iCME Social Media Toolkit

There's a lot of social media sites to keep up with out there. Don't get swamped!

First and foremost, I LOVE being an iCME. I enjoy getting online and making connections with my fellow Incept employees and keeping pace with what’s going on online, both on our web pages and on those of our clients. In short: I love social media!

To be fair, it can be daunting to keep up with all of the different social media web sites I use. Things change so quickly online – whether it’s new blog posts being published, comments being left or keeping all of my source info together (and finding them again). Sometimes things just update too fast and before you know it, the conversation you were following is old news.

Luckily for me, I’ve found a some great tools to help me keep things together and up-to-date:

• Diigo. I must say Diigo is a life saver! I use it for just about everything. Diigo lets you bookmark websites, add sticky notes and organize your findings all in one spot. It’s great for saving pages I want to go back to – and not just here at work, but also at home for term papers. Diigo even has its own toolbar to make it even easier to use! I’d be 10 times more disorganized than I already am without it.
• HootSuite. I spend A LOT of time online and a good chunk of that is dedicated to Facebook and Twitter. Because they both update and change so frequently, it can be easy to get swept away. HootSuite lets me read and post to both of these accounts, as well as a lot of others, at the same time. HootSuite also lets me keep track of comments I get here on Incept’s inceptsaves blog. It’s a great consolidator of both time and space.
• Google Reader. Let’s face it, as much as I love Diigo, and as great as Hootsuite is, I have to be online to get the most out of them. Eventually, I have to go to class and sneak in some sleep time. So how do I make sure not to miss anything? Google Reader. Google Reader scans the internet for you whether you’re online or not and saves articles. All you have to do is set some preferred tags – from news to blogs to just about anything – and it’ll pull those pages in and save them for you. If you’re interested, it’ll find it for you.

One last trick of the trade I’ve picked up may sound obvious, but it was something I initially overlooked. I have Facebook and Twitter accounts not only for work, but also my personal pages as well. I’ve discovered that keeping separate emails for work (for Incept’s social media accounts) and home (for mine) has helped immensely. I know, it seems like a silly thing to overlook, but I did and was swamped in no time flat. So my advice to you is whether you manage social media pages for work, home or both, keep the email addresses tied to them separate. Trust me, it’ll save you a lot of confusion.

All in all, there’s a bunch of great tools out there to make your social media life a little easier. Surprisingly enough, a lot of them are free. Get out there and see what works best for you! If you find something helpful, let me know. I can always use a new tip or tool!

What do you use to make managing your social media accounts more efficient?