As a Social Media Manager, sometimes I get very excited about a particular message and how best to get that message out. I like to have time to interact with my “Followers” and “Friends” so that I can engage in that two way communication between my client and their potential customers. Unfortunately, much of my time is spent just keeping up with it all. Finally, though, I have discovered a tool that makes this dramatically easier!

I used it several years ago when it was called TweetLater, to schedule tweets and so forth in the hours that I was away. I thought it was pretty cool, but never really thought of writing a blog about it (e.g. not quite worth writing home about!) Then my life took a few turns and twists and I went on to do other things for a while, and have only recently come back to Social Media Management. (I was very proud to have recently taken an Elance test on Social Media Management and passed in the upper five percent!) Anyway, I just signed up for the Professional service, on what used to be called TweetLater, and I am very excited about it! Here’s why:

Instead of using TweetDeck or some other service to manually add each Tweet or Update, I can use the SocialOomph service to schedule Tweets and Updates. So, for example, let’s say I want to Tweet about Arachnid Creation’s Custom API Service, I can make a “Queue”, and tell it how often I want it to update. (I always use six hours as I don’t want to be a “Spammer”!) For each tweet, I check a box that says to put the tweet back into the queue. Normally I make at least nine unique tweets, so that the rotation changes for time of day. (E.g. if my first Tweet was at 8 am, tomorrow at 8 am it would be a different tweet, and so forth, for each following day).

Every six hours the next tweet in the queue is automatically posted to Twitter, (and or Facebook, StatusNet, etcetera).

I’m done. Now I can go on to do something else, like interact with my followers on a more personal basis!

Nice thing is, I can add as many queues as I want, and as many accounts as I want. While I’m only managing five Social Media accounts at present, I could easily do twenty – and still do a good job!

But that’s not all! SocialOomph provides the following:

·         Keyword Tracking. I can make a list of keywords and SocialOomph will monitor the Twitter stream and periodically email me a digest of the tweets that contained those keywords. So if I wanted to track, for example, those who had an interest in API’s, I put in that keyword and get reports of tweets, and tweeters, who have an interest in that particular area that I can then follow up on.

·         Extended Profiles. Twitter’s profile area is very limited, but with the SocialOomph service, I can make an extended profile that allows me to make a much more detailed profile.

·         Saved Drafts. These feature allows me to save a draft or a URL for use in later tweets or updates, which saves me hours of repetitive typing.

·         Supports Multiple Media Outlets. This includes StatusNet, Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz.

·         URL Shortening and Click Tracking. Using their in-house URL shortening service, I can shrink my URL’s and then get all kinds of information about who clicked what.

·         View @Mentions and Retweets. SocialOomph allows me to see at a glance my StatusNet and Twitter @Mentions and Retweets in a timeline, making it easy to respond to those who are showing an interest in my message.

·         Automatically Purge DM mailbox. The service allows me to delete all the messages in my DM mailbox, those older than 7 days, or those older than 30 days. Tweetdeck offers my clear my seen DM’s – but I have to mark each one individually that it’s been seen, or it allows me to delete all of them. This is a much better solution!

I could easily spend another few hours trying to list all of their great features, of which I’ve mentioned just a few, but it’s all there on their website at SocialOomph.  They even have a seven day free trial so that you can test drive it before you spend a dime.

Summary

If you’re serious about Social Media Management and Internet Marketing, and want to truly develop an interaction between you and prospective clients, the SocialOomph service makes it easier than ever. At a cost of less than $30.00 a month, you’ll more than make that back in time savings and increased productivity.

Instead of frantically trying to keep up with it all, use Social Oomph to set everything up, and maybe you’ll even have time left over to actually view the Twitter Stream!

Alicia Harris is a Social Media Manager and Technology Writer for Arachnid Creations, a full service web development company in San Diego, California.