photo credit: filtran

I was having a conversation with a friend via Facebook and he jokingly remarked that I was beginning to appear everywhere on his account: his friend feed, his side advertisements, everywhere! He ended by asking if he should expect to see my face in popups next.

The conversation with my friend was lighthearted but it got it me thinking: How could I continue to leverage the viral nature of Facebook and other social media sites, without getting swamped with the numerous time-consuming tasks often related to them? Below are a couple of tips that help me do just that.

1.  Work smarter, not harder (aggregate and propagate)

Social networking can take up a lot of your time. For every website you join, you're essentially adding another inbox to your already-bloated list of email accounts. Just trying to keep up with all of the different conversations can be a challenge in itself.

The key to not getting bogged down is working smarter, not harder. How do we go about doing this in social media (without hiring a VA)? By using services that aggregate (pull in) and propagate (push out) information.

Aggregators

Aggregators are services that basically pull in actions and info from multiple sources and organizes it in one central location. Whether your friend adds a favorite photo on Flickr, changes their status on Facebook, or retweets a great post on Twitter, you'll know about it -- without having to check each site individually.

Popular social aggregators include:

FriendFeed - http://ping.fm/3ZImm

SocialThing - http://ping.fm/LDIys

And I should note that Facebook's News Feed serves a similar purpose. If you're a heavy Facebook user, you should definitely take advantage of it. You can even filter the feed according to your friend groups (e.g. to keep up with your clients)

Propagators

Propagators are simply websites that "push" out information instead of pull it in. Many of these services allow you to update your social network statuses and micro-blogs without having to login to each one individually. Talk about a time-saver! Below are a few of the more popular propagators available now:

Ping.fm - http://ping.fm

hellotxt - http://hellotxt.com

2. Keep your finger on the pulse and your ear to the streets

It's important to know what's being said about you, your niche, and your brand. But you don't want to go searching for these relevant conversations one by one. That's time consuming and a poor use of resources. Regardless, it's still critically important to monitor these things because information spreads fast in today's interconnected online world. Reputation Management 101 should include a serious effort on your part to keep an eye on your public image and your brand.

That said, there are a few services you should be using to keep track of these events so you can mitigate the situation by responding immediately and with a remedy. Not to mention, it also fulfills one of the original goals stated earlier in this post: to appear "everywhere" without doing the back breaking work that would ordinarily be required to monitor these discussions.

Use these services below to aid in your customer service and reputation management efforts:

Google Alerts - http://ping.fm/sQzRq

Get Satisfaction - http://ping.fm/0PnyV

Setup Google Alerts to notify you whenever an article, blog post, et cetera is made that mentions something relevant like your name or company. If you find something positive, leave a nice comment in response. If you find something negative, quickly act to correct the situation

The other site, Get Satisfaction, is a service that allows business owners, help desk staff, service reps, and so on, to interact with people who have posted complaints online.

Their Overheard service "eavesdrops" across the Net and updates with relevant conversations about your product/service. Here's Comcast's Overheard section showing a list of Twitter updates about the company: http://ping.fm/4djVO/comcast/overheard.

Here's a quote that I recently came across from someone who had an issue with the feed sharing service, Toluu:

I got my invite and went to log in. Whenever I can, I use my OpenID because I'm tired of entering passwords in Passpack. However, OpenID failed. I have a low threshold for fails of that variety, so I Tweeted that it was a bad first impression. Within about two seconds, I had a response from @calebelston asking me what issue I had, could I describe it, etc. Best part is that I sent him the info, as well as the issues I was having importing my complete OPML file to Toluu, and then forgot about it. You know how it gets when you are trying 85 apps at a time. Then I get an email from him: Hey, we've been working on this issue. Would you be willing to try it again and see if it works? I was floored that he remembered to come back and contact me.

As you can see, incorporating these tools and tips we just discussed into your marketing efforts and customer service strategy could pay huge dividends. Are there any other websites and/or services that you highly recommend too?

Leave a comment below and let us know how you're using them.