Be Social with these Social Media Tools

Posted on Monday, 6 July 2009 by Harsh Ajmera

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Defining the different ways to be social

There are different types of social on the web and each category has a different focus (with some overlap in functionality):

Social Networking is probably the most widely known Web 2.0 term. FromMySpace to Facebook, LinkedIn, and other similar sites, the focus of social networking is to connect you with others – your friends, people with similar interests, potential employers, and then give you the opportunity to find more connections as your profile grows.
Social Bookmarking (like del.icio.us, Furl, Ma.gnolia) sites allow you to organize your favorite sites, tag them for keywords, and keep them all in one place. Very handy. However, what makes these sites social, is the ability for you to share them with others.
Social Recommendation sites combine the best of social networking and bookmarking to create user generated recommendation sites. Sites likeDigg, Netscape and StumbleUpon encourage users to submit items they like and then give others the opportunity to vote on them. There are also a large crop of smaller niche sites like BizzBites, Sk*rt, Babblz, BUMPzee and such that are evolving to cater to the specific needs of certain audiences.
Social Content sites include Flickr, YouTube, and wikis to name a few. These are sites where users create and manage the content from photos to videos, information on a topic, and everything in between.
Other sites such as MyBlogLog, Technorati, and Blog Catalog give users the ability to network, bookmark and recommend all under one handy roof.

Making the most of your social life

Get a good avatar. It is much easier to remember a picture than words, which is why avatars are so popular with the social crowd. Avatars help you create your social identity. Recommended avatars include a clear photo of yourself, your site/company logo, image that is easily identified.
Be consistent with your identity. While it may make sense to have one identity for your business site and another for a personal or niche site, you don’t want to have 5 different user names for 5 different sites. It just makes it too hard to define your personal brand and it makes it difficult for your friends at one site to find you at another.
Don’t spread yourself too thin! The number of social media sites is growing daily and you just can’t be everywhere. Pick a few sites that provide you with value – sites where your peers are – and establish yourself.
Be active! Once you have found the sites you want to use to build your social presence – work them! Make friends, vote for articles, share your links. Your site traffic will thank you for it!

Social Aggregators

EventBox
EventBox is a mac-only program that integrates the top 5-6 social networks into a single program. From the looks of the site, it’s pretty too.

Flock Browser
Flock is a full-blown web browser that has been designed around social media. It integrates with dozens of services and helps make it easier for you to stay connected.

FriendFeed
FriendFeed help’s combine all of your different social networks into a single feed. Make yourself easier to follow, or make it easier to follow others.

Yumeo
Yumeo is a social network that allows you to control many other social sites in one place.

Ping.fm

Ping.fm makes it easier to update your social networks by connecting the most popular networks into one service.

Second Brain
Organize all of your content in one place, including bookmarks, files, etc…

Plaxo
Plaxo is a service designed to make it easier to stay in touch with people you care about.

Twitter Tools

TweetDeck
TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application that helps organize and make sense of your twitters. You can group tweets based on search terms, time frame, and many other ways.

Twhirl

Twhirl is another desktop Twitter client. It adds the ability to cross-post tweets to other sites, post images to TwitPic, and search tweets (among other things).

Digg Tools

Digg Toolbar
A quick an easy toolbar that integrates with Firefox and provides most of the common Digg functions.

Website Cache View
Shows multiple cached versions of any website in case of the “Digg effect”.

Digg Alerts
It’s like Google Alerts for Digg.

Tools For Webmasters

Digg Website Widget
Put a list of your latest Digg submissions into the sidebar of your website.

WordPress Twitter Tools
This is a WordPress plugin that let’s you pull your tweets into your blog.

StumbleUpon Website Buttons
These StumbleUpon buttons make it very easy for visitors to stumble your articles.

Delicious Tagometer
The tagometer is an advanced Delicious button that shows how many users have tagged a post and with what categories.

Miscellaneous Tools

Spokeo Search
Social media search that makes it easy to find information from 41 different networks.

Jott.com
Voice-to-text, task organization, and much more. Post to twitter and many other services by calling in from your phone.

Gathera
Gathera is an internet explorer plugin that aims to connect social media, email, messaging, and many more features into a single place.

Nielsen BuzzMetrics
Search the blogosphere and track/find trends.

Infegy Social Radar
(Commercial) Social Media Monitoring tool that helps track the web.

Open ID
Open ID is a single sign-on solution that is supported by many of the most popular web-apps and networking sites.

Social media plugins

There are a host of plug-ins you can add to your sites to help others Stumble, Digg, favorite, and bookmark you. Here are just a few of the WordPress plug-ins that I use/have used or my friends recommend.