Social Media Integration With Email Marketing

by Nicole Munoz

If you run an autoresponder, chances are you’re going to spend quite a bit of time writing and refining your autoresponder messages. Instead of having to then take the time to re-post it to your social networks, why not have that reposting done automatically instead?

Most autoresponder services allow you to automatically post your emails to your social networks. This can help you save a lot of time, while automatically giving your subscribers a whole lot more content.

Here’s how to setup your email systems to automatically send emails to your social media sites.

Mailchimp

Log into your Mailchimp account. Click on “Integrations.”

Choose the service that you want to automatically post to.

Click “Log In” to authorize your social media account to be posted to by Mailchimp.

Once your social media accounts are setup, go and create a campaign as you normally would. Now in the campaign setup process, you’ll be given the option to automatically post that autoresponder to your social media sites.

If you check the checkbox, the auto-tweeting or auto-posting will go into effect effective immediately.

iContact

To automatically send your autoresponder emails to your social media accounts in iContact, just follow these steps.

First, click on “Social” along the top navigation.

Click “Get Started” to continue.

Select which service you want to post to.

You’ll be taken through the authorization process. Once your social media account is authorized, you’ll see the “post to” check box on the bottom of your send messages box. Check that box whenever you want to send a message to your social network(s).

ConstantContact

ConstantContact is one of the best autoresponders to use if you want to send visual HTML emails. ConstantContact’s “Simple Share” makes it easy to share your content with your social network(s).

First, start by creating and editing a message as you normally would.

Then save your draft and go to “Schedule”. Under “Social Sharing,” click “Simple Share.”

Choose which social network you want to share your message on.

ConstantContact will take you through the authorization process. Once your account is authorized, you’ll be taken to a share screen.

Customize the message by clicking on it and editing the text.

Click “Schedule” once you’re ready for the world to see your message!

Aweber

To share your message via Aweber, go to “Messages” then “Broadcast” and setup a message as you normally would. Then on step 2 “Sharing” select the Facebook / Twitter account you want to share the post with.

Click “Connect to a new account” if this is your first time.

Follow through with the account authorization. Once your account is successfully added, you’ll see this notification:

Now whenever you want to share a message, all you need to do is check the box at the bottom and change the subject line.

That’s how to post to social media automatically using your autoresponder service. We’ve covered all four of the major small business email services today. If you want to regularly give more value to your users without having to spend a lot of time creating links and uploading content, this is one easy way to have your email service do it all for you.

Adding Social Media Updates to Your Blog

by Nicole Munoz

One of the best ways to add some spice to your website is to add in a social media feed. Your social media feed will help feed the content and updates that you’re posting through social media into your main blog.

The feed will appear as a widget that displays on the side of your screen. You can generally choose how big or small you want the feed to be, so you can customize how much attention to direct to the feed.

Here’s how to add social media updates to your blog.

Twitter Widget

To get started, go to the Twitter widget section.

https://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets

Click on “Create new.”

Then choose the “User Timeline”.

Enter the username that you want to generate a feed for. This can be your own username or someone else’s.

A preview of the feed will appear on the right. Once the feed looks right to you, just click “Create Widget” to copy and paste the code onto your website.

Facebook Widget

To access Facebook’s activity feed, go to:

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/

Then click on “Activity Feed.”

Scroll down, then type in the domain of the site whose feed you want to display. The feed on the right will show you what your feed will look like.

Click “Get Code” on the bottom once you’re ready to post it to your website.

Google+

Google+ doesn’t have a built-in widget creator. However, there are several outside tools you can use to add this functionality.

These options include:
Widgetplus.com
Widgplus.com
Wordpress Plugin

Here’s how Widgplus widget looks. You can access it here:

http://widgplus.com/

Start by entering your Google ID. This is the string of numbers you see in your URL when you access your own profile.

Then specify the settings you want to use to generate the Widget’s feed.

The embed code will be displayed above the customization box. Copy and paste it onto your server.

Adding a Pinterest Widget

Pinterest doesn’t have a built-in widget system. However, there are a number of different WordPress plugins you can use to create a Pinterest widget on your WordPress blog.

To get started, go to your plugins search field and type in “Pinterest widget.”

The most popular and highly rated one at the time of writing is the “Pinterest Pinboard Widget.” Choose one plugin and install then activate it.

Then go into your WordPress widgets (under “Appearance”) and drag and drop the widget. Then configure the widget to look exactly as you want it to.

Your Pinterest widget will now appear in your sidebar!

Adding a social media widget to your site can really help add interactivity and help cultivate a sense of consistency within your brand. It’ll help join your social media site and your website together into one community. If you’re going to take the time to build up content in social media, why not link it up to your main site?

Social Media Cross-Posting Tools

by Nicole Munoz

Most social media networks have gone out of their way to make it easy for you to share content to and from their networks. Posting from LinkedIn to Twitter is easy and viceversa. Pinterest makes it easy to share your pins with both Facebook and Twitter. So on and so forth.

Cross-posting your social media content will allow you to really maximize the power of each of your pieces of content. Instead of just getting the benefit of one exposure, you can get the benefit of exposing every single social network you’re a part of to your new content.

Here’s how to use the various cross-posting tools on the different social networks.

Posting from Twitter to Facebook

The best way to post from Twitter to Facebook is through the “Selective Tweets” app. The way it works is very simple. First, you install the app. Then, just append the hashtag #fb to any post that you want to also post on Facebook. Facebook will automatically recognize the tag and post the tweet as a status update.

To begin, find the app by searching for “Selective Tweets.”

Enter your username. Facebook will watch this username for tagged posts.

Then, whenever you write your Twitter posts, all you need to do is tag it with #fb and it’ll automatically cross-post. That’s as simple as it gets!

Posting from Google+

By default, Google+ can’t share posts to other social networks. Fortunately, the “Extended Share for Google Plus” plugin makes sharing posts to other social networks easy as pie.

Start by searching for the Google+ extension in your Chrome browser or in Google. Find the “Extended Share for Google Plus” plugin and install it.

Now a new share button will be added to your Google Plus posts. Just click the “Share” button and choose which network you want to share to.

The extension will automatically populate a share box with the Google Plus post that you want to share.

To post to and from LinkedIn, you first need to add your Twitter account to your LinkedIn account. You can do this by clicking here:

http://www.linkedin.com/settings/?modal=nsettings-twitter-accounts

To share from your LinkedIn to your Twitter, just check the LinkedIn + Twitter option in the lower menu of the share box.

To post to your LinkedIn account from your Twitter account, just tag your twitter post with the #li hashtag. Make sure your LinkedIn account is linked to your Twitter account before doing this.

Sharing from YouTube

Sharing from YouTube is quite simple. First, click “Share” under your video. YouTube will then bring up the logos from Facebook, Twitter and Google+. If you click on the arrow in the end, more social networks like Tumblr and Digg will appear. You can even choose what minute you want to share the video at. Click one of these logos to share to these social networks.

Pinterest Sharing

Start by clicking “Settings” in the upper right hand corner of your Pinterest account. Move the sliders to activate the Facebook and/or Twitter relationships.

Once you’ve linked your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts, you can simply click the Facebook and Twitter buttons under any one of your pins to share them with your social networks.

That’s how you can share between the various different social networks. If you really want to get the most traction possible, make sure you share every bit of content across as many social networks as you can.

4 Tools To Automate RSS to Social Media

by Nicole Munoz

One of the easiest ways to automate your social media is to take an RSS feed and plug it into your Twitter and/or Facebook profiles. RSS feeds can be made from just about any kind of dynamic content: From blogs to news sources to video channels.

This technique can save a lot of time, but should also be used with a bit of caution. Avoid spamming your feed with RSS content. If you want to build a real audience, it helps to mix in a bit of automated content with hand-written content.

Start by identifying the feed(s) that you want to push to your social media accounts. You can use your own feed, or you can use any feed from anywhere on the internet. Make sure that if you’re using someone else’s feed, you check your Tweets regularly to make sure that you really feel good about what’s going out in your name.

Here are four of the best services to use for RSS to social media automation.

Twitterfeed

Twitterfeed is one of the original RSS to social media services on the web. They support Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

To get started, create an account, then click

Fill in the details about the RSS feed you want to add.

Click “Advanced Settings” to specify more details about how you want Twitterfeed to use your RSS feed.

Select which social network you want to post your RSS feed to.

Then authenticate the account you want to post to.

It’s that easy! Twitterfeed is 100% free, so just about anyone can use it to automate their RSS to social media postings.

ConvertSocial

ConvertSocial is a social media integration, automation and management suite with a wide range of different features. They have a 30 day free trial account, after which you’ll have to pick one of their paid plans.

To get started with automating your social media posting, create an account, then click “Add/Edit Services.”

Go to the RSS tab, then click “Add” next to “RSS Auto Poster.”

You’ll then be able to adjust your feed settings. Note that automating your social media is a paid feature. You won’t be able to access the settings screen until you’ve subscribed.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the largest social media integration sites on the web. They also have a special feature that allows you to post an RSS feed to your social media sites.

To add an RSS feed, log into your Hootsuite account. Then go the launch menu on the left, click the Settings icon and then RSS/Atom.

Click the “+” button next to your RSS feed screen.

Then specify how you want your feed to be setup. You can add the feed URL, specify the account to post to, specify how often to check for update, specify how many posts to post at each time and pre-append text to the tweets.

If social media integration is important to you, using Hootsuite for both your automation and your integration will make managing your whole social media strategy much easier.

Dlvr.it

Dlvr.it is a very basic service that allows you to quickly and easily post your RSS feed to Twitter and Facebook. There aren’t a whole lot of advanced features. You get the social media automation, quickly, no more and no less.

Start by creating an account. It’s a simple process: Just enter your email and password.

Then type in the URL of the feed you want to add.

Choose which social media site you want to add your feed to.

Then authorize Dlvr.it to post to that website.

Social media automation allows you to constantly update the content of your website, without always having to put in many hours of work.

Make sure you create a coherent strategy that’ll allow you to keep your users engaged, while mixing in a bit of automated content that your readers will still love.

Sprout Social: A Team-Friendly Approach to Social Media & Analytics

by Nicole Munoz

Sprout Social is a social media integration service that integrates with Twitter, Facebook pages, Gowalla, FourSquare and LinkedIn. They have a 100% free trial, where you don’t even need to give them your credit card number to subscribe.

They have two plans that are catered to small business owners: The “Standard” package, which comes in at $39 a month, or the “Deluxe” package, which comes in at $59 a month.

Here are some of the things that Sprout Social has to offer:

Message scheduling. Instead of having to post your updates live, you can schedule them to be posted at a later time.
Google analytics integration. See your traffic stats all in one place, instead of having to log into Google separately.
Custom branded reports. If you need to send a client a report, it’ll have your logo on it rather than Sprout Social’s.
Social media integration. Integrate many different social media accounts all in one place.
Live support. Have a question? Sprout Social is there to answer your questions.
Tools for collaboration. Work with your team to get the most out of your social media campaigns.

Here’s how to use Sprout Social to integrate your social media.

Step 1: Begin Your Trial

Click “Start Your 30 Day Trial” to begin the signup process.

Step 2: Select Your Plan

Select the plan you want to use. If you’re a small company, usually the “Standard” version is enough. You can always upgrade later.

Step 3: Create Your Profile

Create your account. Sprout Social will tell you when your trial account is good till on the right hand side.

Step 4: Sign In on Your Twitter Account

Click the “Sign in with Twitter” button to connect your Sprout Social account with your Twitter account.

Authorize Sprout Social to use your Twitter account.

Step 5: Business Details

Enter your business details.

Once you’re done, click “Continue” and you’ll be taken to your main dashboard screen.

Step 6: Adding More Profiles

If you want to add more profiles, click on the “Add Social Profiles” button in the next pop up screen or simply go to the right hand sidebar and click “+.”

Sprout Social will pop up a box allowing you to choose which social media profile you want to link up.

Step 7: Add Team Members

To add more people to manage your account, click “Invite The Team” on the right hand side.

Enter the name and email address of the person you want to add. You’ll need to pay extra to add team members. You can add each person as either a standard user or as an administrator.

Step 8: The Dashboard

When you first log into Sprout Social, you’ll be presented with your dashboard. Here you can view your new Twitter followers, new Facebook fans, Interactions and so on.

Step 9: Messages

To access your messages, click the “Messages” tab in the top navigation bar.

Your messages will be displayed in the center. If access messages from different accounts, click the account on the right hand side. To compose a new message, click “Compose” in the upper right corner.

Step 10: Feeds

To access your feeds, click the “Feeds” button at the top. By default, you’ll see your Twitter’s feed. You can also add a LinkedIn feed or an RSS feed.

Step 11: Scheduling

To schedule a message, click “Schedule a new message” in the “Publishing” tab.

The scheduler will pop up. Here you can attach images, write your message and pick a time for your message to be posted.

Step 12: Discovery

Want to discover new people to follow or get in contact with? Click the “Discovery” button along the top navigation bar.

Sprout Social will then give you a list of people that they recommend you connect with. Take a look at their profile and if it makes sense, follow them or send them an @mention.

Step 13: Reports

Want to get more details about how your social media campaigns are working? Click “reports.” You’ll be able to view data on both your Twitter accounts and your Facebook Pages accounts.

You can view data on your retweets, incoming messages, new followers and even compare the performance of multiple Twitter accounts.
That’s how to use Sprout Social to manage your social media. Sprout social makes it easy to manage feeds, messages, scheduling and various social media networks from one easy to use interface. They also make it very easy to involve the rest of your team in your social media plans.

Postling for Monitoring, Analytics and Easy Updates

by Nicole Munoz

Postling is a social media integration service that ties in reputation monitoring, blog updating, analytics and traditional social media networks all in one easy to use package.

Through Postling, you can update your status or see who’s talking about you. You can track how many posts you’ve made in a certain time period and how many comments those posts have gotten. You can post to all your social networks in one easy to use interface.

Postling was co-founded by Chris Maguire, the co-founder of the popular art marketplace Etsy. It’s raised $700,000 in venture funding, according to TechCrunch.

Unlike other social media integration services, Postling is a paid service. The monthly rate is astoundingly low: $5. If you only want to use social media integration, then Postling might not be worth it. However, if you want to tie in reputation management, analytics and blog posting all in one easy to use interface, then Postling could be the perfect solution.

Here’s how to use Postling to integrate all these different areas of your internet business.

Step 1: Begin Registration

Start by entering your email, name and password

Step 2: Setup Payment

Setup the credit card you’ll use to get your $1 trial. You’ll be billed $5 a month automatically if you don’t cancel.

Step 3: Choose How You’ll Use Postling

Choose how you plan on using Postling. Specifying the type of business you own will help Postling locate reviews for your business on sites like Yelp or Citysearch.

If you select “business,” you’ll be asked for your business’ name and your business type.

Step 4: Add Your Social Networks

Select which kind of social media account you want to add.

Then choose to grant access to Postling when the social media permission box pops up.

Repeat this for each social media account that you’d like to add.

Step 5: Add a Blog

Adding a blog to Postling will allow you to post to your blog from Postling and monitor your results from Postling’s analytics systems.

To add a blog, click the blogging platform you use.

Then give Postling the login credentials needed to log in and post to your blog.

Step 6: Setup Tracking

Setup your tracking here. Postling will automatically monitor social media and search engines for mentions of you and your brand. They’ll also monitor Yelp and Citysearch to help you find new reviews about your business.

Select any one of the tracking options available. You’ll need to give Postling the exact keyword(s) or business name(s) that you want to track.

You can use Boolean search operators in these trackers. For example, you can use a search phrase like “Fishing rod review OR recommendation” to track either people who’re looking for reviews or recommendations.

You can learn about all the search operators you can use here:

http://www.googleguide.com/category/query-input/
Once you’ve setup all your trackers, click “Done! Start Using Postling Now” to continue.

Step 7: Tracking Screen

The main screen of Postling is your tracking screen. Here you’ll see all the latest results from the keywords you’re tracking.

You can change what kind of content you want to view in this feed through the drop-down “view” menu at the top.

Step 8: Publish a Status Update

To update your social media status, click “Update your Status” under “Publish” on the left hand navigation.

You’ll be taken to the status update box.

To shorten a URL, just put the URL in the URL shortener. It’ll automatically generate a bitly link for you.

Type in the message you want to send to your social network. Check the social network(s) you want to post to on the right hand side. Then either click “Publish” or “schedule for later” to post your update.

There’s a character count in the upper right corner to help with Twitter posts.

Step 9: Create a Blog Post

To create a new blog post, click “Create a Blog Post.”

A WYSIWYG editor will pop up. Use this editor to create your blog post.

Once you’re ready to post your message, check the boxes next to the blog(s) you want to post to. If you want to post the blog post to your social media networks as well, you can check those boxes too.

Step 10: Analytics

To access your analytics, click “Analytics” in the left hand side navigation bar.

Select the time period you want to see data for, as well as the account you want to see data for. Then use the checkboxes to check which data points you want to see.

The data will be graphed out at the top of the page. You can also scroll down to see the data laid out in text.

That’s how to use Postling to integrate social media, blog posting, analytics and reputation management. If you’re just using social media, Postling may not be the best integration solution. However, if you want to integrate a whole suite of web management tools all in one place, Postling should absolutely be one of your top choices.

Hootsuite Essentials For Your Small Business

by Nicole Munoz

Set Up Your Account and Add Your Various Profiles

The setup process for Hootsuite involves adding profiles for each of the sites you want to use with Hootsuite. Here’s how to sign up for and setup Hootsuite.

Step 1: Creating Your Account

Start by clicking on “Sign up” in the home screen.

Then select which plan you want to sign up with.

Then create your account.

Step 2: Adding Your First Social Network

Upon landing on your home screen, you’ll be presented asked whether you want to add a Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account.

Hootsuite supports several more network than these three, but the first time around Hootsuite assumes you’ll want to add an account from one of the bigger networks. You can also click “Add a different social network” at the bottom to add a different network.

Choose the network you want to add. For this tutorial, we’ll start with Twitter.

A box will popup asking for authorization. Click “Submit.”

Then enter your username and password to your Twitter account.

Upon authorizing the app, Hootsuite will then be able to connect your account to their system.

Step 3: Adding More Accounts

To add more accounts, click on the “Getting Started” screen.

Select “Add a Social Network.”

Choose from the list of social networks.

Then follow that social network’s specific setup procedure.
Follow this procedure, you’ll be able to add just about every major social network to your Hootsuite.

How to Use Hootsuite: Reading Updates, Posting & Scheduling Updates and More

Hootsuite is essentially an improved way of viewing and posting to your social networks, all in one place.

Using Hootsuite, you can schedule messages to be posted at different intervals. That means that you don’t have to spend time every day posting messages if you want to post messages every day. Just set it up once and Hootsuite will do the rest of the work for you.

You can also monitor all your social media activity from one place. All your feeds, customer feedback, responses from your posts and so on can be monitored in one place.

Here’s how to use Hootsuite.

Step 1: Select Your Social Media Account

If you have multiple accounts setup, start by selecting which account you want to view.

Step 2: Viewing Streams

The first screen you’ll be presented with is your streams screen. Each panel consists of a different stream of information.

In Twitter, your Home Feed is the tweets of the people you’re following. You’ll also have panels of direct messages, mentions and sent tweets.

In Facebook, your News Feed is the main feed, followed by a photos feed, your wall posts and an events feed.

Each social network has a few different kinds of streams.

Step 3: Adding a Stream

Adding streams allows you to customize how your Hootsuite dashboard looks. To add a stream, click the “+Add Stream” button in the top navigation bar.

Then select which social network you want to add a stream for. Finally, select what kind of stream you want to add and click “Create Stream.”

Step 4: Posting a Message

To post a message, click “Compose Message.”

Type your message in the expanded message box.

To add a link to your posting, click “Add a Link.”

To schedule your message to be sent at a later time, click the scheduling button.

A scheduling menu box will appear. Schedule the time you want to send your message and click “Schedule.”

To choose which profile(s) to send your message out to, click the “Click to select profile” box.

Then choose one or more profiles that you want to send your messages to.

Congratulations! You now know how to view updates, view different streams, add streams, post messages, schedule messages and send messages to multiple social media accounts at once.

10 Easy Tips to Improve Your Social Media Management Today

by Nicole Munoz

Social media management is one of those skills that needs to be highly personalized depending on the type of company and type of strategy you’re working with. A Fortune 500 company is going to need very different tools and approaches than a small business just starting to make its way in the world.

In order to successfully manage your social media, you need to implement proven strategies that build customer connection, keep people engaged and keep the process streamlined in the meantime. You need to be able to do things efficiently, while still keeping things personal.

Here are ten ways to help you do this, no matter what kind of company you’re working with.

Tip #1: Encourage Your Audience to Participate in Other Platforms

Try to get your audience onto different kinds of platforms. If someone reads your blog, try to get them on your Facebook page. If someone follows you on Twitter, try to get them on your email list.

Why should you encourage cross-platform participation?

It gives you multiple ways to followup with someone. You’re more likely to get their attention, since they’re seeing you everywhere they look.
You’re less likely to lose them. If you just had them reading your blog, they might one day forget to check back. However, if you also had their email, you’ll be able to continually follow up.
It helps build community. People who participate will often be happy to participate in comments, forums, twitter and Facebook if you give them the chance.

Don’t spent a lot of time hard selling your various platforms. Just let people know what kinds of platforms are available every once in a while.

Tip #2: Cross Post Your Best Content

Take advantage of your best content. If you wrote something that’s funny, creative, original or useful, cross-post it to your various different platforms.

It’s important that you do keep your platforms different enough that it’s worth it for people to be on multiple platforms. If your Facebook page is just reposts from your blog, it’s not really its own standalone platform.

However, when you create something that’s truly original and truly noteworthy, make sure everyone in your network knows about it. Post it to all your platforms. Just don’t overdo it and make sure you write something personal to each platform, rather than just copy and paste.

Social media integration tools can help you cross post to different platforms quickly and easily. You can access all your different social networks quickly and easily from one place.

Tip #3: Survey Your Audience Every Once in a While

It’s possible that you’re so in tune with your audience that you know exactly what they want at any given time. However, it’s much more likely that there will be things your audience wants that you simply won’t be able to predict.

Get in the habit of surveying your audience every once in a while. There are a couple different ways you can do this.

First, you can simply send personal message to people you have a connection to and ask what they like about your content and what they’d like to see more of. Use social media integration tools to spot power-fans and ask for their opinion directly.

Alternatively, you can use tools like Survey Monkey to create a survey, then post it to your social network.

Both of these methods work equally well. What’s important is that you stay in touch with what your audience wants, beyond just what you think they want.

Tip #4: Consider Your Users’ Time Zones

If you’re not using social media integration, it’s very tough to consider your users’ time zones. You post whenever you happen to be online, whenever you can.

However, with social media integration tools, you have the luxury of using software to post whenever you want to. All you need to do is figure out the best times to post, then schedule your posts to go live during those times.

Typically the best times to post are early in the morning, between 9 and 11 am, late in the afternoon, between 4pm and 6pm and late at night, between 9p and 11pm. This allows you to get people in their morning Facebook check, their evening check and their late night check.

Use tools like Facebook Insights and Google Analytics to figure out where the majority of your followers come from. Are they US-based? If not, where in the world are they? If they are US-based, are they primarily west coast or east coast?

Once you know your audience, time your posts accordingly.

Also, track the response rates, virality and engagement of your own post times. See if your audience responds better during certain times of day.

Tip #5: Manage it as a Team

Don’t treat your social media as a solo endeavour. Often time’s the best way to really increase engagement is to work on your social media as a team.

There are a couple different approaches to this.

One approach is to let everyone post under their own name. This allows people to build a bit of a personal brand within your brand. Your readers can get to know different people on your staff and build relationships with each of them individually.

This is a fantastic way to manage a social media team if you have a team of people who’re all great at expressing themselves. However, if only a couple of you are good at creating posts that people respond well to, then you might want to use the second approach.

The second approach is to have your social media messages crafted by just one or two people, but enroll the help of your staff to manage everything else.

Have someone watch the analytics. Have people look out for and respond to direct messages and @replies. It’s impossible for one person to keep track of all of these all the time, unless it’s your full time job. If you have a team watching out for you however, you’ll be able to respond to inquiries much faster collectively.

Tip #6: Measure and Improve Your Virality

Your virality is a measure of how often people who see your content like, share, comment or in other ways cause your content to appear in their feed.

How often do people interact with your content? What kind of content do they interact with? Do people tend to share things you post in video, text or audio format? Do people tend to respond to one topic of discussion more than others?

Figuring these things out will enable you to cater to the rest of your content to your users’ needs and wants.

Use tools like Facebook Insights, as well as various social media integration tools to figure out what kind(s) of content your users like. Then create more of that kind of content, as well as experiment with offshoots of that kind of content.

Tip #7: Automate Routine Tasks

Are there things in your social media strategy that you find yourself repeating by hand over and over and over again? Chances are, someone has already figured out how to automate that. All you need to do is find the right tool.

For example, let’s say you’re regularly logging in to check your stats on your social networks. What if you could automate that by having an email sent to you instead?

Or say you always post your email posts to your Twitter feeds. Why not use a tool that’ll allow you to post your emails to your Twitter, without having to create a shortened link and copy and paste by hand?

The APIs provided by Twitter and Facebook are highly versatile. Developers can create apps that do just about anything and interact with your accounts in just about any way. Because of this, just about any task that needs to be automated has been automated by independent developers looking to create software that spreads on the internet.

Save yourself time and increase your efficiency by identifying repetitive tasks and looking for ways to automate those tasks.

Tip #8: Don’t Overlook Built-In Tools

When people think of social media integration, they often think of tools like Hootsuite or Tweet Deck that have been created by outside developers. However, there are actually quite a few integration tools that have been created by the social networks themselves. Don’t overlook these tools – They’re some of the best.

For example, did you know you can post to your Facebook account from your Twitter account just by adding the #fb hashtag? All you need to do is install the Selective Tweets app from within your Facebook.

You can do the same thing from LinkedIn with the #li tag. You don’t need to install any applications. All you need to do is enable Twitter reposting from within your LinkedIn settings.

The vast majority of social media tools, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and LinkedIn all have social sharing and social media integration tools built in. Look into these tools. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in outside tools, it might be because they already exist in internal tools.

Tip #9: Manage Your Energy

Having twenty different social media accounts you need to manage across different industries is going to cause stress and be nearly impossible to handle in the long run. Try to consolidate your social media profiles whenever possible.

Social media integration tools make it easier to manage multiple accounts. However, if you have too many accounts, it’s still going to be too much to handle – Integration tools or not. Just keeping track of all your different accounts and who’s actively following what is going to be immensely difficult.

It’s often better to manage just one social media feed well than to spread yourself thin over five different accounts. Keeping your attention focused will allow you to post personality-filled content as well as recent and relevant content quickly, instead of being bogged down by trying to juggle too many different threads.

Tip #10: Manage Problems and Follower Negativity

Even if you do everything in your power to do everything right, there’ll come a time when your customers will get mad at you. Perhaps it’s because a new product you released didn’t work as well as you thought it did. Perhaps they hate your new website redesign. Maybe your whole industry is shifting and people are directing their negativity towards you.

Whatever the case may be, it’s crucial that you respond to these issues quickly. When people push at or attack your brand, it’s actually an opportunity. If you respond fast and do so authentically, people will respect you more and become more loyal. On the other hand, if you don’t respond or respond in a mechanical way, people will lose respect for you.

Think of it as a challenge rather than an attack. If your audience really wasn’t interested in what you have to offer anymore, they would have just left. Instead, they’re sticking around to give you negative feedback. If you take that feedback, incorporate it and let people know they’re valued, chances are they’ll stick around.

Social media integration tools can play a big role in this. First of all, you need to spot the negative PR – quickly. Having all your feeds in one place makes this easy. One person’s negative comments is one person’s opinions. Two might be a fluke. The moment you see three or more people saying the same things, you should probably start formulating a response.

Social media tools also make it very easy to disseminate your response once you have it formulated. Instead of wasting time logging in and out of your various social media account, integration tools will allow you to post things all at once, then have your attention fully focused on tuning in to people’s responses and adjusting accordingly.
These ten tips will help you save time, save energy and improve your relationships with your customers, whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or a multi-million dollar enterprise.

Come to Marketing Blueprint Live in Del Mar, CA, April 4th-6th, to find out 5 Simple Ways to Create More Social Media Buzz, Traffic and Profits

Top 10 Benefits to Integrating Your Social Media from Nicole Munoz

Top 10 Social Media Tools

by Nicole Munoz

The number of social integration tools available is vast and getting bigger every day. It seems every other month a new “big” social media tool comes out. Most of the time the tools don’t make that much of an impact. Those that do however can truly help you save a lot of time and resources.

There are social media tools for just about everything: Posting updates, generating reports, finding people to follow, save time, manage teams, get email reports and so on.

Which tools should you use? Here are ten of the top social media integration tools for you to choose from.

Tool #1: Hootsuite

Hootsuite can almost go without explanation. It’s the largest social media integration tool on the web and provides a whole host of technologies and solutions completely free of charge. A lot of things Hootsuite offers for free are paid features of other integration tools.

Hootsuite allows you to manage feeds across multiple social media sites. They have analytics and reporting tools, albeit most of them are paid. You can integrate a team strategy, as well as analyze you contacts.

If you’re not sure where to start in social media integration, Hootsuite is a good bet.

Tool #2: Tweet Deck (by Twitter)

Tweet Deck is one of the largest social media integration tools on the web and the largest integration tool for the Twittersphere. In 2009, they had a 23% marketshare. The only other website that had a larger usage rate was Twitter.com itself.

The primary function of Tweet Deck is the social media dashboard. They feature an intuitive and easy to use dashboard that works with both Twitter and Facebook. In the past, they supported LinkedIn, MySpace and FourSquare, though they have since dropped support for those sites and chosen to focus exclusively on Twitter and Facebook.

Tweet Deck was purchased by twitter in May of 2011. It’s now run by the Twitter team.

You can run Tweet Deck on just about any operating system, including Mac OS, Windows, Linux, iOS (iPhone / iPad) and even Google’s tentative Chrome OS.

Tool #3: Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a social media integration tool that has some very interesting and unique features. For example, Sprout Social will log into your Twitter and Facebook analytics accounts for you and extract data about your demographics. This will give you a very good sense of who your audience is, all in one place.

Sprout Social can also make recommendations about new people to follow. If you don’t want to have to spend hours discovering new potential partners and sources of information, let Sprout Social do it for you.

Of course, Sprout Social also has all the standard features, like message scheduling and feed aggregation.

Tool #4: Social Oomph

Social Oomph is a bit of an anomaly in the world of social media integration tools. Unlike tools like Tweet Deck or Hootsuite that have a very slick Web 2.0 kind of design, Social Oomph is very minimalistic. Their design is simple, text-based and to the point.

Don’t let that fool you however. Social Oomph has a lot of very powerful features and is very up to date, despite the basic looking design.

Social Oomph has perhaps the most advanced automated friend finder on the planet. This was how the service was first built; it’s what gave it its reputation to begin with.

Social Oomph also gives you the ability to delete all your tweets with the click of a button, but not delete your followers. In other words, if you want to start from scratch, Social Oomph lets you do that.

The list of unique features Social Oomph offers is quite long. It’s important to note that some of them do require a paid subscription. All Facebook interactions require a subscription, though if you’re just using Twitter there’s a lot that you can do for free.

Tool #5: Nutshell Mail

Nutshell Mail solves one of the big problems with social media: It takes a lot of time to monitor. If you’re a full time staff member dedicated to social media management, that’s not a problem. However, if you’re a business businessperson with a lot on your plate, then chances are you don’t have the time or energy to log into your social media account all throughout the day.

Nutshell mail simplifies this by sending you email updates. You can receive updates on your social media activities directly in your inbox, so you never have to worry about logging in and checking up on your profiles.

Nutshell mail supports LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, FourSquare and Yelp.

Tool #6: Netvibes

Netvibes is a social media integration platform that has a suite of free features, as well as a host of paid features. Their basic features work a lot like most other integration platforms, but their paid features have a lot of unique functionality to offer.

Netvibes integrates online reputation monitoring into their social media tools. You can see what people are saying about you, your company and your brand all in one screen.

You can create product micro-sites using Netvibes. This makes it easy for people to interact with a new product launch.

You can also create online communities using Netvibes and give people a unique home page.

Netvibes is essentially a social media integration tool as well as a community and brand building tool all wrapped up into one neat package.

Tool #7: Yoono

Yoono’s unique position in the market is its breadth. Not only does Yoono cover media that many tools ignore, such as FourSquare or FriendFeed, but Yoono also incorporates instant messengers in its arsenal.

That’s right: With Yoono, you can sync up your AIM, Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger accounts all in one place.

Of course, you can also use it to manage your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. You can manage multiple feeds across different accounts and do everything you’d expect from a social media management tool.

If you’re only managing Twitter or Facebook, then you’ll probably want to stick with one of the tools mentioned earlier. However, if you manage a range of other networks as well and especially if you use instant messengers to communicate, then Yoono could be a great time saver.

Tool #8: Postling

Postling makes monitoring your social networks and posting to them a cinch. Postling gives you a simple and easy to use “social inbox” where everything people say about you is contained. You can easily respond to each of their comments from a variety of social networks all in one feed.

Postling also monitors review websites, like Yelp or Citysearch for you. If you’re an offline business, this is critically important. Just about no other social media integration tool will monitor these services for you.

With Postling, you can post directly to your blog while keeping your social media in the look. Postling has its own WYSIWYG editor built in for writing blog posts.

You can respond to messages and tweets all by email using Postling’s “reply by email” feature. You can also get a daily email about all the new activities that occurred across your various social media accounts.

Postling offers a lot of unique features. They’re especially powerful if you run an offline business and need to monitory reviews.

Tool #9: Cadence9

For those dealing with multiple accounts and brands, Cadence9 is a social marketing automation software that allows to automate your social media and content marketing team workflow and content posting. It allows to have multiple users, assign tasks and track followers engagement.

Tool #10: Widgets

One of the best ways to integrate your social media into your blog or website is through widgets. Widgets are little bits of code you can install that add social media functionality to an otherwise static page.

By using widgets, you can take feeds from your Twitter account or your Facebook account and put them all on your website.

People will be able to see all your recent posts, as well as posts on your feed, depending on how your feed is setup.

Remember that integration goes both ways – You want to integrate your social media profile, but you also want to integrate your blog.

These are the most powerful social media integration tools available at your disposal. Using these tools, you’ll be able to manage your social media quickly, integrate your social media profiles, post quickly, manage your reputation, build communities and more.

Top 10 Social Media Integration Tools from Nicole Munoz

10 Tips on How to Avoid Looking Like a Robot on Social Media

by Nicole Munoz

One of the big risks to using social media integration is looking impersonal or robot-like. After all, if you’re regularly posting updates from your blog to your social media, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it’s automated. If people start feeling like you’re not interacting with them personally, they’ll disconnect.

Social media integration can be a very powerful way to speed up your social media strategy and get more done in less time. However, it’s crucial that you’re also aware of whether or not you appear automated.

Here are the top 10 ways you can integrate your social media without looking like a robot.

#1: Respond to Personal Messages En Mass

Social media integration tools will allow you to check all your messages in one easy to access location.

For example, sign into Hootsuite and you can see all your Twitter DMs and Facebook PMs in two different columns. You can quickly and easily identify new messages that you need to respond to.

One of the best ways to make sure you don’t come across as a robot is to respond to every single private message or direct message that gets sent your way.

Build personal connections with the people in your network. Social media integration tools can help you save time when you’re responding to these messages. If people can’t get a hold of you, chances are they’ll feel like you’re not being authentic. If you’re regularly dialoguing with your audience however, it’s very hard to come across as a robot.

#2: Add Personal Comments to Cross-Posts

Whenever you do a cross-post, add personal comments. Don’t just use an automated system to do all the work.

For example, let’s say you have a system that lets you cross post from your blog to your Twitter. Whenever you write a new blog post, it’ll create a shortened link for you and post it to your Twitter.

Instead of using an automated tool to do it, add a personal touch. Share the blog post with a brief one-liner from you about what the post is or why people should read it.

Just this one personal touch can change the perception of the post from “automated” to “highly personal” and “added value.”

#3: Reach Out to People Who Regularly Interact With You

One fantastic way to appear more personal is to be more, well, personal.

Use your social media integration tools to follow a variety of different feeds, including feeds from all your Twitter accounts and Facebook pages.

Look for people who’re regularly participating in your feeds. Look for people who’re retweeting your content, commenting on your content or sharing your content.

Whenever you spot someone who you think appreciates your work, reach out to them directly. Send them a quick thank you note. Begin building a personal relationship.

In reality, there’s no such thing as what your “social media” thinks about you. Your social media is just the collection of all your one on one relationships. Deepen your relationships with the people who matter most and you’ll have zero risk of coming across as a robot.

#4: Look at the Birds Eye View of Your Posts

Do you sound repetitive? Do your posts have soul? Are you connecting with your audience, or are you merely putting out “clinically good” content that doesn’t have any personality?

When you look at your social media on a post by post basis, it’s very hard to gauge what the overall “vibe” of your social media messages is. However, when you take a step back and really look at your posts from a bird’s eye view, you can learn a lot about your own voice.

Using your social media integration tools, load up all the feeds of your previous posts in one screen.

Then read through your last 10 to 20 updates on each of your various accounts. What would someone who only saw these updates think? Were they warm and inviting, or did they seem corporate and stiff?

Use social media integration tools to get a bird’s eye view of your current strategy. This will allow you to see your brand the way your audience sees it. Then make chances accordingly.

#5: Retweet and Share More Often

If you’re only posting content, blog updates and tweets about yourself or your company, you won’t look like an authentic social media user. Real Twitter users also read other people’s feeds, follow other people they’re interested in, retweet great posts and share on Facebook.

Unfortunately, if you’re managing multiple Twitter accounts and multiple Facebook pages, it can be very difficult to do this in a personal yet systematic way.

Social media integration allows you to do this, without looking like it’s automated. You’ll be able to load up feeds from all your different accounts in one place, then quickly identify posts that you find valuable. You can then retweet or share those posts all from one screen.

This won’t appear robotic because you’ll only be retweeting or sharing things you genuinely like. People will get more of a sense for the kinds of content that you value.

It’ll help you appear more like a real person, rather than someone who just posts updates.

#6: Write and Rewrite Your Posts to Increase Expressiveness

One of the best things about using social media integration tools is the ability to schedule posts in advance. Instead of writing a post once and having it be final, you have all your future posts laid out in one place.

While this saves a lot of time and makes things a lot more efficient, it also has one side benefit: You get to change your posts after you’ve written them, as long as they haven’t gone live yet.

The best writers in the world often spend hours writing and re-writing paragraphs. Stephen King was once said to have spent a whole day writing and rewriting just one sentence.

Assuming that you can write a status update or tweet and have it land just right on the first go simply isn’t realistic. Instead, why not write your tweets, then rewrite them, then rewrite them, then rewrite them until they’re maximally expressive and impactful?

The scheduling features of social media integration will allow you to do just that. Use these tools to refine your posts until your personality really comes out. Don’t let your posts come out stale or impersonal. Scheduling gives you the time you need to really perfect how your voice comes across.

#7: Do Something Spontaneous

Sometimes you want to meticulously plan out each and every one of your social media messages. On the other hand, sometimes you just want to be completely spontaneous.

Spontaneity is a great way to let your personality shine through. It’s a great way to let people get to know you. It’s also the only way you can respond to extremely fast current events.

Social media integration tools will allow you to be spontaneous in a big way. Instead of having to post one message, then log out of your Twitter account and back into another, you can just post your spontaneous message to all your accounts at once.

There’s nothing quite as ironic or vibe-killing as posting a “spontaneous” message across multiple networks over 30 minutes because you had to keep logging out and logging in. Instead, use social media integration tools to post spontaneous thoughts and events as they happen to all your networks.

#8: Post Different Content to Different Profiles

One thing that screams “automation!” is when you just constantly post the same content from one network to another. While not all of your social media followers will notice, enough of them will that it’ll seriously hurt your brand and reputation.

Yes, if you write a great blog post you’ll probably want to share it on Twitter and Facebook. Yes, if there’s something important going on at your company, you may very well want to share it on both networks.

But go out of your way to shift things up and make things a little different for each network. For example, re-word the way you introduce your blog posts. Or wait a week between posting the same content to each network.

That way, anyone who’s subscribed to both networks won’t get the sense that you’re mechanically posting across the board. Instead, they’ll get the sense that you’re personalizing your message to each network – Because you are.

#9: Respond to Questions Publically

When someone asks you a question in public, try to answer it in public. Use integration tools to scan all your networks regularly to see what kinds of topics people are talking and asking about.

If people see a lot of questions getting asked without an answer, they’ll be discouraged from asking questions of their own. They’ll get the sense that you’re not really looking out for them or trying to connect with them.

On the other hand, when people see that you take the time to answer questions in public, they’ll feel valued. They’ll feel more involved in your community and want to participate. You’ll appear more real and less robotic.

Watch for @replies and mentions. Talk to people who talk to you. Whenever a question is asked on your Facebook page or in a hashtag you created, try to answer it as quickly as possible.

Social media integration tools can help you get to these questions quickly and efficiently.

#10: Make Your Branding Personal

Don’t want to look like a robot? Make your branding personal.

Start with your Facebook cover and your Twitter profile picture. Pick a color scheme and graphic scheme that makes sense for your brand and make it as personal as possible.

Use your social media tools to create posts that go along with that brand. For example, if you have a vibrant brand, post fun and lively messages. On the other hand, if you’re branding yourself as an expert on a topic, make it a habit to answer questions in deep details.

Social media integration tools can make posting, answering questions and disseminating a core brand message much easier.

Your core brand should in some way be tied to your voice. It’s okay if you have a company whose image needs to be extremely personal. You can still add your voice to it. Even Google often uses phrases like “Don’t be evil” and “We made it suck less.” Figure out your brand internally, then use the tools available to you to proliferate that brand.
These are ten different ways you can make sure that you don’t come across robotic, monotonous or automatic when you’re integrating your social media. Social media integration can be a huge blessing when used properly. Just make sure you don’t tarnish your reputation by coming off as using computer generated content.