Saturday, August 14, 2010

Keeping up with the Blogses

I'll admit it: I have a lot in the way of social media and web-related tasks, both professionally and personally. And then I set up this blog, hoping that a colleague would chime in as a partner, but lo and behold - she's swamped too!

So, then, the topic of this post is the seeming impossibility of keeping up with all this... stuff!

In my position, I oversee the social networking projects, which includes 5 Facebook pages and a Twitter account. I am also the project manager of our YouTube video series, an on-going series intended to highlight specific programs offered by the university.

Add to that my web tasks. The webmaster is still the webmaster, and it ain't me; however, sans fancy title, the fact remains that I designed, maintain, and create all of the content (graphics and related text included) of the home page, as well as a handful of pages that link from it.

Please don't think for a minute that I don't love what I do. Social media, networking, webbish stuff - that's my passion. Communicating in [insert air quotes here] new and old ways has always been my passion. The discussion -if there were to be an actual discussion- is HOW to manage it all?

I've married the Twitter and Facebook accounts, so there's a nice circular motion of communication going on there. That's good. And I have fantastic collaborations going on that makes it possible for the Facebook pages to be monitored regularly and questions answered, comments responded to. (If it's not a discussion, what's the point, right?)

One tool that has really helped is my iPhone - I can do everything from Tweet to post to Facebook and even update the web page from it. And I've found that HootSuite is really handy for the FB/Twitter cross-postings, as well as the integrated FourSquare app (although I use FourSquare only for personal postings).

So then, if you don't have a full staff or a gaggle of interns at your disposal, how do you keep up with the social networking/media tasks?