The world of social media is changing rapidly. Many of us have played around with tools like
Twitter and Facebook, usually for personal uses, but these tools can be very
useful as professional resources, as well.
They can be used in the classroom for educational purposes and also for
marketing programs or communicating and networking with others in your
field.
One common issue that comes up in discussions about managing
social media networks is that it can become overwhelming to keep up a profile
with so many different sites. How does
one manage so many online identities? A
tool that I’ve found that works well is HootSuite. HootSuite is a dashboard that allows you to
manage multiple social network accounts from one place. You can even schedule tweets/status updates
and submit the same text to post in multiple accounts at one time. The free version lets you connect up to 5
different accounts from sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
I’ve found this very useful in managing my own social media
presence. While I have a personal
Facebook profile, I also manage a Facebook page for a community service
organization to which I belong, and I also manage their Twitter account. I use HootSuite to schedule updates of
upcoming events to both Facebook and Twitter for their accounts
simultaneously. I can go through the organization’s
event calendar and schedule repeated reminders for events to be posted as they
get closer without having to do it the minute I want the message posted. It’s very convenient! I also use Twitter myself personally to
follow ed tech topics. I find the
interface on HootSuite is easier and I use this site whenever I use Twitter.
If you’re using social media and want to find out about how
wide your circle of influence is, you should check out Klout. Klout is a site that creates a score for you
based on your interactions within social media.
Anyone who has a Twitter or Facebook account can sign in; then you
connect your various social media accounts to Klout and it calculates a score
based on who has “liked” or “retweeted” your comments. What these scores
actually mean has yet to be seen, but it is interesting that people (and
employers) are looking at this. Wired magazine recently featured an article on Klout.
If you’re curious about exploring these tools, or learning
to use HootSuite, feel free to contact me and I’d be happy to show you what I’m
doing and what your options are.
