Consolidating Your Social Media

It's hard to keep up with social media.  Even a social media expert may miss a friend's post or event invite.  There are now social media tools that make posting and tracking social media easier. However, these tools may not solve all of our problems. Numerous changes to social media networks including the changes to APIs make it difficult for developers to make updates to applications. A program for multiple programs is not always the solution. But, for now it may be the best.

 Problems with social media in 2014:

• Too many social networks - Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Linkedin, Google+, and all the others
• High Learning Curve - networks continue to update their features, forcing users to adapt and learn the new interface.
• Time Intensive - some of my friends do not use social media because it takes too much time out of each day.
• Filtering out the Noise - Advertising is becoming more distracting. Corporate media is now embedded into our news feeds and having 900 friends does not help.

Solution

Use one social media management tool as your hub or pick a favorite network. The former allows you to stayed connected to all your friends on all your networks, but it may be overwhelming. The latter is easiest, but you may miss that special moment on another network. I personally have a favorite network and use a social media management tool for business and connections.

Most popular social media management tools (with pros and cons): 

• Hootsuite: is the best for everything in one spot. You can plugin a rss feeds, your newsfeeds, and share directly from the application on your smartphone or desktop.
• Buffer (free): if you like sharing more than reading posts, this is the best tool. Simplify your life with buffer.
• SproutSocial (paid): this is very powerful social media tool for businesses and analytics. It gives you social media advice and is very data driven.
• Crowdbooster (paid): Another great tool for businesses, but if you like seeing the numbers and adapting your content this can help

I don't recommend social media management tools for light social media users because some are more complex than the social media networks.