The social media sphere is busy, it’s 24/7. People often ask me, how do I have a social marketing strategy without being chained to my desk? The answer is use tools. You need to automate what you can, semi-automate what you can’t. Automation is not a dirty word on social media if used correctly.

Here are 5 Ways To Run Your Social Media in less than 30 minutes each day!

1.  Schedule

Scheduling your news and topics means you are using your time effectively. If you have a global market, you can’t really be expected to stay up 24/7 and send manual updates at particular times aimed at peak times in different time zones. It’s an impossible and unrealistic expectation. By automating these types of updates, you will be using your time effectively as well as optimizing the timeliness of your marketing. You can use MarketMeSuite to schedule from inside the app, and tools like Bufferapp to have as a handy plugin in your browser if you see some interesting content.

2. Automate RSS

RSS feeds are a great way to disseminate informative and useful content to your audience, and it’s automated! Many blog platforms allow you to connect your blog to your social media accounts so that when you publish a blog post, a link to it automatically gets posted to your social media entities such as your Facebook business Page or Twitter feed. This enables your friends and followers to get instant notifications when you publish new content, and can save you the time of manually posting links yourself every time you publish something new. RSS feeds are a great way of getting your content, articles, and news out to the masses, just be sure to give the author credit. If I were to tweet out all blog posts from DIYmarketers.com, I’d want to set up a “prefix” to say “New on @diymarketers” or “RT @diymarketers.”

3. Auto DM

This is a feature to be used with care. While it’s not always appropriate for individual accounts, it’s a huge help for business accounts to send a “hey, thanks for following me, and here’s a link to my blog…”

You can cycle through different messages, and turn them on and off as you need. Think of it as an extra little push to get your customers to engage with you outside of Twitter. Be sure to track replies though! If someone thanks you for it, send a real time DM acknowledging it.

Here is a quick list of examples to create the perfect DM:

• DO say thank you for following- This shows a human side to your business which the follower can connect with
• DO provide them with only relevant and useful information-  For example, provide a link to your websites blog which means they stay up to date with all your business news and promotions. You could also send them to a link which has tutorials or helpful documentation so they know where to locate what they need immediately.
• DO send them details of how to get help and support if they need it. For example, here at MarketMeSuite we let new followers know they can tweet :@MarketMeHelp if they have any questions through the DM service. It’s quick, informative and to the point, everything a DM should be.
• DO NOT send more than one DM to a new follower. This is vital, just have one Message go out per user or you will be flooding them  unnecessary  information.  If it doesn’t fit in one DM, then write a blog post explaining that you are grateful for their interest, add your business details and help information and link to that in a single DM. Sending more than one looks spammyand messy, avoid this if you can.

4. Unfollow

This is a “semi automated” part of your social 30 minutes because Twitter has a firm stand on unfollowing behind the scenes. In other words, it MUST be user controlled. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it quickly! With MarketMeSuite you can populate an entire list of who is not following you back and decide to dump or keep.

A handy feature is that if there’s someone who has no hope of following you back (like @oprah), but you enjoy reading their posts, you can whitelist them so they stop showing up in the unfollow list.

5. Geo-Target

The socialsphere is big and busy and you have to cut through the clutter. It’s often very hard (and time consuming) to connect with the people who are actually potential customers. Using tools to geo-target helps you shave hours off the search. Below is a pic of “reply campaigns” in MarketMeSuite which is what I use to geo-target.

Imagine you’re a chiropractor. With MarketMeSuite you can actually geo-target a campaign just to 25 miles from your office.

This type of geo-targeted tweeting is a tremendous time saver. As nice as it is to chat with someone with back pain in Norway, you need to fill your office in New York. The results are pretty staggering too. 85% of replies sent using this method elicit some kind of reply.

Key Take Away

Only you know your company, its ethics, and your audience, so it’s up to you to determine what works best for your business. Just always be sure to have that touch of humanity in your online presence, because behind every computer sits an actual person, not a robot. But with that said, part of being human is that you don’t have time to be at your desk 24 hours a day and it’s overwhelmed with everything that’s going on in social media. Use automation and semi-automation to maintain a presence and cut through that clutter, and focus on being effective on social media.

Attention Small Business Experts!  Here’s a New Way to Add Dollars to Your Bottom Line!

There is nothing that a marketing person loves more than finding new ways to add customers and profitable revenue to the bottom line.  So when the folks over at Mindflash approached me with their latest innovation, I got really excited because I just knew that you would be too.

A Little About Mindflash

I was originally approached by Mindflash when they launched their online training platform.  At that time, this product was aimed at larger organizations who had internal training needs and wanted to save money on expensive training software.  Since my audience consists of small businesses and consultants who could only dream of being big enough to HAVE a training department, it wasn’t a good fit.

But NOW – Mindflash has launched some new features that I think you will REALLY love.   The Mindflash Marketplace is an online platform where anyone can sell a course or presentation at absolutely no cost.

This new feature, which developed out of the requests of many previous Mindflash users, provides an exciting new way for experts, consultants, and small business experts and professional trainers to make money with their hard earned knowledge, as well as a way for those seeking new skills to avoid hiring programmers or dealing with merchant accounts. With over seven billion ‘How-to’ Google searches to date, Mindflash Marketplace fills the high demand for high-quality online instructional content.

How Does Mindflash Marketplace Work?

Anyone can use Marketplace to create professional courses from content they already have. Some example courses include ‘Negotiations’, ‘Social Media Business Basics’, ‘Closing the Deal’, and ‘Transit Systems’. It all starts with a blank course template. Here you can upload files (e.g. Powerpoint, video or Youtube formats, PDF’s, etc.), make Quizzes, Descriptions, and more. Users can setup reminder and course management details, Question Types, Handouts, and three different types of Certificates. Mindflash lets you preview your test before it goes live. It also provides a full suite of reporting programs to track how well your courses are selling, as well as a way to invite trainees yourself. There’s also a feature that allows customers to contact the instructor, which can be setup as well, and ways to link to your course through your blog or email. Once all this is done, you just decide the price. The minimum is $9.99. Once the course is live, customers can preview the first three slides then purchase your course with just a click.

Revenue Sharing With Mindflash Marketplace

There are no setup or subscription fees with Mindflash. The fees are commission-based, meaning Mindflash will take a small percentage of money made through the course (though even this fee is waived in the beta, which will go through the end of October). The commission is 15%. All transactions will be handled through credit card, though Mindflash handles all the necessary processing fees. Customers will use a PayPal account to get their payments to you. At the moment, funds are dispersed through Paypal every two weeks. There are additional plans in the works for commission discounts for high volume sellers (those making $10,000+/month). And once your courses start selling, Mindflash provides an platform to track your various earnings. Again, all this is totally free.

Why Choose Mindflash Marketplace?

There’s no question that the Mindflash Marketplace is the first service of its kind. Similar sites have a much different fee structure. Digital Chalk, for example, has a $299 start-up cost, as well as a per course listing cost and a transaction cost. With these types of programs users can lose hundreds of dollars before they even sell anything. Mindflash is a great platform for both experienced professionals and those just starting out looking for an easy, low-risk solution.

Additionally, though it has limited functionality at the moment, Mindflash plans to do a lot of the marketing work for you. If you have a blog, web page, or other established network anywhere in the world, Mindflash Marketplace will help you get the word out. Right now there’s a Public Course link that can be pasted around the web, and Mindflash hopes to integrate the marketplace with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter within the next month.

Mindflash Marketplace is the perfect way for industry experts to monetize that expertise, especially in an economy where supplemental income and marketable skills are increasingly important. It’s a simple, innovative way for millions of people to connect and share resources, and it’s all entirely free. There’s no reason not to give it a shot and make money sharing your knowledge with the world.

A big part of online promotion is creating content that can be shared.  This includes email newsletters, article submissions, press release distribution, and blog post writing.  Social media is a great place to share this high quality content once it has been created.  Social media is important for numerous reasons.  It helps to build a brand and improves SEO.  Businesses are realizing that it’s not just a fad and that it’s time to get involved, if they haven’t already.  One of the most important decisions that needs to be made is who will be the social media voice that represents the company and brand.

The first thing that needs to be decided is whether the voice should be a brand or a person.  Should the Twitter profile that’s promoted for business use be “CompanyX” or “JaneDoe” (President and Founder of Company X).  This usually depends on the company.  If it’s a product based company, it might be easier and more acceptable to use the brand name.  If it’s a service based company, it’s more about forming relationships and establishing trust with an actual person.  Certain situations, especially in the service industry, need that personality.  People like to put a face with the company name.

Once you’ve decided that the voice should be represented by a person at the company, the next step is to determine who that person should be.  Depending on the company, the right person differs, but it could be anyone including the owner, President, CEO, or VP of Marketing.  This decision is extremely important because the brand will be built in this person’s name.  You need to think about whether or not this person will still be working at the company in 2 years, 5 years, or 10 years.  If the brand is built in their name, and then they leave, they take all of that brand equity along with them and it’s like starting all over again.  The name needs to be consistent across all marketing channels including all business and social profiles.  One of the possible dangers of using a person is that the personal and professional sometimes blend together.  If an account is being used for business reasons, the content needs to remain professional at all times.

It’s also important to consider if more than one person should represent the brand.  For a small business, only one person should be the voice of the company.  If there are too many people it’s not consistent and could lead to confusion.  Seeing one name promotes brand recognition.  People see the name over and over and get who that person is representing.  The brand behind the name is less recognizable as more names are used.  For a large corporation that has numerous divisions, it is more appropriate to have multiple people representing the brand because they can represent the various divisions or products lines.  In this case, using only one name will cause too much clutter since the information isn’t relevant to everyone.

Determining the social media voice is the first step in establishing and building a presence in the social media space.  This is a decision that will affect major online marketing initiatives, so it needs to be made wisely.

This post originally appeared on Strategy Stew — because that’s the blog that attracted the #WordCarnival host, Tea Silvestre.  I’m posting here because I’d like you to consider doing something similar in your industry.  Blog carnivals aren’t just for bloggers – this is a truly creative way to engage other thought leaders in your industry and build wonderful and profitable relationships.

I’m blown away by the speed at which online media changes.

Yesterday I participated in a Blog Carnival.  Basically this is how bloggers build traffic and comments to their sites when they first get started.  It used to be very popular “back in the day” — which was about five or six years ago.  CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE THAT?

“Back then” all the big names were having these blog carnivals.  Those people have grown their brand and their readership lists and are now “over” the whole blog carnival thing.  But there are millions of newbies out there who have yet to understand the power and the fun of blog carnivals.

Did I say that blog carnivals help you build traffic and readership for your blog or site?  I’m saying it again if I didn’t. I’m not sure why the people I interact with don’t talk or do blog carnivals so much, but it’s still a powerful tool — especially if you’re new to the online marketing world.

Here’s an updated primer on blog carnivals

1. Have a blog. It helps to have a blog, otherwise, why bother.
2. Participate in a blog carnival. Check out www.blogcarnival.com.  It’s a great place to start learning about carnivals and participating in one.  Don’t try to host one until you’ve participated.
3. You troll the blogs in your subject area and find ones you like.  You invite them to participate in the carnival.  That part is easy.  Then it gets a little sticky.
4. Find a niche in BlogCarnival.com and submit your article. That’s really all there is to that.  In fact the hardest thing will be finding a niche you want to participate in.
5. Read the posts. Then you go over to the other posts and read their articles, post comments, etc.  It’s a great way to meet people and build relationships

The next thing you’d want to do is look at hosting your own blog carnival.  My new friend Tea Silvestre did just that and added some new twists to her #wordcarnival by adding a free converence line so that you can participate even if you’re not at Twitter.  I can honestly say I hadn’t thought of that.

It was a smart and cozy group and I was happy to meet some wonderful, creative folks.

Hmmm.  Maybe I’ll participate in some more blog carnivals from now on.

This post is part of a “Blog Carnival” that’s being hosted by Tea Silvestre from The Word Chef Blog.  The theme of the carnival is “Building Business Relationships” it’s part of a series of posts on the subject from a variety of small business experts.

Building referrals is just as important now as if was in the past.  In fact, I think it’s much easier and more cost effective now to develop and build those relationships than it had been in the past.  What I think is more difficult is keeping those referral conversations alive and focused.

Social media tools make it infinitely easier to find and connect with people, but because so many social media tools use a “timeline” format you can see and start a conversation one minute and forget about it the next simply because the screen has been refreshed with new conversations and posts.  This makes it difficult to move referral and opportunity conversations forward.

Here’s my killer time-saving and stress-reducing recipe for cooking up new business using a social media based referral strategy.

Total Time: About 2 hours to create social media accounts and generate list and about an hour per day managing your system

Yield: Profitable New Opportunities and Customers

Difficulty: Easy Peasy if you stay with it

Ingredients:

• No more than 3 specific marketing goals
• Twitter account – in your name, brand name or company name
• Facebook account
• LinkedIn account
• Try Nimble.com as a tool to integrate your social media conversations and create action items from those conversations
• A list of about 200 names, you can create a list or just go down your email address book and pull the people you think can help you get referrals

Directions:

1. Set your marketing goals and objectives. These goals should look like something like this: “Launch a webinar series targeting pet shop owners in March” or “Find 5 market research contacts at big box stores who want to use our online survey tool”.  Setting clearly defined marketing goals will guide your social media networking strategies.
2. Create a list of 200 referral contacts.  Use your email database to create a list of 200 people with whom you want to have referral relationships.  Go through that list and label people “friends and family” then “partners” and finally “influencers”.   As you are labeling and grouping your contacts, you might get ideas about the ways in which they might be able to help you achieve your goals i.e. “Introduce me to the CEO of company X”.  I’d recommend that you write that next to their name while you are thinking about it, it will save you time later.
3. Work your LinkedIn Contacts.  Go through your list of 200 and find everyone on LinkedIn.  If you are not connected to them, connect with them.  If they do not have a LinkedIn account, then you will have to manage that relationship via email and face-to-face methods only.  As you are doing that, you can send them an email message touching base and asking to schedule a catch-up call to discuss what they’ve been up to and how you can help each other.  You can also share what you’ve been up to and what you are looking for – they might respond with a connection or introduction on the spot.    Another great idea is to leave an endorsement for people as you check their presence on LinkedIn.  Leaving an endorsement for them will prompt them to leave one for you and to get in touch with you to catch up.  It’s a wonderful surprise and great “gift” to receive.
4. Search Twitter for conversations around your goals.  Notice what the conversations are and who is having the conversations.  Create a Twitter list of the people labeled “Networking” or maybe even around your goals such as “market research” (to use our previous example).  Take 15 minutes a day to monitor the conversations on that Twitter list and engage in conversations with those people.  Follow their links, re-tweet their content, comment on their links and articles.  Of course, don’t forget to search for your list of 200 on Twitter and add them to your Twitter list.  This way you are tracking their conversations as well.
5. Use Facebook to Network with Friends and Family.  Many businesses are hip to creating Facebook Fan pages, but your personal page may be more powerful as a networking tool.  I recommend posting pictures of what you are up to around your business and sharing with friends and family.  A friend of mine is in the promotional items business and often takes pictures of creative T-shirts and other items at trade shows that he things are very effective.  It tells us where he is that day and it gives us ideas that we can use for our promotional projects.  If you own a restaurant, take a picture of the daily special, if you are making a sales call or want to connect with someone, just ask your friends and family.  But don’t oversell on Facebook, it will be perceived as spamming and can backfire.
6. Check out Nimble.com.   My new favorite social media and sales management tool is Nimble.com.  It was developed by Jon Ferrera, the CEO of the successful sales CRM tool Goldmine in response to his peeve of having referral and opportunity conversations fall through the cracks.  Nimble will integrate your email, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts and show all the conversations in one stream or separate streams.  What I love about it is that it allows you to see all these conversations in one place and then you can also create an action item for yourself around that conversation.  Nimble is basically a social CRM tool that increases the value and ROI of your social media conversations.

Now, you might think all this will take an entire day’s worth of work.  Well, I won’t lie to you – the set-up probably will.  In reality, you can spend a day planning and strategizing your referral system – but once it’s done and you’ve focused your efforts, all it will take is about 15 to 30 minutes a day of working your system to keep those relationships and sales opportunities flowing your way.

This post is part of the  The Word Chef Blog  Blog Carnival hosted by Tea Silvestre.   Join us for a fun and informative  1-hour Tweet Chat about Business Relationships, how to build them and nurture them on Thursday, September at 1 pm Eastern / 4 pm Pacific.  Your participation in the Tweet Chat enters you into a drawing for a $50 Amazon Gift Card.

One of the biggest challenges for many bloggers is to come up with new ideas for content on a regular basis.  Sure, it’s easy to just throw something together but that’s not really the point of blogging.  The whole point is to provide your target audience with quality content that establishes your place as an expert within a given industry or niche.  Even the best bloggers face writers block and whine to themselves, “I have nothing to write about today!”  When this happens (and it will), why not look back at an old post and write a retrospective post that sheds new light on the topic and link to the original post?

As time goes on, your knowledge of a particular subject matter should evolve.  It’s likely that the industry that you are blogging about has evolved as well.  Depending on how long you have been blogging, you may have lots of great content that could use an update.

To start, look back at some of your “best of” posts including:

Posts That Got Lots of Comments

Clearly, not everyone that reads your blog takes the time to comment on it.  Many blog readers skim the content, get the point, and are on to the next thing.  If you have an old blog post that got many more quality comments than usual the subject matter must have been important to them.  Why not revisit it?

Posts That Received Lots of Traffic

Check your analytics data to see if there are any posts that received an unusually high number of visitors.  What was the post about?  What new information can you add?

Hot/Timely Topics

Smart bloggers keep up with industry trends and write posts about these topics.  Timely topic posts could range from something as captivating as a scandal within the industry to something exciting like an innovative new product launch.  What has happened since then?  Is the scandal still relevant?  Did the product turn out to be a dud?

Your Favorites

There’s no doubt that there are some blog posts that you are more proud of than others.  Point out what you like so much about them and explain the writing experience and process.  Include what you might change if you were writing it now.

Best of the Worst

It may be hard to admit, but there are probably posts that you look back at with slight embarrassment and think, “Really, I wrote that?”  While you might not want to draw attention to those posts, they are evidence that you have grown and your audience will probably appreciate that.  Pointing out your own flaws and recognizing mistakes that you might have made in the past humanizes you and makes you more relatable.

Just because your blog posts are categorized in the “published” section of your blogging platform, that doesn’t mean that they are no longer valuable.  In addition to creating retrospective blog posts, browsing old posts can sometimes spark a brand new idea.  Taking a look back can be a great strategy when you are really strapped for ideas, but don’t rely too heavily on it.  You never want to be accused of living in the past!

About the Author: Nick Stamoulis is a Boston SEO consultant and the President and Founder of Brick Marketing, a search engine marketing and SEO services company.

Involver is an easy to use Facebook Tab Tool that integrates social media channels into your Facebook page

I visit a lot of Facebook business pages. I’m always poking around, checking out different small businesses, liking and commenting. That’s part of what being an internet marketer is all about.

In many cases, the Facebook page is my first point of contact with a business. When I get there, I’m looking for the goods. I want to see what they are all about and what they have going on.

More often than not though, I’m greeted by pretty well nothing. Sure, there’s the info tab. But the navigation guide on the left is pretty bleak and leaves me wondering, is there anything else you’re doing online?

Creating tabs on your Facebook page is a golden opportunity to highlight what else your company is up to on the web. Many businesses shy away from them, however.

They’re not sure how to get things set up.

Or they break out in hives when they hear works like HTML code.

Or they search for apps and get inundated; so many of them are glitchy, hard to set up or come with a fee.

The tool that I’m going to share with you today is one of the easiest Facebook tab integrations that I have yet to come across. There are TONS options available, but this one stood out for me because of how simple it is to set up. And the best part? Totally free!

Facebook tab tool – Involver

The folks at Involver (http://www.involver.com/applications/) allow you to choose 2 social media channels to integrate in your page. (You can go beyond this with their paid options, but the costs are a little high for a small business). My favourites personally are the Twitter, Flickr and You Tube integrations.

In a few clicks, you can have these up and running on your Facebook page. Just follow these instructions:

• Log into Facebook as yourself the person (not the page)
• Go to http://www.involver.com/applications and click the “Install” button on the app you want to integrate
• You will then be prompted to choose which page you want to add the application to. Select your business page.
• A button will come up, asking you to “Add”. Click it.
• You will then be asked to fill in your company name, and your phone number. (they will only ask you this with your first app). Plunk in your info, click to accept the terms and hit “Save changes”.
• You will then be brought to a page where you can get the tab configured and link it to the social media account. So for Twitter for example, it will ask you to add your username (don’t forget to click the “add” button). Once you have the settings filled in, click “Save changes.” Note – you are always able to go back and adjust the settings.
• Go back to your page, and you will see your new tab. (If you don’t see it right away, give it a couple of minutes). Your likers can now check out all your recent activity.
• Power tip: If you want to be a little more clever, you can change the default name that’s generated on your tab. So, for the Twitter tab, the default name is, you guessed it, “Twitter”. Go to the “edit” area of your page and click “apps.” Find the app that you added and click “Edit settings.” You can now enter a “custom tab name.”

To see an example in action, have a look at my You Tube tab (http://www.facebook.com/MartinaIring?sk=app_57675755167) that was created with Involver and note how I’ve customized the name to “Small biz videos”.

Use Involver to Create Customers Out of Facebook Visitors

Your Facebook page should not be a standalone entity. To be effective, it needs to integrate your communications and drive your Facebook fans deeper into your business and deeper into the content you produce. Some fans may never go to your website again after the first visit (or maybe they never even visited it in the first place!).

By adding these tabs, you can encourage your likers to check you out on other online channels, expose them to what you’re up to and hopefully connect with you there too. And if they’re say not on Twitter yet, they can still get the benefit of all the great stuff you tweet. You are creating a page that is a valuable source of information.

You’re also boosting your credibility. You’re giving off the impression that your page is well cared for and that you’re darn savvy. These tabs look pretty fancy, don’t you think? So they were easy as pie to implement. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me…

So give Involver tabs a try and come back and let me know how it went. Feel free to share links to your Facebook page so I can come and check you out. And if you have other applications that you love for getting tabs, let us know.

On Monday July 25, 2011 between 7:00pm and 8:00pm ET there’s going to be a Tweet Chat about the SMBInfluencer Awards.

What are the SMBInlfuencer Awards?

The small business space has become increasingly crowded and overwhelming.  Even if you troll around the small business internet space, it’s unbelievably easy to be confused about who is an expert in what and which companies provide what service.

This is why co-founders Anita Campbell, publisher of the award winning Small Business Trends and Ramon Ray from SmallBizTechnology.com put their heads together and came up with a way to recognize the companies, leaders, gurus and media organizations that help and influence small business every day.

This project started in June with nominations pouring in from all over the internet.  And the voting period started about a week or so ago.  To get some more background and see the field of SMBInfluencers, visit the SMBInfluencer site and browse around.  Feel free to vote for the people who have influenced you and helped you in your business.  You can vote daily and you can vote for more than one person.  So head over there and give it a try.

Join the #SMBInlfuencer Tweet Chat (Use Hashtag #BBSMBchat)

If you’ve never been in a tweet chat, you will find this an engaging and thrilling experience.  A tweet chat is a live conversation about a specific topic that is going on in Twitter.

You can participate in this Twitter chat by joining us on Twitter — search on the hashtag #BBSMBChat and weigh in withyour tips, insights and ideas. Or follow the action at the Tweetchat room: http://tweetchat.com/room/BBSMBchat

For all the details about the Tweet Chat and the SMBInlfuencer awards – Read the press release for SMBInfluencer Awards and Tweet Chat (#BBSMBchat)

Do it yourself marketing has seen several evolutions in the past several years. With the advancement of internet technology and then the social media revolution, DIY marketing has had to make several adjustments. In many ways, marketing has become intrinsically married to the internet and social media culture. For many DIY marketers, this can be a struggle. While it’s impossible to market something without it being seen or heard by the public, it is also a challenge to manage new technologies and multiple social media accounts. These three tools can help you manage your various social media accounts for simpler and more successful marketing.

1. TweetDeck: This application is by far one of the most popular social media managers available. Allowing users to view their Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, and Twitter accounts all from one interface, TweetDeck simplifies social media for the mega user. Use TweetDeck to stay up to date on local events and marketing opportunities, while also, easily managing your correspondence with customers and business associates on your various platforms. Tweetdeck enables you to divide your contacts into columns, so that you can separate specific groups of people into different areas. This allows you to manage your marketing schemes more quickly and easily.

2. Gist: This tool allows users to collect all of their contacts from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, and more in one centralized location. This organizational help can be invaluable for marketers trying to manage their network. Gist provides you with the latest news, blog posts, and tweets from anyone in your professional network when you want to receive it and where you want to receive it. Because Gist is so customizable, it can be extremely useful for nearly any user. By gathering the essential information from your inboxes and social networks, Gist provides the perfect way to speed up your marketing potential. Use Gist to become more productive with marketing and connecting to professional contacts.

3. Ping.fm: While Gist is more focused toward organizing your many social media contacts to simplify managing networks and new updates, Ping.fm focuses on making posting to various platforms simpler. This tool allows users to ping a message or data to multiple social media accounts from one location. This can be especially useful for DIY marketers, hoping to get their company or product seen through social media outlets. Ping allows you to select which accounts you want to post to and really speeds up the process of getting your voice out there.

With all of these tools and services free to download and use there is really no reason DIY marketers looking for some aid with managing their busy social media accounts shouldn’t try all of them. Check them out and decide which services would be most valuable for you and your marketing efforts. Social media is a great way to get your ideas out to the public and to develop a strong professional network. As social media expands and evolves, tools and applications for managing these accounts will become ever more useful.

About the Author:  This guest post is contributed by Patricia Garza, who writes about gadget, technology, design, social media, e-learning related articles at online university rankings.

I’m always being asked for strategies to increase the ROI of social media.  DIYMarketers are busy folks and no one has any time to waste.

My advice to every crazy-busy  small business owner who has recognized that social media as a marketing vehicle is just too valuable to pass up is to streamline and automate wherever possible.

Tools to Help You Automate

My favorite automation tools are HootSuite, MarketMeSuite and SocialOomph.  Each of these social media apps allow you to manage many accounts and automate and schedule Tweets.   I allocate about 15 minutes a day to review my goals and strategies for social media and program any Twitter love I want to hand out to my community.

I use automation to do the things that don’t require any personal interaction.

• Promote your peeps. For example, if my clients are running a special contest or program, I create unique tweets with hashtags and links and program those to go out over the course of the day/week or month depending on the program.
• ReTweet. I pay attention to content that I’m always re-tweeting.  For example, I noticed over time that I re-tweet just about every quuote, cartoon or infographic that’s out there.  So I automate those items.  I also have people whose content I just love that I’ve automated as ReTweets.
• Manage Followers. I’ve automated my following using SocialOomph.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t clean my lists, it just means that I follow everyone and then about once a month, I spend an hour or so watching TV and cleaning my list.

Automation Doesn’t Build Relationships or Influence — Conversations Do

Don’t think that automating everything will bring you success — in fact, it will ruin your brand reputation.  Brand equity and follower responsiveness is built with personal conversations that you have with people and the action items that come from those conversations — and THIS is where so many of us fall down.  We have these great ideas, and we don’t follow through — and this is where Nimble becomes your saving grace.

Nimble is the Next Generation of Relationship Management – Social CRM

Anyone in sales and marketing is familiar with the CRM systems like SalesForce, ACT and Goldmine.  These systems were developed to manage customer relationships, but have evolved into sales and marketing management reporting systems rather than relationship development systems.

I have several clients who use all of these programs and they definitely bring value — but with 28 million small business owners and over 50% of them being solo-preneurs, these systems really do little to manage those all-important and profitable relationships.

The observations I’m making here aren’t just mine — these ideas come straight from Jon Ferrara, the developer and CEO of Goldmine and now, the creator of Nimble — the latest CRM tool for the social generation of small business owners.

Nimble Streamlines and Automates the Relationship Building Process Without Sacrificing the Personal Touch

I’m a Google Apps girl.  And on any given day, I can have as many as 15 tabs open in my browser.  I hop and skip from email to calendar to HootSuite and then click over to my Google task manager to make sure I am getting everything done that I’m supposed to do.  It’s crazy.

I’m always looking for tools that will help me reduce the number of tabs I have open in my browser.  Nimble is one of those tools.

Nimble combines the three core activities that every small business owner has to manage 80% of the time; email, calendar and social media conversations.

All you do is register, import your email accounts, primary Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts and your calendar.  That’s all there is to it.  The entire process took me about 3 minutes.  And I did it while chatting with Jon Ferrara about a completely unrelated topic.  So you won’t need a lot of concentration to complete the task successfully.

Nimble keeps things very simple — notice that I said PRIMARY social media accounts and calendar.   Nimble’s focus is on building profitable relationships and actions and not just on generating tweets, updates and content.

Nimble Ties Contacts, Conversations and Tasks Together

I haven’t used this feature much – but I’ve only been using the system for a day, so it’s just a matter of time.  Nimble gives you the ability to TIE TOGETHER your social conversation with contacts and tasks.  Here’s how it works.

Say you start a Twitter conversation with someone.  They ask you a question, you answer and then you start a conversation about a potential opportunity you want to create together — say you decide to partner on a webinar for example.  So now, you’re going to move the conversation to an email.

With every other system, the Twitter conversation is lost in the Twittersphere and then it continues in your email client.  Then you add tasks on your list.  In Nimble — ALL of these things become CONNECTED.  So that you can see that you started your relationship on Twitter and then migrated it to email and then you can create tasks from the email or the Twitter stream.  In the midst of all this, you’ve added this new person into your personal contact database.

Standard marketing strategy for maximizing on social media is to transition these virtual relationships into REAL LIFE, face-to-face interactions — and Nimble allows you to do that.

What You WON’T Find in Nimble — Today

One notable item that’s missing from Nimble that makes in practically incomparable to the current CRM systems is it’s lack of sales funnels and management reporting.  The focus is squarely on meeting people, building and generating leads and generating tasks based on these relationships.

That doesn’t mean that these items aren’t coming.  In my conversation with Jon, he shared the future of Nimble and you can expect to see all these items and more become part of the application — for a fee.

For now, I’d recommend that you sign up for Nimble and give it a shot.  It will take some practice to wean yourself away from the myriad tools you’re using now.  I still find myself going over to my email now and then before I remember that I can send messages from Nimble — but guess what?  That doesn’t matter because Nimble still keeps track of all that.  So you can send email from ANY device you like – and it will be connected.

Nimble is a super new tool. I’ve already noticed that I’ve increased the number of valuable interactions and conversations that I’ve had on all my social networks.  So far, I’ve found Nimble to be a valuable complement to my automated social media content.  It’s helped me to become a more interactive and influential part of the conversation.

Related articles

• CRM Daily | Nimble Offers Social Relationship Manager for Teams (serve4impact.com)
• Nimble Launches 2.0 – Unifying Team Contacts, Communications and Collaboration (diversity.net.nz)
• Using Nimble.com to Unify Your Social Network Contacts (readwriteweb.com)
• 5 Ways to Get Started With Social CRM Today (oneforty.com)
• Thinking one step ahead with social CRM (customerthink.com)
• Striking the Right Balance With Social CRM (customerthink.com)
• 5 Tools for Automating Twitter (blogs.sitepoint.com)
• 10 Steps to integrate CRM and Social Media (#SocialCRM, #scrm) (customerthink.com)
• The Top 5 Alternatives to Salesforce.com (customerthink.com)