Social Media Tools to Minimize the Time Suck: Putting it All Together (Part 3)
Jul 16th, 2011 | By Darlene MacAuley | Category: Inspiring New Tip, Social Marketing
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The first two parts of this series covered social media tools that will save you time connecting with people and ways to easily find and share online content.
Over the past couple of months, the tools I’ve been using have really helped me have a more frequent online presence while at the same time allowing me to have more time to do other things in my life. Once again, here is a list of the tools I shared:
Tools to Connect:
Tools to Find Content:
Tools to Share Content:
Here is an example of how I use these tools:
- Once every day or two, I’ll check my Topify email filter and go through email notifications. When I open each e-mail, I’ll see who they are and what they’re about, and then I’ll either follow back, ignore, or sometimes even block them. Rapportive will show me each user’s most recent tweets and display a Follow button that I can easily click.
- Two or three times a week, I’ll go through my Social Oomph emails and scan the chats I missed, reply to mentions I missed, and thank users for retweets and Follow Friday shout outs. Sometimes I’ll use TwitterGadget for Gmail, which allows me to send tweets from Gmail and avoid going directly into Twitter.
- Once a day or every other day, I’ll scan my Summify emails and StrawberryJ.am and add tweets to Buffer and/or Timely. I’ll also add some articles on my Facebook page directly or schedule them manually to post to Facebook using Hootsuite.
I’ve found that as an active curator, the key for me to be more involved and focused with social media is to do what I can OFFline. This keeps me focused on the task at hand, because once I’m on Twitter or Facebook I will likely get distracted.
“Best Practices” for Social Media Tools
You might be thinking, “Say what????? Isn’t the goal to be, well, social?”
There is definitely an ongoing debate when it comes to whether or not to automate posts and what “best practices” for using social media should be. The tools I shared above are just that… tools. Many birth professionals busy in their businesses and are also moms. As solo business owners we don’t have a marketing department, and most of us do not hire assistants. To make the best use of our time, tools like the ones shared above can be utilized to help us keep in contact with those who like and want to know us better. These tools can be set up to work for us while we sleep, when we’re at births, and while we’re spending time with the very beings who inspired us to work in this field!
Be mindful of the following when you’re using social media:
- Be helpful. Understand what your followers are interested in and give them quality tips and resources that they will want to share with their followers, or even more importantly, apply to their own lives. Their followers may then see your helpful links and tweets and want to follow you too. The thing is, you can’t be online all the time, right? You may have followers in other parts of the world who will see your scheduled tweet live in their stream. You may be sleeping, but you’re giving them useful information when they’re online.
- Be curious. Tools like SocialOomph are great for finding conversations to jump in, even if you’re a little late. Show interest in others. Ask questions and see if you can offer help.
- Be responsive. If you’re going to be posting at various times of day, it’s a good idea to look out for replies and comments to your posts. Show appreciation to those who took the time to hit the retweet button or recommended you to their followers. Reply to their questions or responses to your tweets.
- Be professional. If your social media profile bios say you are in the birth field, realize that your tweets and posts reflect positively or negatively on you, your business, and your field. If you need a personal outlet, create a separate one from your professional accounts.
- And finally, DO also spend some time interacting live with others. One of the easiest ways to do so is to join in on one of the numerous chats happening on any given day on Twitter. @BirthSwellhas put together a growing list of Twitter chats related to pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. You can also find chats on just about any topic, so do a bit of research and asking around and jump on in.
As always, I love comments, emails, and of course retweets. If there are any other tools I need to know about, please share them with me.
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