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[Infographic] Facebook vs Google+

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Jul 112011

Infographic on Facebook vs. Google+

Use One Site to Update All Your Social Media

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May 192011

HootSuite - Social Media Dashboard

Did you know that you can use one site to update all your social media? You can sign up for a free HootSuite account and easily update all your networks in one fell swoop. You can do it “in the cloud” using a PC and a browser or you can do it from your mobile device. You can update to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more social networks.

Another program that lets you update all your social media networks at once is called yoono. This is a program that can be added to your Firefox browser as an add-on tool. You can automatically view and update your social networks with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo and others. It does not have as many networks available as Social Oomph and ping.fm but it looks promising as they plan to add more social media networks eventually.

Gizapage is another promising aggregator. It says it’s an integrated social hub bringing together your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and more so that you can share with all networks at the same time, and you can pick and choose which networks too. It also lets you view your full profile from one spot. The problem with it is that you have to ask for a quote. It looks really great but that automatically makes me think it will be expensive. I put in for a quote but haven’t heard anything yet.

Social aggregators aren’t new, they’ve been around as long as social media has been around. If you do a Google search on social media aggregators you’re likely to find a lot of them both working and defunct. You’ll find free aggregators, and premium fee based services. They come and go so choose a popular one that is widely used so that you don’t have to start over. Part of using an aggregator is to save time. Setting one up takes some time and work but is worth it in the end so no matter which one you choose definitely make sure you do choose one in order to stop wasting time duplicating tasks.

Introduction: Surveying the Social Media Field

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Mar 012011

“Social media” is defined by Wikipedia as “media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques.” In laymen’s terms, social media helps people connect online. In popular usage, the term “social media” typically refers to social networking and sharing sites, including the following:

Blogs
Forums
Image/Photo-Sharing Sites
Video-Sharing Sites
Twitter
MySpace
Facebook
Linkedin

It has become the battle cry of the new Internet revolution that businesses MUST be involved in social media to succeed online. But with new social media outlets emerging and others going in and out of favor at an ever increasing pace, it can be hard to keep up. And many online entrepreneurs find it a real challenge to know where to invest their time and how to leverage social media effectively. Many frazzled business owners are asking themselves and others the following questions:

What social media outlets are best for my niche?
How much time do I need to spend online to be successful?
I’m so busy working IN my business – how am I going to Tweet, blog, and spend hours on LinkedIn too?
Do people really care whether or not I’m on Facebook?

Sure, managing your social media efforts can seem frustrating and overwhelming at first glance. But fortunately, you don’t have to invest hours and hours posting tweets about what you ate for breakfast, or uploading videos of your cat to YouTube. In fact, you better skip those things.

Instead, approach social media with a plan, and focus on providing and sharing useful information while also interacting with your fans, friends, and followers. If you do that, social media can be an effective and even fun part of your marketing mix.

In the next few blog posts, I’ll show you how to create a strategy that will maximize your efforts and minimize the time you need to invest. It won’t take hours a day either. In fact, if you approach social media marketing with the right goals, tools, and strategies, you won’t have to spend more than 30 to 60 minutes a day in order to reap great benefits. Ready? Let’s get started!