9 Tools for Leveraging the Web

Last week I spoke at an event in San Diego totally focused on using social media to increase sales. My topic...how to get the best out of your business blog.

Aside from the fact it was a great event, lots of buzz, got to connect with new friends, meet clients in person, and reconnect with wonderful gal pal Mari Smith, a ton of content was covered. Maybe even too much for one day, but it certainly had the audience excited. There was a lot of sharing of tools of the trade.

Paul Colligan spoke about how to use syndication to leverage social media. Not only is Paul a dynamic and funny speaker, he provided a lot of value. The big hit was when Colligan told people about Ping.fm, a service I've been using for a very long time.

Ping.fm enables you to be more efficient when you update your social networks. In one place you can update your twitter and Facebook status as well as Plurk, MySpace, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Del.icio.us and 24 other social networks. One post, updates all over the web and you don't have log into each site. Very cool. Very efficient.

That got me thinking about the other tools I use to extend my visibilty on the web. Here's my list, in no particular order of importance and they're all free:

Ping.fm - to update Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace status

Twitterfeed - to automatically feed blog posts & other RSS content feeds to my twitter stream

Tweetbeep - like Google alerts, sends daily emails with key words I'm watching so I can reply to tweet I might have missed and manage my online reputation

Tweetdeck - hands-down my favorite twitter application that allows me to follow groups of followers and see all replies and direct messages at a glance

Utterli - post audio messages that push out to my twitter stream from my phone

Tweetlater - set up tweets to post in the future. Automatically follows new followers and sends them a welcome message (this is controversial - some people think this defeats the purpose of twitter, but I don't)

Facebook Notes App - set up to feed my blog posts to my Facebook feed so my friends can stay up to date. Note: about 50% of my blog traffic is now coming from Facebook & Twitter and those visitors are more inclined to leave comments.

12seconds.tv - shoot and then automatically post 12 second videos on twitter stream.

TubeMogel - upload videos to one site that will distribute your video to multiple sites. Saves hours and hours of time if you want to get wide distribution of your videos

I'm sure there are other time-saving tools I use, but these are the ones top of mind right now.  Would love to see your list of top tools to save you time leveraging social media and the Web!

By the way, here's Michael Stelzner's list of 8 Must Have Social Media Tools.

Comments

[Lynn Jordan]

Denise, I'm so sorry that I missed the social media event. Since I was nearby, I really wanted to go, but my in-law's health prevented it. Thanks for the notes!

How does tweeting from Utterli differ from tweeting from Jott? I just found out today that Jott now posts to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites.

[Denise Wakeman]

Hey Lynn, sorry we didn't get to meet F2F in San Diego.

Thanks for heads up about Jott. Haven't used it for awhile so I wasn't aware that you can now use it to update Twitter and Facebook. I think I would be afraid I'd send my grocery list to my twitter friends!