Reading blogs and news in your industry is important. Keeping up with all the information can seem overwhelming at times. How can you really find great content in what interests you most? The web can be a vast place… so I recommend dropping by Alltop. It’s a great way to discover new blogs to read.
Tip: I have an Alltop dashboard, but I use the site to find great blogs to add to my Google Reader account. I visit Alltop once every few months when I review and purge my Google Reader for fresh content.
We love watching and sharing videos. By scanning through Facebook and Twitter, you’ll likely discover many videos being shared daily just by your existing connections. Sometimes these are videos created by the person sharing, and other times it is just something important to the person. At other times, the videos are just funny to watch, and a great way to waste some time.
Magma has created a magazine-style website that helps find what is popular on the Internet right now. You can quickly see all the most recent viral videos from many different websites, and just as easily share the video to your friends. Learn more about Mag.ma:
Update from the official Magma staff (also known as the staff at Rocketboom):
Sharing your videos to multiple places at the same time can increase not only how many people you can reach, but also how viewers discover your website. By sharing your video to multiple places at once, as well as filling in the complete information with keyword descriptions and a link to your own website or a specific blog post, you will help viewers find your content.
Uploading videos to so many places can be an undertaking. There are two great tools to upload this content. Tubemogul and Traffic Geyser. While Traffic Geyser offers far more features, if you are in need of a free video uploading tool for more than one month, check out Tubemogul. While not as full featured, it does offer the ability to bulk upload and measure statistics on your videos.
Sharing photos online is a great way to engage others in conversation. But – should you share to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, or somewhere else? The answer is: YES! I’m all in favor of sharing the same photos across multiple platforms at once. By doing so, you share the image with different connections, no matter where they are connecting with you. To make it easier, you can use Pixelpipe to send your photos to several places at once, even to your Facebook Fan Page.
A quick word of caution: upload just a few pictures at a time. Save those entire photo albums from your hiking trip for just one destination. Twitter users will only want to see one or two pictures at a time.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and countless other places to list your status have gotten us overwhelmed in trying to keep up with it all. Need an easier way to tell the world a quick quote, your plans for the day, or about the big event coming up? Connect your Ping.FM account with all your profiles. Ping.FM functions as a hub to update your information across many platforms. You can use your mobile phone, their website, or an instant messaging program to send the message to Ping.FM. Then Ping.FM will send your status update out to all the social network accounts you have connected with it. Take a quick peak at how to get started:
As businesses continue to implement a online marketing strategy, they quickly look for their social media return on investment. Getting those numbers can be difficult if you don’t know what others are saying about you. It is important to listen to implement brand management, or monitor what is said about you, your company, and any products or services that you offer.
If you’ve gotten one of those amazing SEO keywords lists, or a list of key phrases your ideal clients are using online, it makes sense to include those words on your own website, and in places that you or your company posts any type of content (status messages, photo tags, video descriptions, or just about anywhere else). But, finding where people are already using those same phrases can help you know where the your ideal clients are already showing up online. That’s where to go comment on blogs, engage in a conversation, share their videos or photos to your community, or just begin to observe what they are saying.
So – how are you monitoring this information? Google Alerts is a good start, as is SocialMention. Google Alerts doesn’t show the sentiment, or whether the information was favorable or not. Social mention is a great start as well, but doesn’t let you save the information. Many other more robust services have popped up. Trackur has just announced a limited account option that is now FREE. Check out how you can better monitor the real-time web with their service.
Ever need to show others, especially clients, when you are available for a meeting? I keep all my appointments in my Google Calendar, and even share my meetings with assistants. When I need to schedule a meeting with others, I often send them an invite to the event in my Google Calendar for them to confirm as well. However, I have wanted a way to schedule client appointments with their help.
MeetWith.Me has created a way to do just that. I can now add a widget to my website that shares my calendar for clients and others to see. Others cannot see who I am meeting with, but just my availability.
What I would like to see in future releases of this service: a widget that I can properly resize for my website columns, and a way to embed the full calendar within my own site. I do love the idea that clients can review my schedule and compare it with their own BEFORE scheduling an appointment with me.
Moving all your email to Gmail can make your web experience much easier. No longer are you waiting on your email to download to Outlook, Thunderbird, or Mail. Following these basic steps can get your email moved entirely into Gmail.
From the domain server, forward all email from a particular account to your Gmail address
In Gmail, go to Settings, Send/Receive
Add new email as a Pop3 account
Verify the changes
Select which email address to make primary, configure settings to send/receive based upon what it was sent to
As you create accounts on many social networks, the fastest way to find your existing contacts is to scan your address book. But, this can be complicated if you are using a software email system, or have contacts on an email marketing platform. Most social media platforms can scan Gmail, AOL mail, and Yahoo mail. Learn how to get your contacts all moved into Gmail and scanned on Twitter to quickly connect with others.
Tip:
Monthly repeat this process, and scan your accounts for new connections. It’s a quick way to find new connections you’ve just met at networking events or new sign-ups to your newsletter lists.
Reading the news, blogs, and other ways of finding out what is happening in your specific industry is important to staying current. For many, though, Google Reader isn’t the nicest thing to look at. For those that want to use the features but with a better layout or design, add Feedly to Firefox of Flock. Here’s a quick tutorial on installing Feedly, learning to use it, and some great shortcuts.
To get started, you’ll need to set up these places first:
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=cfb81bac-064e-4f84-adb5-359d5a585f50 "Finding blogs to read using Alltop")
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=4414558a-893c-49d1-912d-e9395fb04156 "Find the latest viral video: Mag.ma")
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3b312d6a-ba4c-4d8d-a7b9-d458900a4f03 "Social Media Shortcut: Upload your videos to multiple places with Tubemogul")
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c1924f76-8d75-4110-b078-31032404dfd2 "Social Media Shortcut: Share your photos across multiple networks with 1 upload")
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3dea00a0-4256-45e9-80d5-24a1825db342 "Social Media Shortcut: Use Ping.FM to update your status messages across many networks")
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=247b41dd-51f1-4dc3-b425-3b869874317a "Trackur: Brand Management & Social Media Monitoring")
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=da9a033b-8c24-4ea4-9ec8-f00c105068e1 "MeetWith.Me: How to show your availability for meetings")
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=15f17314-7a20-4fce-9a08-13e88f5da424 "How to move all your email to Gmail")
