You were told to Twitter, to get a Facebook and a LinkedIn account, to join a few business based social media sites and create a social media campaign to get your name out there. So you did–and now you’re overwhelmed. People want to be your “friend,” they keep answering you, asking questions, inquiring about your small business and you feel obligated to write them back. But there’s that business thing you’re running that’s getting in the way of your social media life! How to manage it all? Create a social media desktop.

A social media desktop will help you keep track of all your posts and who comments at one central place. It will also help you keep track of what’s going on with other social media sites who are also focused on your topics and keywords. What makes it so easy to track is RSS feeds. That’s Really Simple Syndication, which will allow you to follow many sites and keep them in a single place.

Which sites would you like to follow? Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, blogs and news updates from Google or MSN are good choices.

Why is this important? Because a social media desktop will help you start to know how your efforts are paying off. You will get to see a running commentary of what people are saying to you, about you, and your business as well as what’s happening in your field.

The major RSS services are iGoogle, MyYahoo! and Netvibes. You can set up an iGoogle, MyYahoo! or Netvibes homepage, and once you do this, you can list websites, blogs, or social media sites you’d like to follow–and many of them will have an RSS feed icon, which all you have to do is click on it and it will be added.

Your social media desktop can help you streamline your online efforts, but once again, so RSS feed every site you like or you’ll be right back to being overwhelmed. Only list the ones you are compelled to visit again and again. Enjoy viewing them all at once, and at your convenience. That’s online marketing and networking at its best.

Tags: online marketing for small business, rss feeds, social media marketing

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 7:52 pm and is filed under Networking for Small Business, Small Business Internet Marketing, Social Media, Tools for Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.