Social media consolidation - from links to management

August 27, 5:54 PMMadison Social Media ExaminerWendy Soucie

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Xeesm.com/wendysoucie social capital value using social media site manager.

Social media is being talked about everywhere.  Accounting firms, hospitals, manufacturing, software firms, hardware firms and even non-profit organizations.  What the early adopters are learning is what mistakes not to make and more importantly how to build a strategy around social media use to meet business goals. The driver of course is return on investment whether you are an individual networking for a new job or a manufacturing company looking for help from its community for co-creation of a new product, or simple leveraging social media across all departments.

The three most common questions I am faced with are:  

1. What tool do I use to get started? (If new)

2. How do I get all those links efficiently the different tools sites in one place? (Once connected)

3. How can I use my time more efficiently to get the golden egg of "content" on each and every site? (Committed users)

What tool do I use to get started?

This may be the toughest to answer if simply because companies need to do their homework.  First understand the business goals you are hoping to achieve and decide whether social media can get you there.  Next begin an assessment that investigates and analyzes the conversation by people from your customers/potential customers, partners, brand issues, and your competition. I recommend the Social Media Academy Four Quadrant Methodology as a solid process to collect the data you need to review.  Based on where the conversations take place, you can begin to narrow down where you should start with a social media engagement. There certainly is much more to this process but this is a quick overview.

How do I get all those links efficiently the different tools sites in one place?

One new tool is a social site manager called www.xeesm.com.  It has recently had on Beta test and is moving towards a more full featured product.  I have been involved in the  

Beta program and really liked some of the initial features (www.xeesm.com/wendysoucie).  I especially liked the one location to change and add more social media sites.

That solved many issues for me on my business cards and email correspondence. With SPAM programs now getting more sensitive to the number of links you add in an email, this can only help keep email marketing a valid tactic for staying in contact with customers.  the URL is so short that it can be easily used on microblogs where character count is important.  

“XeeSM attempts to make anyone more approachable.”  I would have to agree.  By keeping all your social sites in one place it is much easier to manage and maintain your list of places and spaces. The one location also makes it much easier for your friends and customers to find you on all the social sites you are engaged with.  Since my initial sign up, it has tracked my social capital as well by $.  I appear to have grown that as well since July but I didn't find an explanation on the site for how they are calculating it. Well, if it’s going up, it can't be all that bad right? By the way, Xeesm is pronounced (see sam) as in “See me on Social Media”.

How can I use my time more efficiently to get the golden egg of "content" on each and every site?

Assuming you have a solid strategy in place that has directed you to the right social media tools your ready to place content.  Certainly the next question that comes up after get a social site manager in place is how you manage getting your original, repackage, repurposed content out to the hordes of social media sites of which you are now proud owner.

In that regard you have many options, depending on the tools you have selected. I am an avid LinkedIn user so that was a factor in what I looked at versus actually tried. I currently use www.Ping.fm when I want to just do status updates to my big three (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter). Some of the ones I investigated were:

Flock.com (does not have LinkedIn)

hellotxt.com (status up date and friend feed - has LinkedIn)

Friendfeed.com (does not have LinkedIn)

Some others I found other recommended were:

http://www.digsby.com

http://www.bebo.com (now part of AOL)

http://posterous.com/

http://extendr.com/

http://www.ping.fm

http://getsmb.com/smb/crm.aspx

http://www.retaggr.com

http://www.pingle.com

http://wave.google.com

http://www.netvibes.com

http://www.pageflakes.com

http://www.atomkeep.com/

http://www.gathr.me

I would love all this to be pulled into one tool regardless of which one you use, it would make life a lot easier for everyone with limited time to spend on social media.  

However no one tool yet does this.  You also have to be very careful that in your use of multiple tools, you don't set up a vicious loop of posting and reposting from various tools to the same account which can cause you to be de-linked and de-friended pretty quick.  Good luck finding those tools that will work for you.