It’s a given–we all want to do more in less time with social media. The good news is that there are lots of tools to help automate your social networking activities.
Although I don’t encourage automating your whole experience (that would be missing the point), there are some useful productivity-boosters worth checking out.
1) Ping.fm: Want to update your Twitter status as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites all at the same time from one place? Ping is great for this. Tools like Ping are one of the top “secret weapons” of the most successful social media marketers. (Finally, a way to be in multiple places at one time! 
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So, if you have something to say to your Twitter followers but that you would also like to share with your Facebook fans and friends and your connections on LinkedIn, you can—without going to each site and logging in separately. Ping has the ability to update over 40 different social networks. This is a major time saver!
Plus, you can even create groups, so that if you only want to update LinkedIn and Twitter but not Facebook, for example, you can do that. It’s definitely worth exploring. (It’s also worth mentioning that HelloTxt is another service that has very similar capabilities. I just happened to have started and stuck with Ping.)
Ping also has a toolbar you can install for your browser, making it simple to update your social networks with a link to and description of any web page you are on.
2) Hootsuite: I consider this to be the ultimate Twitter tool—and its ability to automate so much of your Twitter experience is truly incredible. It’s definitely another top “secret weapon.” Hootsuite is free and web-based and here are just some of its most useful features:
• Pre-schedule tweets to go out ahead of time (great for “set it and forget it” marketing)
• View multiple columns to see @ replies, direct messages, keyword tracking and more
• Manage multiple Twitter profiles
• Have multiple administrators for your Hootsuite account
• Monitor keywords of your choice
• Integrate with Ping.fm to update many social networks including Facebook and LinkedIn
• Track statistics of how many people have clicked on the links in your tweets
• Automatically feed RSS to your Twitter stream
• Create groups of friends by simply dragging and dropping them into columns
I also love the “Hootlet” bookmarklet, which you simply drag to your browser toolbar so that you can quickly tweet out any web page you are viewing. 
3) Selective Twitter Status: If you use both Twitter and Facebook, you’ll want to take advantage of integrating the two in order to reach even more people without any extra effort.
Selective Twitter Status is an application you can add to your personal Facebook profile and/or Fan Page in order to update your Facebook status with your tweets. Once you have this application installed, you simply add #fb to the specific tweets you want to make your Facebook status as well.
4) Facebook Fan Page to Twitter tool: If you want to do the reverse and send your Fan Page status updates to Twitter, you can do that by using Facebook’s Twitter tool. This is really great because you are allowed to use over 140 characters for status updates on Facebook, so when you update Twitter (which has a 140 character limit) with a longer message, it inserts “…” along with a link back to your Fan Page so people can finish reading your update. This means more people are driven to your Fan Page from Twitter. 
Those are four of my favorites, and ones I use on a daily basis. Any other tools you would add to list? How do you manage your time with social media?
And if you’re ready to take your business to the next level with web 2.0 (and beyond!) tools and strategies, sign up to be on the priority list to be the first to hear all about my new 6 Steps to Kick Start Your Social Media Success System™!
Awesome breakdown Christine! I love Ping.fm, amazing time saver tool! HootSuit is great too. I keep going back and forth betweet that and Tweetdeck.
Anyone not using the tools you mentioned is truly missing out! Keep up the great work Christine
.-= Paul Cooley´s last blog ..6 Mistakes Most Entrepreneurs Make and How to Avoid Them =-.
So true Paul, Christine is a wealth of knowledge. I’m a huge fan of Hootsuite but haven’t used Ping.fm much yet.
One question I have: I’ve been afraid of irritating followers/friends by posting the same thing in different places. Therefore, I tend to post different things in each place for variety (and to encourage them to follow me in all spots). What is your take on this? Do you find that fans get annoyed by repeat content in multiple places?
Warmly,
Sarah Novak, Certified Expat Life Coach
“Helping Accompanying Spouses Reclaim their Identity!”
http://www.envisionlifecoaching.net
http://www.facebook.com/envisionlifecoaching
http://www.twitter.com/coachsarahnovak
http://www.inspiredoverseasliving.com
Great Post.. I have been using Ping and Hootsuite for 6 mnths.
I couldn’t live without them!
Hootsuite is the first thing I tell people to get on if they want to use Twitter to it’s full advantage without taking hrs of your day to do so.
.-= John Paul´s last blog ..CPA Is The Only Way To Make Money Online Without Making A Sale =-.
Christine, every time I visit you I’m more impressed with your large bank of social media common sense and effective tools. I’m glad you’ve made it your business to stay up on all this in service to your clients and readers.
.-= Tom Volkar / Delightful Work´s last blog ..Is Your Business Authentic? =-.
@Paul–Thanks Paul! I used Tweetdeck for a while but it always seemed to be such a resource hog on my computer so I switched over to Seesmic Desktop. But now I love Hootsuite for many of the same things that Tweetdeck does–and I actually like how it’s web-based.
@Sarah–Hi Sarah, regarding your question–think of it this way: the people who see your tweet on Twitter aren’t necessarily going to be on Facebook as well at that time or LinkedIn, etc. I think it’s a balance. You don’t have to send every status update to all of your social networks all the time. I mix it up. I find that different groups of people see my messages in different places. I usually update Twitter more in one day than I do LinkedIn and Facebook so I send only certain updates to Facebook for example. Ping’s great for that because they allow you to group your status updates to include what networks you want.
@John–Agreed! I am surprised more people don’t use Hootsuite but I think it’s just that they aren’t aware of it. I’m trying to spread the word.
Tom–Thanks so much, I appreciate that! (And I like how you’ve called it “social media common sense”–I might need to start using that.
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Excellent post Christine! I also don’t see why everyone has this love affair with TweetDeck…HootSuite 2.0 is clearly superior. Enjoyed learning about the Facebook/Twitter options. I do agree that I post things differently on both platforms but it’s good to know that the automation tools are there at our disposal should we need them!
Looking forward to your future posts!
- Neal
.-= Neal Schaffer´s last blog ..7 Reasons to Start Blogging in 2010 =-.