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Think of social media monitoring tools like garages where you can store social media boxes (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). You no longer need to worry about outside elements, but the social media garage does not take away the social media clutter.

Let me explain. When I move, which is sometimes more often than Jason Bourne, I often think I should list specific items in those boxes. I never do. Even though my boxes are in a garage, their location does not solve the problem of needing to dig through them to find specific items. The location of the boxes just makes the boxes easier to find.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a huge proponent of social media monitoring tools. If you would have asked me a year ago about the future of social media, I would have said social media monitoring sites need to offer ways for people to listen and respond. While that is still true, another component of the future of social media is apps for smart phones that use voice recognition technology to allow people to update their social media status by talking.

If I wanted to go George Orwell on you, I’d blog about technology that allows people to update their status just by thinking. That technology will happen. For now and the foreseeable future, apps that allow people to update their Facebook, Twitter, and other social media statuses by talking is the future of social media.

Voice recognition technology has been around for at least 25 years, companies have integrated it with the World Wide Web for at least the past ten years, and those and other companies have integrated that technology with smart phones and social media sites for the past few years.

So, why do I say this technology is the future of social media instead of just telling you it exists? Because while that technology exists, other technologies, including social media sites, social media aggregation sites, and social media monitoring sites should integrate with those voice recognition apps to offer more seamless ways for people to listen, respond, and integrate with social media.

Voice recognition apps that integrate with smart phones and social media sites:

Optimus 7 by LG Shoutout by Promptu Vlingo Lighthouse SQ7 MID IM+ by Shapeservices

Blogs I’ve written on social media monitoring:

The Omission Factor of Social Media Monitoring Branding Your Identity with Integrity

Playing the Social Media Market Identifying Your Audience’s Common Denominator

The Value of Monitoring the Social Web: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4

Monitoring the ROI of Social Media Marketing

Using Google Analytics as a Social Media Monitoring Tool

Listening to the Conversational Web Techrigy Allows You to Play e-God (Techrigy’s Alterian)

Stay social my friends,

Erick

#Google#Chrome #Social#Media

Here are what I consider the 10 most useful #apps for #Facebook, #Twitter, and #Youtube Google Chrome offers.

Facebook:

1. Always https (for Facebook and Twitter) – This app allows you to browse Facebook and Twitter securely, as well as it also bypasses proxies. They plan to add an on/off button, and they may extend support to other websites.

2. Better Facebook – This will turn your Facebook browsing into a whole new experience. Among other things, you can change your theme, control which feeds you see, and more. Once you install it, log into Facebook, and change your ‘options’ next to the ‘home’ button in the top blue bar.

3. F.B. Purity – Cleans up Facebook – This gets rid of application spam and improves your Facebook experience. It also allows you to hide messages, such as who you became friends with, what events you are attending, your changed status, and more.

4. Facebook Application Blocker – I used to receive posts from certain friends and relatives who posted from applications. Now, I don’t.

5. Facebook Invite All – If you go to this blog and watch the second video, it will explain how you use this app. This is useful for those people with fan pages.

6. Power Twitter for Chrome – With this you can do more than just post on Twitter. You can post photos, shorten links, update your mood, and send a Twitter gift.

Youtube

7. SmartVideo for Youtube – This gives you different video playing options, including the option to start videos once the page loads, the video buffers, and more. You can also loop videos and enable HD.

Twitter

8. Twitter Extender – This app allows you to highlight your mentions in timelines, hide mentions, and more.

9. Twitter Plus Plus – Highlight your mentions, desktop notifications, and more.

10. Twitter Reactions – You can use this to show the world how you feel about whatever you’re reading.

Would you add any to, or take any away from, this list?  There are many more at the Chrome Web store. Check them out and Enjoy!

Stay social my friends,

Erick

Last week, I met a friend for coffee.  He talked about a business idea, and then he asked me to sum up what people meant by “social media.”  I answered, “Integration.”  Twitter and Myspace integrated with Facebook, Facebook integrates with your personal experiences, and we all use the Social Web to integrate with one another and learn more about one another.

Recently, I tried to explain the concept of Apps to another friend.  I explained that many Apps allow a person to do in one or a fewer steps what once  took several minutes to do even on non-smart phones with Internet capabilities.  Other Apps allow people to do what cell phones could not do that long ago, even with the Internet.  They allow people to integrate with their phones in much the same way they would integrate through social media using their laptops or desktops.

The terms ‘social networking’ and ‘social media’ are often misused and used interchangeably.  Think of social networking in the same way you think of networking.  You network with people you know, people you want to know, and/or people who want to know you.  Now, think of social media in the same way you think of media.  You use various social media channels to network with people, learn information, or tell others your message.

Through social media, everyone who uses the World Wide Web can potentially interact with everyone else who uses the World Wide Web.  And that social interaction through sharing interests and using technologies allows us to integrate our experiences on the World Wide Web with our experiences in real life.

What is ‘social media’ and ‘social networking’ to you?  How do you use them?

Stay social my friends,

Erick

The best way to integrate your Web content with your social media marketing campaign is to write a blog at least once a week and use social media to promote it. The more you write and promote your writing, the more people will become familiar with your name and your site.

Blog about whatever your site’s about.  If your site’s about politics, blog about politics and use political keywords.  But use language that allows your writing to remain accessible to anyone who might read your blog.

Let others know about your blog by posting it to social networking sites.  But don’t stop with Twitter and Facebook.  Set up accounts on social bookmarking sites like Deli.cio.us, Digg, and Reddit.  Web browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox have apps that automatically fill in content for you on those and many other social bookmarking sites.  You can even integrate many of those sites with larger ones like Twitter and Facebook, so they automatically update when you update your Facebook or Twitter accounts.

The Internet allows people to do faster for free what it took several weeks and dollars to do less than ten years ago.  It takes time to setup and update those accounts, but the return on the investment is worth it.

Stay social,

Erick

This is the third blog in my series about blogging and micro-blogging, which is a great way to boost you social media marketing campaign.  Again, this week’s software offers a free version, but it is not open source.  Though, Yammer can provide open source script that runs within firewalls and will sync a LDAP or Active Directory server with Yammer.

Since we are interested in the free version, let’s look at that version of Yammer.  Yammer’s free micro-blogging platform includes the ability to share files and create groups, mailing list integration, SMS integration, desktop/iPhone/Blackberry apps, and of course the ability to suspend former employees.  If you want to know what the silver and gold packages include, read about them here.

Yammer works much like Twitter; though, there are some features Yammer offers that Twitter does not.  Yammer users can set up RSS feeds, set ups those apps, or integrate with SMS.  Honestly, without signing up, I don’t know if Yammer will automatically shorten URL’s; though, there is a paperclip right below the message bog where users can attach files.  I’m also not sure if that’s just for pics or Word and other files.  But it’s there.  Whatever types of files you can attach, it’s much easier than having to go through your list of contacts and finding e-mail addresses.  Oh and just like Twitter users can follow and unfollow people, set up or join groups, view a tag directory, view a file directory, and do so much more.

Okay, so there’s more.  But that more costs a little something.  Since I only blog about free and open source software, I am going to let you review the perks of the silver and gold versions.  Depending on which version you want, it’s only $3 or $5 per user per month, and you can add clients with either of those versions.  All in all, the ROI might be well worth it.

Oh yeah, for anyone who hasn’t noticed that social media marketing is going mobile, here’s a link to Yammer’s apps.  And, of course, you can always be assured that no matter how long a person locks themselves in the lavatory, Yammer always has your security in mind.  And they’ll never charge for extra bags.

This week let’s look at a web site that allows the user to act like Google:  Botspot.com.  Google, and other search engines, use bots that scour the 5 billion web sites that make up the World Wide Web (that’s different from the internet).  Those bots read various websites and categorize them according to various algorithms.  While botspot.com doesn’t let individual users search and rank all 5 billion web sites for the world to see, it does allow users to search through various web site and their computer in much the same way that search engines’ bots do.

Botspot.com features various bots for Macs and PCs, of which some are freeware and some are not.  Personally, right now, I am a Mac man; though, I switch back and forth, depending on my current needs and whoever has the cooler commericals.  For Mac, there are bots in eight categories: Artificial Life bots, Download bots, Search bots, surf bots, Web development bots, File Sharing bots, shopping bots, tracking bots, and there is even a category for users to design their own bots.  There are 27 bots in those eight categories, and three design a bots.

Among my favorites are Htmlsearch Lite 3.1, which allows users to search the internet, an intranet, their computer, or a CD ROM.  There is also Glooton, which allows users to query several search engines at once.  Since Firefox has an app that can do that, I don’t think it’s worth it.  For those of us who are aware of the filesharing program LimeWire that is featured under File Sharing Bots.  LimeWire allows users to interface and share files with anyone else using a Gnutella file-sharing program.  Though, as a social marketer, I am going to have to give my kudos to Hotline Connect 1.9.1, which allows users to enjoy a more interactive way of sharing files through social media.  There are several other bots for Mac users; though, those are a few that stood out to me.

For those who work on PCs, or run windows on their Macs, there are more bots than I have time to count.  Those bots can be found in eight categories subcategorized into 35 sucategories.  Among a few I randomly picked, Genealogy Detective helps users search their family history, as well as it allows users to create a family website and host it for free.  Visual Web Task allows the user to search through websites by parsing HTML tags and searching the most relevant data and files.  Offline-Commander searches in a similar way, but it consists of a few more features that also help users protect their computers.

Since I had to undergo several months of therapy (not really) due to that infamous purple ape BonziBuddy (Whoever came up with him will probably revolutionize social networking 20 years from now), I am not going to suggest a virtual assistant who helps you keep your schedule or strips for you because she’s bored.  I am going to suggest Talking Translator Pro , which translates content and finds definitions of words.  While there are several more bots available for PC than Mac, the reality is Macs come equipped with many of those bots on their iMacs, so all of those extra-apps (That’s really all the bots are) are not necessary (Steve, can I get a free MacBook Air since I gave you some free advertising).

Among other features on Botspot.com, there are some books you can buy.  Honestly, they’re just links to Amazon, so nothing to get excited about.  For those who want to keep an eye on what Botspot.com’s up to, they do have a newsletter, and many of their editions are archived.

Botspot.com is a great site that allows computer users and internet surfers to take back control of their computers, thus making it more user friendly.  So whether you’re a slightly jean wearing, geeky guy who once appeared on a show about a small town lawyer who owned a bowling alley or you’re a nerdy business man who still thinks sweater vests will make a come back, Botspot.com has a bot for you.

Botspot.com is one of the many websites featured on my custom made search engine, along with various other sites I’ll tell you more about in the following weeks.  So, come back and learn about some other great websites in the weeks and months to come.  And be sure to connect with my on Facebook and Twitter.