Over the next 30 days, I’m going to be teaching you how to methodically & efficiently cover the social media landscape like a highly skilled explorer. You need to first set up your cockpit, or control panel. This is like the instrument panel, or dashboard where you can monitor all activity at a glance. You’ll save time and become more efficient when you can see in real time what’s happening across all of your accounts. You won’t miss anything important, and you won’t waste time clicking and refereshing endlessly… The first thing you need to do is to set up your gmail account properly. Gmail is a free email account provided by google. But gmail is so much more than an email account. You can use yahoo, hotmail, or any others, but your Gmail account will quickly become one of your most valued resources. Here’s why:
- You need it to log into google friend connect
- Use the same email account when registering for your social media accounts
- Use Google Reader from within gmail to monitor RSS feeds (piece of cake)
- Gmail does things in one place that would usually require multiple accounts, saving time.
There are two important things you need to do once you register for your free gmail account. Setup Message Filters: Have messages from facebook go into a "facebook" folder. Have messages from twitter go into a "twitter" folder. Have emails from squidoo go into it’s folder. See a pattern yet? This organizes the information flowing to you, so you can scan and receive messages without sorting through unorganized information. Monitor RSS Feeds: Every blog & vitually every social media site provides and RSS feed of activity (i.e. the new stuff that’s being added by users). Use Google Reader from within your gmail account and you’ll be able to quickly see where all the new action is throughout your social memberships. Don’t resist getting RSS feeds set up – it’s the only way you won’t go totally crazy & quit doing social media! I’ve prepared a video to show you how to set up message filters and RSS feeds in Gmail & Google Reader. Take the time today to learn how to do this & you’ll save yourself 80% of the time you’ve been wasting without it! Think of your own creative ways of using filters and RSS feeds to organize your efforts.
Tip: Put The Social Media Source Blog’s RSS feed into your google reader. This way you’ll get the information as it’s published, and you’ll also have gone through the process and learn by doing it.
This is absolutely the key to success in any field or niche. Without being organized you are just beating against the wind and going nowhere fast, or at all. One of the main keys to social network marketingis organization. So thanks for making this plain and visual.