One of my clients quizzed me about this yesterday. She found out, and I hadn’t told her. She wasn’t mad at me, thankfully, but she was curious about the ability to update multiple social media profiles at once.
There are some great tools available to update multiple social media profiles at once. This can be looked at in two ways. One is if you have multiple social media profiles as in a facebook, twitter, delcious, friendfind, or digg. The other is if you currently manage multiple profiles for multiple clients. Hopefully, you are not pulling your hair out trying to find time to log in to each and every profile to update!
There are several tools for doing this, and they can save you a lot of time and allow you to be a little creative too.
Ping.fm
This is the first tool I learned about. Simply put, you can update several profiles at once. You can even set lists so that the update goes to only the profiles you want. The ping.fm team makes it easy to connect as the site automatically connects with social media site you use if you are already logged in. This is a great place to start if you are learning how to do multiple updates.
Socialize
As I write this, I am checking out Socialize your Cause. I found this in the comments section of an article Openforum.com. This looks to be one of the most comprehensive services I have seen with the ability to even post updates to a self hosted WordPress blog and monitor your brand using SocialMention.com. This is really a hub for your social media.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite seems to be really popular right now. Hootsuite is used by many people to manage their twitter accounts. The good thing about Hootsuite is it will allow you to schedule your updates. It also allows you to update several social media profiles at once, and it even keeps stats for your posts.
Seesmic
Seesmic has both a desktop and, now, a web-based twitter application. Seesmic is fast becoming a favorite among many including my friend Cotton Rohrscheib. I am impressed with its features. It is definitely one of the top twitter tools.
TweetDeck
Tweetdeck was one of the first and most-often used twitter applications. The cool thing about tweetdeck is that they have applications for your iphone as well as your desktop. In fact, they now have an app for your ipad. How cool is that?
As with anything, you want to take a little time to decide which tool is best for you and what your purpose is for using one. These tools are great, but don’t let them substitute for engaging your followers or clients in the social media world. Otherwise, you just become an obtrusive salesman blasting info that may or may not be wanted by those within hearing range.
Question
What is your favorite social media tool? Feel free to leave comments below.
Good point Elizabeth. I told my client that the one weakness of these automated tools was not being able to engage with her fans/followers. I actually meant to put that in the article, but I forget. So, thanks for point that out!