HootSuite . . . I Love my Dashboard!

I am managing social media for a growing list of clients, which means that I’ve also got a growing list of separate logins and passwords for Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter for each client–rarely does a client synch login information. I log in, upload a post, an image and often link to an article that positions the client as a brilliant industry thought leader. It used to be that I looked at this as a leisurely morning activity and a great way to kick off my day. Lately, it has become extremely time consuming, and I knew that I needed to find a better way to do this.

A bit of a purist, I held off on using dashboard tools because I did not like the way that a post showed that it had been published by whatever tool was being used. I have totally gotten over this because I am loving the way automation has simplified my life. I tried out a few applications, including SplashCube, which does a great job with lead generation with Twitter, but it’s $200/month, and it doesn’t support images, which makes it unrealistic for me. This is a visual medium, for crying out loud, and images are critical to attracting readers to posts.

I settled on HootSuite, and once I figured out how to make each client a team in my HootSuite fiefdom, I am thrilled with the way it has created efficiencies for me. I now have one login rather than 15. I open it in the morning, upload my posts and leave it open all day to stay on top of the activity on my clients’ sites. I like the spontaneity that HootSuite provides, allowing me to maintain a dialog, asking question and making comments throughout the day, which is critical to creating an online community.

Just one question remains: What took me so long?

Ask me about using HootSuite for your digital media program, Top of Mind Marketing

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Five Easy Tips for Staying on Top of Social Media

I was reading a report recently that listed 64 things to do to keep your Facebook presence lively and fresh. Sigh. Sometimes, it’s hard to be clever, funny and dispense little pearls of wisdom in a few sentences–no wonder people can’t keep up. This, along with FB’s constant changes to its interface, the fact that the FB help menu sucks, trying to figure out the recent rollout of Timeline, a news-driven interface where users can edit the content they want to receive, and it becomes a bit overwhelming.

I was reading a report that had 64 tips for upgrading the quality of your posts. Some of these are good; others ridiculous. Some, happily, are things I’m already doing, so I see these as best practices. These are some things that I think are worth doing, ways to make it easier to manage your social media and make it more meaningful.

1. Create a week’s worth of wallposts/messaging at a time. In this way, you will be able to upload a message every day or so without thinking about it. You know how that goes–the phone rings and you’re off and running and forgot about social media until you are ready to go home. Doing this ahead of time makes it easier to incorporate it into your daily routine.
2. Ask questions. I’m experimenting with this now. So far, the response is a big fat zero, but I’m not giving up, and I like this concept a lot–you’re soliciting a response and people love to think of themselves as authorities.
3. Upload images. This is especially important if you’re a business with a portfolio. Designers, architects, those in food-related industries or galleries. Anyone with good pictures will find a happy home on Facebook.
4. Link to articles or other sites. This is especially important if yours is an industry where there are lots of good articles–a spa could link to endless articles about taking care of baby-boomer skin; architects can link to new design trends or award-winning designs. Besides making you look like you know what’s going on, people like to have something to click on.
5. Publish your blog and newsletter to social media sites. I do this and always get a few good responses. Just paste the link to your blog and newsletter into the message field and it will create a little thumbnail and upload.

Give these a try–they’re easy to incorporate. I will share more in my next post.

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SEO and Those Pesky Algorithms

In case you missed it, google changed its algorithms. I know, who cares. Search engine optimization has always been a little voodoo to most of us, but not to me–at least not anymore. Not since I sat down and registered my website on more than 100 website directories. Difficult? No. Tedious? Oh, yeah. But everyone tells you that this is one of the things you need to do to show up in a search.

So now they’ve changed the algorithms, which means that those directories may not longer be relevant. Before falling on my sword, I did some reading, and all may not be lost. Think publish. Publish everything and publish often. The reality remains that the more content you have in online environments, the more likely it is that you will not just show up in search engines, but have a high ranking on the first page or two rather than in Siberia.

Publish means articles, and you can upload these on many of the directories on which you registered your site. The format varies a bit, but you have the ability to create a bio, upload a picture of yourself, (don’t forget to label this image–it counts as online content) identify keywords, add your website and then drop your article into the appropriate field.

Get serious about blogging. In a recent article on Hubspot (http://www.hubspot.com), they reported that in more than 1,500 small-medium sized businesses, those companies that had a blog, on average, had 55% more website traffic. The experts agree that content remains the constant. If you’re not yet doing a newsletter, blog and frequent social media updates, ask me about how I work with my clients. It’s time to embrace these electronic communication channels.

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