When building your community, keeping track of your social brand can be a difficult task. One of the main difficulties you will face is deciding how to divide your time amongst the many networks you have developed a presence in.
In order to keep organized in your social community management efforts, it would be nice if there were applications that can let you manage multiple communities at once. Well, you’re in luck, because those applications do exist and they can be very useful.
Out of all the choices available to you, I have picked the three social media clients you can’t live without. These three have been widely accepted and have been constantly innovating since their inception. Enjoy.
TweetDeck
“TweetDeck is the leading browser for the real-time and social web.” As the first client to really move into this space, TweetDeck has always been a popular choice for managing your Twitter feed.
Since then, however, TweetDeck has become so much more than just a Twitter client. Here are some of the features that make this application so useful:
- Supports Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, & LinkedIn
- Create and manage lists of friends and users
- Built-in re-tweet, @reply, and direct message
- Create, share, and view photos and video
- Search and follow topics in real-time
Seesmic
Seesmic, my personal favorite, is another great client for managing your social networks. They have multiple applications for you to try and they are all pretty impressive, including Seesmic Desktop, Seesmic for Windows, Seesmic Look, and Seesmic Web.
Seesmic is very similar to TweetDeck as far as options are concerned. The one thing that stands out to me is Ping.fm integration.
If you don’t know, Ping.fm is a service that allows you to post content simultaneously to almost every social network. Seesmic purchased Ping.fm not too long ago and has stated that they will be integrating it into all of their clients very soon. Awesome.
Hootsuite
Another client that has come a long way is Hootsuite. Hootsuite is one of the best at brand monitoring and has most (if not all) of the great features that TweetDeck and Seesmic have.
Hootsuite has a bit of a different layout than the aforementioned but it is very customizable and allows you to track statistics, monitor what is being said about your brand, and build lists of your contacts.
It supports Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, WordPress, and even Ping.fm. You can use Hootsuite on any browser and it works on any operating system. They have apps for the iPhone and Android as well.
Conclusion
So these are the social media clients you can’t live without. I hope you give them all a try and pick which one you like best for your community management. These companies are constantly innovating so check their websites for updates and improvements.
Using an application to manage your networks should hopefully save you a lot of time in the long run. You can also customize these clients and use them to manage your marketing campaigns or however you see fit. Make sure you follow the 4 C’s when developing your social brand.
Did I miss your favorite application? Is there a social media client you just can’t live without? Leave your thoughts, comments, and ideas below!