1. Short and fast content:
Say you are an artist, you may not want to build your brand on how much you know about the history of the art form, or the current controversy surrounding the medium, per se.  Maybe you just want to show the world your personality and your work.  A full blog might be hard to fill out, too much work to post a simple picture or quote that lets your fans know what is going on in you world.  Tumblr provides an easy fix.  A simple and easy to use -read learn- platform, means that you don’t have to fuss with the logistics, you can just post.

Which brings me to my next point,

2. Easy set-up:
There is something to be said about the ease posting, but there is even more to be said about how easily one can get to the point of posting.  No one starts blog to spend all of their time setting it up and designing the pages and placing widgets, and while some, like us at KR Social Media Consulting, enjoy the set-up, most just want to start posting.  Tumblr is for that person.  You can seriously set up an account and post within minutes, maybe seconds over there.  There aren’t even any pesky sample posts or comments to delete (no offense).

3. Variety of media:
I love writing.  That, however, does not change the fact that every once in a while, I just want to post a picture to say my 1000 words.  No title.  No typing.  Tumblr makes this easier than ever with its 6 easy to understand icons. Check it out!

At the top, you can see the bar or icons.  When you log in, this page (dashboard), is what you get.  Useful, huh?  This makes it easy to write an entry, or simply post a quote you just heard.  Not too many clicks, or much set up, you just click on the icon that best represents what you want to post and voila!

4. Re-blogging:
Tumblr is an online community that encourages sharing.  They encourage re-blogging, or reposting, other users’ posts, they like to share the love and spread the info.  That’s great if you want to get your work, ideas, or great personality out to the masses.  Since it’s so easy to do, people do it all the time!

All in all, these are just a few things that make Tumblr a viable option for your blogging needs as a professional, or just as a regular person who wants to share yourself with the world!  So get out there and blog, but don’t forget to come back and post a link of your page, so that we can check you out.

Also, if you are in need of some guidance, feel free to ask us.  We love to help people and businesses get connected right!

It’s no hugh secret that we love content.  We believe that content curation and creation are both great tools for you business.  People are always searching for information, and the newer, more entertaining, and more useful it is, the better!  Well, where can I find such content?, you may ask.  The answer is simple.  Sometimes you just have to get out.  There are discoveries, new problems to solve, product reviews and reactions, and out-of-the-box ideas that you can encounter only when you network and socialize in the old fashioned way.  You know, in person.  Long before social networks and the world wide web were even a thought, people socialized face to face. We know, crazy! But they may have been on to something! The truth is there is still nothing in cyberland that can beat running into a friend on the street and having them demonstrate the cool new smartphone they just bought. No matter how much you fight it, that moment sticks and comes to mind the next time you’re shopping for a new device. Word of mouth and hands on experience still trump LCD everytime. That’s just the way it is.

Welcome back for another installment of KR Social Media Consulting Social Media Management Tool of The Week ( #smmtotw). We hope that everyone had a great holiday season filled with family, friends, memories, love and food! This weeks Social Media Tool of The Week is going to be a review of Sendible, this is a very complex online based program so this post will give you a brief overview.

Sendible has many different packages that are designed to fit many different budgets Starting at $9.99. They also offer a 30-day free trial with no credit card info required to give you a no strings attached opportunity to evaluate the product. There is a lot to try in thirty days, but they also have videos available on Youtube and a great customer service staff that is available to assist you with any questions that you have.

Sendible is an online based program and it’s one of the first that I have worked with that supports a large number of social media outlet options so that the you can manage all of your networks in one place. Here is a link to the > list< of the networks that are supported on Sendible. Two of the main services that we use at KR Social Media Consulting are Facebook and Twitter, and this program allows us to manage those as well as a plethora of other networks!

Sendible offers a way to manage your networks completely from your message box. The facebook account in sendible, for instance, it is very comprehensive, you can view your your profile comments, update your profile, update your fan pages, and see the activity in your groups as well as participate in those conversations. This is my favorite stream within sendible because you can monitor all of the conversations and comments in any group that you are a part of and comment right from your sendible desk top. Now, I mentioned earlier in the post that the packages start at $9.99 and with each package you only get a certain number of services; so if you are just starting and you don’t have the funds to get a bigger package there is one problem. The way the program is set up, each network that you manage is considered a service and each stream that you have within each network is considered a service. Each package sets a limit on how many of these “services” you can have. So, if you sign up for a cheaper package, you will quickly have to choose which services you want to manage in the program. If you have a number of profiles for your business of brand or if you manage profiles and networks for other businesses you may want to choose one of the bigger packages.

With everything in one place you have the ability to interact with your fans and follower, answer questions and have conversations with your fans and contributors in your groups as well as update your blog and sent out your weekly or monthly news letter all from the some place, without having to sign into multiple places. This program is one that will save you lots of time when managing your own social media as a small business owner or a social media manager. Please join us In the coming weeks as we will be breaking down some of the key components of Sendible.

Please leave you feedback, let us know what you think about this product and let us know what you think about our site. . Check back with us next week for another installment of the Social Media Management Tool of The Week also follow us on on twitter @krsmconsulting and like our Facebook Fan Page

*In related news, I fixed my cookie problem

Google Alerts is one of the components that made Google Reader the “Social Media Tool of the Week” last week.  While, within reader you can do way more with the specific searches that you have and what shows in the feed, Alerts is a great place to start if you don’t need the whole shebang.  In that post we said that we would post a quick explanation of what Google Alerts are since they are a key component to brand and product monitoring and management.  Since Google is an internet searching powerhouse, it is quite fitting that one of the places you look to see what people are saying about you is in the latest search results on Google.  This is a great test to see if your SEO strategies are working because it pulls from news, blogs, discussions, videos, and books.  Thus, all of the content that is out there and could pop up in a Google search is what populates your alerts of feeds.  You choose what you want to see, like the blog results for that last week for instance.  So, you see, Google Alerts is a nice little trick to have up your sleeve!

Well, the people over at Twitter are at it again.  There is yet another new user experience rolling out.  Tagline: A faster, simpler way to stay close to everything you care about.  Now, while I am a creature of habit, and these things usually annoy me more than make me breath a sigh of relief, I must say that they may be on to something this time.  Twitter has gone back to the basics and decided to streamline their overall experience, while adding features for business users as well.  I won’t go into all of the details because Twitter has a blog and landing page dedicated to explaining the when, how, and why behind these new changes.  What I will do, however, is highlight some of the basics just to give you a taste until the new site rolls out to you fully.

New Site Navigation

New Tab Menu

Twitter has developed what they’re calling the Tab Menu, that you see above.  These are the icons that will now grace all user experiences Twitter.  Every site (full or mobile), plug-in, and app that they own will have the same simple to understand menu icons that allow you to quickly get to what you want.  The idea is that once you are familiar with these icons you will more easily be able to “follow what you care about, connect with others and discover something new.”  They have changed the TweetDeck platform to mirror that changes too, since they own TweetDeck now.  Check out the new Twitter for Android profile page, and then meet me on the other side for the lowdown on the new site layout!

Twitter for Android

New Layout

The layout of the site has changed too.  Here is a screen shot of our homepage:

New Homepage

As you can see the content is now on the right, and your vitals (as I like to refer to them) are on the left.  You’ll also notice that the navigation tabs have the icons that I talked about above.  On this main full site, the words accompany the icons, this is not the case on the mobile site and in the Android and iPhone apps.  Profile pages will look like this:

New Profile Layout

Notice the extra head room! Another cool feature is that your media will be embedded into your tweets.  I’m guessing this is with the help of Twitter’s new native posting services that can replace services like bit.ly and TwitPic.  I know!  The plot thickens!

New Enhanced Profile

That brings us to the main event. Along with Twitter’s anouncement of the new site for all users, they have introduced “enhanced profiles” for business users. The idea is that business pages should feel more like the brand of the bussiness. They have allotted more head space for businesses to add images to their profile header, and will have the option for a promoted tweet that will act as a “sticky” post at the top of your page, and will automatically expand whatever media is in the tweet.  Check this out:

Disney Pixar Enhanced Profile

Cool, huh?  I think that this will be great for businesses.  Branding the entire online presence has always been one of the the strategies that produces that most Brand recognition, loyalty, and familiarity.  Twitter is making this enhanced profile available to 21 (big time) partner business right now, but will soon roll it out to all businesses!  We, here at KR Social Media Consulting are excited, and I hope you are too!  Sound off on what you think in the comments!

Hoot Hoot!!  Hootsuite is here to stay, and I must say that it is Sweet!! **All Corny puns and jokes are the property of @kcarth of KR Social Media Consulting.**

Ok, all jokes (good or otherwise) aside, this week’s social media management tool the the week is Hootsuite, and for good reason.  Hootsuite offers a plethora of awesome features that are essential to managing your social media networks, and those of your clients, in a painless and user friendly way.  Now, because there are so many different features and options, we are just going to take a look at the ones that you’ll need to get started and then you can go and make your personal Hootsuite experience your own.

Multiple Social Media Accounts

In the free version you can manage up to five(5) social media profiles, whereas, in the paid version($5.99/mo) the number of profiles in unlimited.  Thus, if you are just managing just your own accounts, the free version will probably be sufficient.  If you are managing for clients and want the ease of one location where you can cover all bases, then the $5.99/mo is worth it!  The social network that can be managed are  Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, FourSquare, WordPress, MySpace, and PingFM.  This is awesome because unlike some other platforms, that means you can manage blogs right in the same place, which comes in handy if you are creating and managing some or all of your clients’ content on such blogs.  There is also a neat feature that allows you to plug your WordPress blog into the social networking sites!

Profile Tabs

Hootsuite creates a tab for each profile that you manage.  Clicking on the tab will bring you to a screen that has columns or “Streams” that you have customized to show the information that you need.  For each profile you can add Streams that are unique to the network.  Take Facebook, for instance, you can add a streams that show your most recent news, status updates, photos, and videos from your feed, wall posts, events, and even the messages that you have scheduled to go out.  You can even follow and unfollow people in your timeline.

Scheduled Posts

Hootsuite allows you to create posts, and set them to go out at any time you choose.  If you want to send out a reminder to check out the holiday deals, for instance, that you offer, you can send a post now, and also schedule one to go out at 1pm everyday next week.  The free version allows you to schedule these one at a time, and the paid version lets you mass schedule (pick several times and dates, at one time for the same post).  the kewl thing is that you could set a post for sometime next year if you wanted, now I don’t know how effective that would be, but the option is there!

Analytics

This is another awesome tool that will help you in finding the best strategies for your business or the businesses of your clients!  There are several platforms that do this to varying degrees out there, and most of them cost considerably more than the paid version of Hootsuite.  Don’t be fooled by the low price tag.  Hootsuite does the job.  If you add links to your posts through Hootsuite’s URL shortener, Ow.Ly, it will track the clicks that you get, and include information like who did the clicking, and when, amongst other information of your choosing.  This info can be compiled in a report that you can customize and print or e-mail to your clients, or keep for yourself.  The Report Builder is user friendly, and even allows you to insert logos and contact information. That’s just what you get for free, for reasonable costs, you have access to Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Influence Reports, and Proposal Reports that allow you to monitor the progress of your campaigns across Twitter, Facebook, and website profiles.

Team Members

The ability to have team members is for the paid version.  With $5.99/mo, you can have one(1) team member, that can log in, and see the same accounts and information as you.  Without this, each unique set of log-in credentials for the various social networks can only be managed by a single Hootsuite user under their log-in information.  The ability to have a team member means that you can share tasks, and reports and create assignments for your team.  If you are a business that needs the ability to add more than one team member, the cost is $15/mo for each additional member.

Contacts

Another cool feature of Hootsuite is the Contacts page.  You can go there to find any lists that you have created in Twitter, and the lists of your followers and those you follow and manage them.  You can add people to lists or take them off, and change their position in the lists.

Fun Extras

You can also download apps within the platform that allow you to follow other streams like YouTube and Tumblr, and if there is an app that you want that is not in the list, you can request it.  Hootsuite is also great because there are desktop, mobile, and web add-on versions!  That means you can manage your profiles from anywhere!

Are you sold yet?  The features that Hootsuite offers could be written about for days, but where is the fun in that?  Now that you have a general idea of how to get started with Hootsuite, go on over and check it out!  It’s free, remember!  Make sure you come back and share your discoveries with us!

Hootsuite or TweetDeck, that is the question.

Hootsuite is a great social media management tool that enables you to post updates to your social media profiles such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and FourSquare but unlike TweetDeck, you can also update  WordPress, MySpace, PingFM.  Now, depending on your social media needs some or all of these options may be very beneficial to you.  Another major difference between HootSuite and TweetDeck is the ability to monitor your analytics. If you are a business owner, affiliate marketer, or just simply a numbers junkie that uses a lot of links in your posts you will love this!  TweetDeck does not offer this option.  In the analytics tab on Hootsuite you can track the links that you post in your updates.  This option is great for discovering what ads, verbiage, and update styles result in conversions.  Both TweetDeck and Hootsuite have the option to schedule updates which is great if you have certain times to invest in crafting your posts, but your target audience if most active at a time that you are unavailable. TweetDeck is like a Cadillac with cloth seats and a CD player;  a phenomenal tool for an individual that likes luxury and only has a few special needs but still wants to look good!. Hootsuite, on the other hand is like that same Cadillac but fully loaded with heated leather seats, satellite radio, mudflaps, and a TV for the children in the back.  A great product that has extended functionality and you still look good! (I may be aging myself with this analogy but you get the picture).  Both of these products are great; Hootsuite in my opinion is the better business tool because of all of the added power under the hood, its great if you need the analytics horsepower that won’t break your wallet.  Tweetdeck, on the other hand, is a great tool for an individual who only needs a few extras to get their job done, and does not need no know what makes the car run better. For a full breakdown of the Hootsuite software check back tomorrow for our Social Media Tool of the Week! For other product details checkout www.hootsuite.com

*This comparison considers the features of the free version of hootsuite.  Visit their website for the added features of the paid version that starts at $5.99.

Posterous

Posterous is the social media management tool of the week because of two truths.

1. It’s cool.
2. It does what it says it will do.

The idea behind Posterous is that people should be able to upload content to the web once and have it populate all of their social media sites.  There are many sites that claim to do this, but few that pull it off painlessly. Of them, Posterous is chief.  Posterous not only posts your uploaded content to the places you want it to go, but it houses the content in “spaces” that you create on it’s site, that can be publicly shared or privately viewed by those people that you choose.  This site has mobile apps, as well as the ability to post via e-mail, so it’s extremely easy to push your pics, witty comments, and blog posts to the web without much work at all.  Put simply, you provide the brilliance and Posterous will do the rest.  Setting up a free account it quick and easy, so check it out!  When you do, make sure that you share your favorite features with us!