rank in your area.
  4. Twibes – Want to follow people with similar interests or check your rank in various lists and groups around the Twitterverse?  Then Twibes is for you.  Its an easy way to find new followers and groups that are related to your business and personal activities.
  5. stock.xchng – We use this site to get really good quality free stock photos for our blog.  They have THOUSANDS of images all for free and the site is very easy to use.  The quality isn’t as great as the pay photo sites, but its worth a few extra clicks and searches to get free photos.

Those are our favorite free social media sites.  What did we miss?  Any sites you love to use that we need to know about?