Social Media Leaps

Becoming More Efficient

Time management is an important part of managing your social media efforts. There are convergence tools out there that can help you to become more efficient, allowing you make the most of your time spent on these sites. A quick search on the Web for social media convergence tools will lead you to descriptions of hundreds of good resources for your consideration.

However, the key to being efficient in the social media realm is to manage the information flow that social media creates. The more you participate in social media, the more relationships and connections you’ll have. That means that you are going to have more online conversations than you are having now. Have you ever been to a cocktail party where you know a lot of people? It’s often hard to get out of the room. With each step you bump into yet someone else you know with yet something else to discuss. Social media can feel like that sometimes. Therefore, you need to do as much as you can to make your time invested effective. While there are dozens of specific things you can do, we’d suggest three important ones to do right away that will make your social media experience more effective and start you out on the right foot.

1. Create an email strategy.

Think about the number of places you give your email address online and in real life. Each of those interactions creates more traffic to your inbox and more information to sort through. Many successful social media “players” employ multiple emails to ensure they can be effective. One for really “important” communications, one for general business and one for registering, signing up, etc. that is used to attract most of the junk mail and less relevant traffic. There’s a good summary of this approach about managing your email in the additional readings below called “Inbox taming for busy people.”

2. Take advantage of aggregation points.

There are several tools available that can become “one stop shops” for posting content; checking on social media updates and managing the way you can keep up across platforms. For simplicity, we recommend iGoogle. It’s free, easy to use and one of the best tools out there. You will find and read about others as you do more but make things simple and start there. In one location you will have the ability to see your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn activity through social media gadgets that you can add to your page. Other aggregation applications that may be helpful to you include:

Ping.fm: Update your status across LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and a large variety of other social networking sites at one time with one tool.
TubeMogul: Upload video to the web, publish it and track statistics about it across a variety of video services.
Tweetdeck : Complete social media platforms management system.
Hootsuite: Similar to Tweetdeck; complete social media platform management system, scheduled sends and analytics reports.

There are several different convergence to choose from, but the ones above are just a few to get you started on understanding how aggregation tools can help.

3. Use a RSS Reader.

A lot like your email account has an address for people to send you messages, an RSS reader is a service in which the Web can send new content that is being posted to Web sites, blogs and other information sources that you have identified as interesting. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is the technology that enables your RSS Reader to work.

The key benefit of an RSS Reader is that it helps to organize and manage the plethora of new content that is being created on all the websites you care to follow. From news outlets to industry blogs and any other feed on the web, you’ll have an “inbox” that helps you keep track of what’s new and what’s worth knowing about. Check out the link in the additional reading section below (How to Track 500 Business Blogs in 10 minutes a day) for a step by step summary of getting GoogleReader set up as your RSS Reader. Again, there are many out there that you can use, but for starters, we suggest quick, easy, free and powerful GoogleReader.

4. Standardize your online identity.

As you register on multiple social media Web sites, the need to standardize your online identity becomes increasingly more important. Be careful of character limits, numbers, spaces and abbreviations when you select your online identity (or name you will use for your group or unique URL). These things can make it difficult for users to find you in a search. Below are a few quick tips to consider as you build your online community:

Take inventory of your current social media accounts. KnowEm is an online tool to check a username and show where it is or is not currently available on more than 120 social media sites.
It is a good idea to register an account in your preferred username on sites you think you may want to use down the road. This will protect you online identity, or your name, so that no one else takes it.
Create a file containing all your social media usernames and passwords and update it whenever you add or change one. Store it securely on your computer and also keep a printed hard copy in your records. While you may not need it right now, staff changes and memory lapses do happen over time.

No single technique will be a perfect solution to managing social media for every chamber or business, so apply these ideas in a way that works best for your needs. To get the most out of your social media activities, the most important thing to remember is to develop a system that works for you and stick to it.