Is keeping track of all your social media platforms driving you to distraction?

Bring them back in focus with a Social Media Manager. And no, that doesn’t mean adding another person to your payroll. Several free software applications exist that provide you with a single portal to view and manage a wide variety of social media including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and more. Instead of logging on to each site individually, programs like Seesmic (www.seesmic.com), Digsby (www.digsby.com), and TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com) consolidate the content of your various outlets into a single stream, à la an RSS feed. The application also disseminates your posts across any outlets you choose (i.e., write a single status update and the manager will post it as a Tweet, Facebook update, LinkedIn status, etc.) instead of having to update each one individually.

Various programs include tools for collaborative functions with varying levels of permission (e.g., one person has administration privileges, while others can submit updates). These managers generally support all of the most popular social media sites, and several have plug-in libraries that add support for some of the more obscure sites (snurl.com, anyone?). And if you need even more advanced functionality, managers like Socialite (www.apparentsoft.com/socialite) and HootSuite (www.hootsuite.com) are available for a reasonable fee.