Cyberwise.(QA)(Brief article)(Column)

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I have profiles on Linkedln, Twitter, and Facebook and also maintain a blog, but I find that keeping up my social networking presence is time-consuming and frustrating. Should I ditch them aft or just focus on one site?

--E. Carson

Via E-mail

This is a common problem for many entrepreneurs. But before you ditch them all, let's look at how you can streamline things.

One of the tools I use is FriendFeee, which lets me customize my "feeds" (information I post) to the sites I've joined. For example, I use it to feed my "tweets" (updates from Twitter) to Facebook. Ping.fm (http://ping.fm) is another great tool that has gained a lot of traction this year; it posts messages to more than 40 social networking sites, including WordPress blogs and Linkedln. You can also use Ping. fm via SMS, MMS, e-mail, and a host of third-party applications.

I also use FutureTweets (http://future tweets.com), which lets me plug in information that I want to tweet, or send out, at particular times of the day. Colleagues tend to think I'm always "on," but I typically spend 15 to 20 minutes each morning posting information that gets tweeted throughout the day. I then periodically check in (every few hours) to respond to comments. Tweet Later (www. tweetlater.com) is a similar service.

The key to a successful social media experience, however, is to make good use of the tools already built into the applications, like privacy controls and general settings. They can be a real sanity saver.

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