Social Media Tools to Minimize the Time Suck: Tools to Find and Share Content (Part 2)
Jul 14th, 2011 | By Darlene MacAuley | Category: Inspiring New Tip, Social Marketing
Image by _DaniloRamos via Flickr
In part one, I shared three social media tools to help you connect with others on Twitter. Today I’ll be sharing a few useful tools to locate awesome content and share it easily.
About a month or two ago, I discovered there’s a buzzword that describes people like me. I’m a “curator” – someone who finds informative and useful online content and shares it with friends and followers. I’ve been the resource gal for as long as I can remember! Being a curator is very time consuming (fellow curators, please nod along with me). Luckily there are apps for people just like us!
Tools for Finding Useful Information
In the past, the way that I found most of the material I shared was from spending a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter, reading through my SocialOomph emails, and scanning my Google Alerts. Aside from this time suck (in my denial I called it all “research”), I also knew there was a lot more great information out there that I wasn’t seeing when I wasn’t online. That knowledge drove me crazy. Then, I found the two following tools:
Summify – This awesome tool will scan your Facebook feed, Twitter stream, and Google Reader feeds, and then it will send you a specified number of top stories (based on the number of times the stories were shared). Each email you receive will include the title, summary and link of the story, the names of your friends and followers who shared them, and the number of times that article was shared thus far in Twitter and Facebook. From here, you can click and share the story on Facebook, Twitter or Google Reader, or click on a friend’s username and share directly from their post/tweet.
Summify just created an iPhone app and after trying it, I think I almost like the iPhone’s interface better for immediate sharing!
StrawberryJ.am – Connect with this cute lil’ site, and it will give you just the sweet goodness – links baby! Strawberryj.am goes through your Twitter stream and only pulls out links and shows you a tiny thumbnail of the users who shared them. Here are some highlights:
- You’ll see the title and links to real-time or popular articles shared by the Twitter users you are following.
- You can view the most popular links or a real-time stream of links.
- Add search terms, hashtags and Twitter lists, and these will be included in your results.
- Click on the links to read articles immediately, or save them for later and read them in an instapaper.
- Move your mouse over the picture of the Twitter user who shared it, and down will drop the original Tweet, along with an opportunity to retweet or Buffer it (see below about Buffer App)
- You can also opt to receive an email summary once a day to receive a specific number of links.
I am still exploring StrawberryJ.am and look forward to using it more!
Tools for Sharing Information
As a curator, I enjoy sharing information but have been frustrated that in order to share links, my choices are to either retweet or post links all in one sitting, or to take even more time by scheduling tweets manually using Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. Then I discovered two awesome services that enabled me to share multiple links that post at different time intervals, all with just a couple clicks. So easy.
Buffer – Here’s what you do:
- Decide what days you want the application to send out tweets, and on those days, choose how often you want to tweet each day, and the times you want to tweets to be sent. (Tip: if you want to know the best times to tweet based on when more of your followers are online, check out Tweriod.)
- Once your Buffer is set up, add tweets to your Buffer. You can type them in on the Buffer website; install an add-on to your Chrome, Firefox or Safari browser that enables you to add a link to Buffer from any web page; Buffer a retweet directly from Twitter; or share an article right from Google Reader or StrawberryJ.am.
- That’s it. Buffer will send out your tweets automatically at the times you’ve previously set up.
The free version allows 10 tweets in your Buffer at any given time. If you sign up through my link above, we’ll both get an extra tweet! You can also pay an additional fee for more tweets in your queue and track your links through Bit.ly. I’m waiting for an iPhone app to be released, but Android users can take advantage of a mobile version of Buffer right now!
You’ll also want to follow Buffer on Twitter and read their blog if you’re a Twitter tool fanatic like me! They’ve also started #ToolsChat, a Twitter chat dedicated to discussing the top Twitter tools.
Timely – Timely is somewhat similar to Buffer in that you simply add tweets to your queue and Timely will send them out automatically. It also has a free and a paid version. Benefits of Timely include:
- Simplicity. Timely analyzes your last 199 tweets and determines the best times to tweet them for you.
- You can have unlimited tweets and you can use your Bit.ly or Awe.sm accounts to monitor clicks.
- You can add unlimited twitter accounts and invite other people to add to the queue
- All you need to do is add a bookmarklet to your browser. When you come across a link you want to share, click your “Create a Timely” button and a window will pop up pre-populated with your link to share.
So with the last post, you found a way to save time connecting with your peeps. Now you have some tools that will help you find and share information. You’ll find that with your tweets and posts spread out through the day, you will have more opportunities to connect with more of your followers and friends. Isn’t that cool?
In my next post, I’ll sum it all up and share with you how I use all of these tools on any given day. In the meantime, I urge you to sign up and start using the above tools. It will change the way you receive and share information, and you may be pleasantly surprised at how much more time you have at the end of the day.
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