If you’re a Blogger, whether for business or personal, it’s imperative that you have an Online Presence. An online presence helps us be “seen” and network with other like-minded individuals. However, it’s not always feasible to be online.
Life gets in the way. We have responsibilities to our employers; our job that actually pays the bills; family, including children and animals; domestics and other home maintenance needs; and other miscellaneous things that deter us being online.
However, we can TRICK the world-wide web into thinking we’re online all the time.
Why do we want to “Trick” them?
It’s not necessarily “tricking” them, we are simply utilizing tools that are at our disposal that can help us “achieve” our online presence. It’s not that we want to play the “deception game”, it’s simply we want to keep on contact with our readers, fans, and friends, when Life Gets In The Way.
How can we accomplish this?
Some of you know that I work full-time outside of my home. I can not possibly be online all day long, even with the comforts of a smart phone. I do have a job to do and yes, it gets in the way of my online life. If you follow me on other social networks, it may appear I am online a lot. I’ll let you in on my secret: I’m Not.
Thanks to some awesome social media tools, I am able to “trick” you into thinking I am surfing the web right along with you. Mind you, by me commenting on your blog posts, that is really me. I haven’t found an app that will auto comment for me and be the personable person I am. ;)
The tools
Here are my favorite tools that help me with my day-to-day online activity.
Bufferapp is a pretty awesome tool. As with many tools/apps there is a Free and an Awesome (Premium) version. I’ve used both and like them a lot. With Bufferapp you can connect several of your social media networks (Facebook profile, page, group; Twitter; LinkedIn; Google+ brand page; and a few more. With the Free account, you can connect ONE (1) of each account. With upgrading to Awesome, you can connect twelve (12) accounts, 200 buffered posts, connect RSS feeds to have content at your fingertips, and Suggestions (a handful of popular posts) that you can buffer. Web and Mobile apps available.
I’ve never been much of a Klout fan until I resigned up the other day. I noticed Klout has an awesome option available to help us share content! Klout is all about building Influence across the web. You connect/link whichever social media networks you want to, based on what Klout offers, and Klout analyzes how influencial you are. There are other benefits and perks to using Klout however, what I want to talk about is the Create option. Create allows you to pick several topics that you’re interested in and based on that criteria, will make available to you, several popular posts relating to that topic! You can then schedule these posts to your social media networks! How easy is that! Web and Mobile apps available.
Hootsuite is another app that many like. As always, there is a Free and Premium version available. I won’t go into all the details of Hootsuite other than to point out two (2) features I’m impressed with.
With Hootsuite you can schedule posts to your social media networks. There is an Auto Schedule where Hootsuite determines the time and day; and an option for you to set the day and time. This is available in both the Free and Premium versions. The second feature is Content Suggestions. This is similar to the Suggestions in Bufferapp and is only available in the Premium version.
Facebook has stepped up to the plate and has enable Scheduling of Status Updates. This too is important if you are a Blogger or Business and want to keep your Brand in the eyes of your Facebook fans and friends. This option is available on Facebook Pages. If you use Bufferapp, you can also Buffer status updates right from Facebook
Now I turn it over to you. Do you use any of the above awesome scheduling tools and if so, which ones? Do you find these tools useful? If you’re not using any of the above but are scheduling updates and posts, what tool are you using?
