One of the biggest questions I get about using social media is “How do you keep track of everyone when they start contacting you all these different ways?”- meaning, how do you manage the individual social sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, in such a way that you’re not spending your whole day responding to communication?

While there are many strategies you could use, here are a few that I’ve used successfully:

1) Put social media applications on your smartphone. If you have a Blackberry, Android, or Iphone, you should be able to install applications that help you manage your social site participation. The way I use these applications is to ‘carry my social media with me’- so if I am waiting in line somewhere, or riding the Metro, or otherwise have a few minutes, I can quickly and easily log into my accounts and respond right from my phone. I’ve found these applications to be particularly helpful for Twitter and Facebook. While not perfect, they can help streamline the process.

2) Try to funnel contacts into just one or two preferred modes of communicating. For example, if you are contacted on LinkedIn, you can immediately ask that person to contact you directly through your own email, or by phone, or however you prefer. This will help you shape the communication process into something that works better for you, and can reduce how often you need to check your various social inboxes. I, routinely, will ask people to email me directly rather than messaging me on Facebook or LinkedIn. I check my Twitter DM’s every two weeks or so and let people know that there are better ways to reach me more quickly.

3) Set aside time every few days to manage your social accounts. While it can be tempting to try and address every friend request immediately, you can actually wait a couple of days. Set aside about 30 minutes every 2-3 days, and use this time to catch up and manage your social media profiles. If something is more urgent or timely, respond to it more quickly. But, usually, most things can wait. If you adopt this strategy, you may even want to reduce the number of notifications you get from the social sites, knowing that everything will be there when you next log in. This can help reduce the amount of email management you have to do.

4) Keep all of your contact information in one place. I make it a habit of regularly entering all my new contacts into my Google contacts. I make sure to add name, email, phone number, as well as Facebook ID and Twitter handle. This has saved me on more than one occasion! Try to keep your end of the information stream as organized as you can, and reduce the number of places you store this kind of information. Make use of online services that you can access from anywhere, especially if you travel quite a bit or have a mobile office.

5) Remember, this is a good thing! As you become more well known, it is inevitable that more people will want to reach you. The challenge comes in how you view these contacts and in how you manage them. People want to connect with you because they like you and you’re interesting. Remember this; it will help you manage your relationships with more grace and ease.

And finally, remember- even though we live in a super-connected world, it’s ok for you to put some boundaries around your availability. Unhook from the computer once in a while. Leave the phone in the car. Spend more time in nature.

We’ll still be here when you get back.

I’m not in the running for Ms. Manners’ job, or anything, but I did want to write a quick post on the etiquette of Facebook chat. Now, for those of you who use Facebook often (and there are more than 450 million people doing that each day), you know that Facebook offers a chat function, which lets you send instant, quick messages to whomever you happen to be chatting with.

I think this is a fun way to have conversations with your friends, and can take the place of instant messenger, text messages, and other similar modes, provided that your friends are on Facebook and have chat enabled as well.

I recently disabled chat on my Facebook account- and here’s why:

It’s mainly because people have poor chat etiquette. On multiple occasions over the past month, each time I’ve logged in, I’ve been bombarded with chat messages from random men. This is the downside of having a reasonably open social network. I tend to accept most friendship requests on Facebook, figuring I’ll worry about the 5,000 friend limit when I get there. That being said, I am starting to use my fan page more, and may shift to just using my personal profile for direct friends and people I’ve met.

But I digress.

Let’s talk about the reasons I disabled Facebook chat. As I said, it was because I was getting annoyed by the constant, intrusive instant messages from random men which all seemed intent on asking me for a date or something even less polite. I’m not sure why there was this uprush of attention, all of a sudden- I didn’t suddenly change my profile pictures, get incredibly better looking, or anything. But it was starting to happen so much that it was irritating me. It was annoying to login and get these rash of messages constantly popping up on my screen. It would make a “quick check” of Facebook take much longer than it needed to.

So here’s the thing. If you are using Facebook chat, I would submit that basic rules of communication etiquette still apply. If you are attempting to chat with someone you don’t know, I suggest you think twice about doing that. But, if you do reach out, why not start by saying hello and checking in with that person about whether or not it’s a good time to chat? If you truly want to make some kind of connection with that person, tell him or her why you wanted to connect, and give them the option of connecting with you in some other way.

Just like if you were to call someone on the phone, you might make sure that it was a good time to connect; I suggest that Facebook chat etiquette should follow these same rules. Similarly, if you are involved in a Facebook chat and need to end it, give the person some warning that you’ll need to sign off shortly.

While all this may sound obvious, I have observed people throwing common sense and good manners out the window as they take part in social media.

And that makes you look like a complete jerk.

Content syndication is a hot topic in social media, and there is a lot of confusion about what it is, and how to do it. In the most basic sense, content syndication refers to the process of efficiently distributing your content around the internet.

Since effective content syndication does require a little bit of technical know-how, most people’s eyes glaze over when they hear about it. The problem is that if you’re ignoring the power of content syndication, you are only getting about 1/3^rd of the value from your social media efforts as you could be.

Done correctly, content syndication can help you accomplish four main business goals. It can help you generate more targeted visitors to your website and blog, it can help you improve your search engine positioning, it can help you build your following, and it can build your expert status. All of these are valuable outcomes for a process which doesn’t really take a lot of time.

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is in creating content (for their sites, blogs, teleseminars or trainings) and then only using the content one or two times. This means that your time to create the content is only paying off minimally.

Far better to repurpose your content into multiple formats, and be able to use it multiple ways, so that you are getting maximum value from the time you spend creating the material in the first place. Repurposing efficiently and regularly is one of the key underpinnings of an effective content syndication strategy.

An example of repurposing your content would be to take a written blog post, convert to an audio (instant podcast), turn to a slideshow, and then convert to a video. Your one blog post then becomes deployable in multiple formats, and can be sent out to the various article, audio, and video sites. So, in essence, you get four times the value for your content. There are multiple other ways to repurpose your content, and you’ll find, as I have, that once you get good at doing it, it’s kind of addictive.

So now that you understand the background of content syndication, let’s look at some easy ways you can get started:

1) Make use of RSS. RSS stands for “really simple syndication” and is one of the easiest and fastest ways to start syndicating your content. RSS is a technology which takes your content and puts it into a special format (you don’t need the details) so that the content can be shared easily and republished across the internet. The majority of the open social sites use RSS. You can find the link to your RSS feed by searching for the RSS icon, which often looks like the icon at the beginning of this paragraph. Sometimes it’s colored differently, but this symbol denotes the RSS feed. What the RSS feed represents is an aggregated container of that content.

To actually start using RSS, you can take your RSS feeds (such as from your blog) and submit these to RSS search engines, such as Bloglines, Blogpulse, DayPop, and Feedster. (There are many others, this is just a partial list.) The idea is that the RSS format allows for content to be deployed and shared in a consistent and standardized way. When submitting your blog’s RSS feed to these search engines, you are increasing the likelihood of your content being found, and, also, potentially giving others the option to republish your content with attribution to your site.

You can also submit RSS feeds from your Twitter account, as well as other social sites. There are specialized software programs that can help you rapidly submit your RSS feeds as well.

RSS submission is one of the easiest ways to get started with content syndication.

2)      A second strategy for getting started with content syndication is to send your blog updates to your Twitterfeed. If your blog is built on WordPress, you can configure a plugin such as Twitter Tools to send blog posts to your Twitterfeed. This is a great way to drive traffic to your site, especially if your titles are compelling, and you don’t overtweet your new content. Since Twitter updates are searchable, you can find yourself getting first page ranking in Google for your content. This listing may not last, as tweets are constantly updated, but it’s a good way to get your content out in front of more people.

3)      A third simple strategy for content syndication is to import your blog posts into Facebook and LinkedIn. You can use the Notes application in Facebook to get your blog posts publishing in there, and you can use the WordPress application in LinkedIn to get your blog content published there as well. Again, if you focus on highly relevant content, and use strong titles, you will see clickthroughs to your site. Importing your content into these sites also helps establish your expertise and credibility, and can grow your brand following.

While there are many other content syndication strategies you can use, these are three solid strategies to get you started. As you invest more fully in content syndication, you’ll find that your online following grows, that you get more opportunities, and generate more leads into your business.

Content syndication is an important step in the chain of social media profitability. Get started using it today.

To get 4 weeks of focused training on content syndication and repurposing, check out From Platform to Profit

As some of you may know, I’ve recently taken up social dancing in a big way. Now, I tend to do everything in a big way- really digging into something for a few weeks or months until I’ve gotten whatever I wanted from it. I change hobbies often, but I’m super committed while I’m there.

Anyway, I’ve been taking a mix of private lessons and classes at Dance Bethesda, learning, so far, the basics of foxtrot, waltz, salsa, tango, rumba, and swing. The instruction has been top notch, and I’ve made significant progress in just a few weeks. My instructor is talking about me taking part in my first competition by November of this year; it might be my very own version of “So You Think You Can Dance?”

The reason I wanted to write about my dance studio today is that they are doing several things very well in terms of creating a fan base and following. The strategies they are using are ones you can use, too, to build your fan base through social media marketing.

Strategy #1: Be as inclusive as possible. One thing that impressed me, a lot, about joining the studio is how friendly and welcoming everyone has been. Of course, it is called SOCIAL dance, but a key strategy is to make newcomers feel welcome and included. We all have some anxiety about being the “new kid on the block”, whether in real life, or online, so be as welcoming and inclusive as possible. You might include a warm and friendly welcome video on your site, or you might make a special effort to reach out to new followers or friends. Whatever you do, make people feel welcome- they will stick around much longer.

Strategy #2: Start as early as possible. Dance Bethesda is just rolling out a kids dance program, starting ballroom and latin dance lessons for children as young as 5. Not only will this help them build another level to their training and instruction, but it’s a smart long-term customer strategy. It’s likely that these kids will continue to take part in studio activities for multiple years, and they are likely to get their parents involved too. For you, think about how you can broaden or widen the range of people you work with. You might create some infoproducts, or do some live trainings, or offer new products or services to aid more people across the business cycle. When you start early, you create longevity and lifetime customer value.

Strategy #3: Spice it up. Dance Bethesda not only offers lessons, but they also offer training for competitions, as well as dance focused cruises. They hold weekly dance parties for all sorts of holidays, and try to keep their clients interested and learning. How can you offer new and unexpected value to your network, so that they are continually learning and investing with you?

Strategy #4: Integrate your marketing. The studio uses online and offline methods to drive people to the door. They are using Facebook and email newsletters, for instance, and also advertising in the local neighborhood. Although most of us probably focus on online methods, offline ones still work. And you can build a stronger business by using both. Don’t overlook the fact that some of your future best customers can be right outside your front door.

Strategy #5: Have fun with it. Dance Bethesda has a lot of fun- and they share it. New pictures are posted regularly on their site, and they continually invite you to take part in the fun. How can you create a fun or more exciting experience within your business? Remember, everybody likes to feel like they are part of something cool and unique and interesting and enjoyable. How can you bring these qualities into your business more fully?

And the final strategy, of course, is to track your progress and give the process time to work. Tracking helps you know what’s working, so you know what to do more of- and being a little bit patient gives your marketing time to take root and grow strong.

If you want to build your social media fan base, these strategies will help you do so more successfully.

When you are building your brand and your business online, one of the most important elements to monitor is your online reputation. If you know anything about online reputation management, you know, essentially, that it’s the process of monitoring and managing what people are saying about you and your company.

Online, as in real life, word of mouth is one of the most potent methods for spreading good news (and bad).

While there are many paid services to help you monitor your online reputation, there are several free tools you can (and should be!) using to keep track of your mentions on the web.

The first is using Google alerts. You can set these up at http://www.google.com/alerts. You would set these up for your name, your business name, and any key terms or initiatives you might also be monitoring. Using this free service enables you to be notified whenever there is a new Google listing for any of your keyword terms. You can set how often you should be notified (I have mine set to daily), and you can set up as many alerts as you would like. It’s wise to use your desired keyword term in quotes (as in “red cars” rather than red cars), as this increases the specificity of your alerts. Google alerts are a good first line listening tool to monitor your online reputation.

A second tool you can use to monitor your online reputation is a site such as Keotag, which is located at http://www.keotag.com. When you visit this site, you’ll be able to enter a keyword to research. You could start with your name, for instance. When you submit your query, you’ll be given a list of sites you’d like to search. When you select a site, you’ll be given a set of listings where your keyword terms appear. Sometimes Keotag returns results that the other tools miss, so I like to have it in my arsenal.

A third tool you can use to monitor your online reputation is Addictomatic, which is located at http://www.addictomatic.com. This site is great because it pulls from many content sources, and you can get a one page listing of your keyword as it appears on various sites. You can remove or switch around the order of results. What I like to do with this site is set up some custom keyword searches and then bookmark them in my browser. This way, I can easily return, at a glance, whenever I’d like to be updated on new information on my keyword.

I’ll be covering other tools in future blog posts, but these three will get you started. If you don’t have these set up and running for your name, business, and main business terms, set these up right away.

It’s always good to know what people are talking about- especially if it’s you!