Thanks to a new adventure as the New Media Director at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy (a global nonprofit with more than 5,000 members) and a new gig as a Digital Media Consultant for Brazen Careerist, Inc., I’ve been introduced to a number of new social media tools that I want to share with others.
First, I’d never used a social media management like TweetDeck or Hootsuite before this year. I can’t believe I waited so long. The improved efficiency of streamlining your Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin accounts is astounding, not to mention the ability to schedule posts in advance, quickly scan insights on various member profiles, and see metrics on who’s clicking, forwarding and following you on a daily basis. I’m now a Hootsuite evangislist. I’m late on that boat, I know.
Second, creating Facebook welcome pages and customized tabs have gotten easier in the last year with the introduction of Shortstack.com. I have to give a shout out to YPFP’s London office for giving me this tip, but wow, what a powerful tool to design custom facebook tabs either as a designer or as an individual with a small business. Measuring your Facebook fan growth and monitoring your image on Facebook also became easier with tools like BuddyMedia. (PS: Buddy Media is hiring for a slew of sweet jobs in NYC ).
Third, an internal communication too that I’m discovering quite useful: Yammer.com. It’s a lot like Facebook, but exclusive to your organization and totally private. It’s great for having staff-wide conversations that are not time-sensitive enough to clog inboxes and interrupt the daily work flow, but are helpful to put in a public space for commenting and gathering feedback.
Fourth, Google sites. As a web designer, I’ve not found the need to explore Google sites before, but they do provide an excellent tool for creating shared workspaces for project collaborators in a quick and dirty way when you don’t really care about designing for an external audience. And while we’re on the subject of Google, I’d like to give a shout out to Google’s new acquisition of Manymoon’s project management platform — which, although I haven’t had a chance to use yet — seems pretty powerful for a free project management/timeline/assignment task management tool.
Keeping up with new digital marketing and social media tools is certainly a challenge! What are your new favorites this year?
