#blogboost blog inspiration reflections social media social media tools

I came across a prompt from The Daily Post free E-Book : 365 Writing Prompts whilst on the hunt for some blogging inspiration.  I'm going to combine this prompt with another one (which says to set yourself a time goal of 10 minutes and answer the question).  So here's the prompt and my response : 

Do you feel like you "get" social media, or do you just use it because that's where all your friends and family are ? 

I DO get social media.  Sure I have friends and family on it - using various types of social media but I'm there for my business and myself.  I truly believe that one can build themselves as a brand if social media is applied in the right way.  

Over the past month - I decided to upgrade my educational skills.  I have a B.Comm in Management & E-Commerce but it's been a while since I have studied anything.  It came as no surprise to me when I found myself signing up for a Diploma in Social Media Marketing & Online Reputation Management.  It's an accredited course from a reputed educational academy.  I enjoyed it so much that I signed up for the Advance Digital Marketing Diploma as well. 

Before I even began to develop the social media platforms for my business - I had already been (in a way) building my personal brand up.  It all started with a few blogs and then there was Twitter - and all of a sudden I found myself being asked to blog for other amazing blogs who actually wanted my perspective on topics.  I managed this without really putting too much thought into it - I was going with the flow and learning the ropes myself.  

Now when it comes down to my business - I want to grow my brand using all the available channels that social media has to offer.  Let's face it - the power of social media goes a long way  !  I guess that's why I took the course and why I still want to learn more.  Social media is constantly evolving - probably too rapidly for most of us to understand .. but the way I see it - there's no harm trying to keep as up-to-date as we can. 

If you want to know more about social media for business then I would recommend reading 'Will Social Media Take You On A Magic Carpet Ride (To Success' and How Social Media Can Help You Get Ahead. 

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Over the last few weeks everyone seems to be talking about ‘Pinterest’.  I’d read about it and heard about the ‘by invitation only’ access and thought that I should go and check it out. 

Good news.  I went to their site and requested to ‘join’.  Got my ‘invitation’ within a few days.  Bad News.  I couldn’t sign up !! After a weeks’ battle of trying to actually create and log into my Pinterest account; I figured out that I couldn’t sign up using Chrome and had to register using Explorer instead. 

After finally getting my account sorted out - I’ve managed to browse around the site and see how I could use it for myself and also for my business.

What’s All The Pinterest About

It’s yet another networking site – but this time more with images.  It’s essentially a way to organize your ‘visual thoughts’ by way of creating ‘boards’ and ‘pinning’ images to it. 

It’s a lot like Facebook in the sense that when someone posts something, you can like it, share it, and comment on it.  You can ‘follow’ people (kind of like ‘friending’ a person) and see all their updated ‘pins’ (i.e posts) on your home page.

The best way to find ‘boards’ that interest you are to look out for key words.  For my business account I would look for boards that are related to ‘destination weddings’ or ‘wedding hair styles’.  For my personal account I’ve created my first board ‘Quotes’ where I’m collecting different quotes that have been created in a visually appealing way.

The feature I like most is the fact that I can create a ‘pin it’ button that can be used directly from my browser to be able to ‘pin’ images from other websites directly to a relevant board (and if you don’t have one – can create one).

I suppose I can see what the fuss is all about.  It’s a cool site and am sure it’s useful for a lot of businesses out there (especially for people in the service / hospitality sector)

To know more about Pinterest, check out these blog posts :

1. 35 Brilliant Bloggers Talk About Pinterest
2. Beginners Guide to Pinterest Basics

If you are on Pinterest or if you fancy joining it – don’t forget to follow me or like some of my pins.  The Pinterest account for my company AKA : A Klass Apart can be found here.

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It has taken me nearly 9 months to come up with a way of dealing with all my social media accounts and not be overwhelmed with the responsibility. Many people now have multiple social media accounts on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and so on, so it’s important not to spend your whole day stuck to your computer screen, it’s bad for your health for starters!

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.

Flipboard

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.

Jo Harrison of Writer's Block Admin Services is a British Virtual Assistant based in South West France. Jo specialises in social media management for small businesses and eBook formatting. Jo's blog contains further articles on social media tips and the eBook industry.