Everyone’s got a set of go-tos during their daily routines:
- You have your morning cup of coffee.
- My wife has her flat iron.
- My son has chicken nuggets for dinner.
- Teens have texting.
- You get the idea.
These are things that we can’t do without on a daily basis. We need them to live/eat/think/read/focus/etc. Same goes for me. Here are the tools that I use on a daily basis to maximize my social meda strategy efforts:
5. Timely.is
This little guy’s a sleeper. Timely is a web app that allows you to cue up your tweets based on the highest amount of exposure Timely thinks you’ll get. I’m a huge advocate of scheduling out your social media presence, so Timely takes the guesswork out of scheduling for you.
Most often, I’ll pass along links I find helpful through Timely. Hit the sharing bookmark, cue it up, and forget about it. Timely also allows you to slam your bit.ly credentials in for free *cough* Buffer *cough*.
4. Tumblr
Tumblr is the evolution of blogging. I’m convinced of it. But just not yet. It will take some time for this platform to mature, but until then, I’m going to invest in it and experiment.
My Tumblr is Stuff Justin Likes. I curate all sorts of content I find on the web and tumbl-it-up. Content curation, cutting through the noise for the sake of your reader, is the next skill needed in web communication. If you haven’t already, sign up for Tumblr and start experimenting!
3. Twitterfeed
Another “set-it-and-forget-it” web app that I use daily. One of the main traffic drivers for my blogs are social networks. Twitterfeed makes it easy to insert your blog’s RSS feed into the interface, tweak a few settings and let the app do the hard work for you. Twitter, Facebook, Statusnet and Ping.fm are all covered by Twitterfeed, so you can send your posts to the platform of your choice. Dead simple and a must-have.
2. Klout
I’ve just started paying attention to my Klout score and I’m glad I did. It’s not everything, but it’s a good way to see how effective you are in your online activities. Since I started focusing on increasing my engagement, my Klout score has risen three points! “What gets measured gets managed”, right?
Klout, I believe, will increasingly become a factor in gaining influence online. Hootsuite already allows you to filter tweets according to Klout score-the higher the score, the more likely it is you’ll be interacted with. Brands are using Klout to parse through the customer service requests, positive and negative tweets they receive and retweet probability.
Klout isn’t something to obsess over, but it is important to be familiar with!
1. Hootsuite
Last but not least, my beloved Hootsuite. I make sure to mention the Hoot in all of my presentations for a reason: It works. It lets me schedule tweets, listen effectively, manage all of my social media accounts from one platform, filter tweets by keyword and Klout score and so much more. Simply put, it makes my life easier. If you manage more than five social media accounts total, I recommend the pro version. Otherwise, Hootsuite is a free web app.
What about you? What do you use to manage your social media efforts? What works for you?
