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Whether you are a small business or just an avid social media fan there are a wealth of tools out there which can help you manage your time online. Maybe you like spending a lot of time online interacting with your friends, family and followers, or maybe you’re in business and need to free up some time to actually get on with your work.
Here are some great tools (in no particular order) I have come across in the last 9 months which I wouldn’t be without, I have written about most of these on my own blog:
Tweetdeck
Since Tweetdeck was updated a few weeks ago I have been using it a lot. You can use Tweetdeck with Twitter and Facebook. I can consolidate all my own accounts and my client’s accounts on here and can easily scroll through them quickly to see any mentions or interactions. I used to schedule tweets through Tweetdeck but it was a cumbersome operation and took me such a long time just to do a week’s worth of posts, I now use SocialOomph for scheduling...
SocialOomph
Automation of updates is a hot topic among the social media circles, some like it, others hate it... it’s a bit like marmite!
If I was being honest I didn’t like automation when I first started out, it seemed as though the person didn’t really care about being on social media. My opinion quickly changed when I realised how much time social media can take up, I just wasn’t getting any real work done and I was starting to get stressed with it all.
SocialOomph lets you schedule tweets, and with the advanced plan, Facebook and blog posts as well. I have a paid account and it has definitely paid for itself in the number of client’s I have gained through Twitter alone. I love the queue reservoirs, I can add updates when I think of them and add them to the queue. You set a time frame, so say every 2 hours and the queue is tweets out and it goes to the back of the queue and so it carries on. To really benefit from this you need to have a lot of updates in your reservoir because people don’t want to be seeing the same updates over and over. I tend to check mine once a week, delete old irrelevant ones and add some new ones.
I also have my clients profiles on here using queue reservoirs and it’s a great way of getting your updates out there but not being tied to your computer 24/7 - plus it frees up your time to interact more with your followers/fans.
Buffer
Buffer works by scheduling Tweets, Facebook or LinkedIn updates at optimum times of the day. When you install it, either as an add-on for your browser, on your iPhone or a widget on your blog/website, you can click the Buffer icon and the tweet/link/update will automatically be scheduled to post at the next time slot.
I recently upgraded my account with Buffer so I am now able to have 6 accounts and 50 updates per account.
I use Buffer with Flipboard and SocialBro, they link very nicely!
SocialBro
SocialBro is all about stats, it tells me everything I could ever want to know about my followers and who I follow on Twitter.
Within the application you can customise what you want to see such as 'Best Time to Tweet' or 'Analyse Your Competitors' and so much more! You can also link it to Buffer and it will automatically customise the best times to tweet, it suggests you do it once a week so your tweets go out at optimum times.
This app is for the iPad and iPhone. When you are overwhelmed with social media this is a great app which consolidates everything into a magazine style format. You can flip through page after page of updates, it's nothing like your Twitter feed, and it includes the images so it makes it so much easier to pick out items of interest. You can also add customise searches, and you can link a lot of your social media accounts. I have mine linked to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Reader, but there are other options too.
I am always interested in what others use for managing their social media, so why not follow me on Twitter and let me know, or comment on this blog post.
