Lesson 2 Overview
Lesson 2 is about setting up core “infrastructure” tools to easily and quickly manage all your social media and networking activities.
Most of the tools are on-line sites providing SaaS - Software As a Service. Many of them are Free and a few have a small monthly fee. These are the tools that I use daily in my executive search practice, consulting activities, publication through our 5 blog properties, and in our e-commerce store.
I recommend you get a tool/site in each category. These are simply my favorites. You may already have a similar tool that you love for clipping websites, storing passwords, or recording information in a journal form.
I am saving 3 significant tools for the end of the e-course and dedicating an entire lesson to each one. These tools include Gist as a contact management turbo-charger for Outlook, Licorize as a tool to convert blog/website useful information into to-dos, and Hootsuite as a Twitter management tool. I am Windows user and most of the tools I recommend will be primarily windows tools, but they may also have a MAC option. In addition, there may be specific MAC tools that work as well or better than their Window counterparts.
Lesson 2 Action Items
- Register for a Google Reader Account. You'll need Google Reader to track the RSS feeds and variety of content that you're going to start collecting as an influencer/connector in your networks.
- Download Feedly as an Add-In to your browser. Feedly will present your Google Reader RSS feeds in a more user-friendly and attractive manner - also efficient - to quickly sort through an overwhelming amount of information.
Lesson 2 Discussion Points
What tools do you currently use as a blog/rss reader. What type of add-ins are you using within your browser to enhance tracking/managing/sorting through blogs and other rss feeds?
Are you currently using any form of a bookmarking service to store all the great content you come across on the internet that at some point you will either use as inspiration for your content/blog or to share with your network? As mentioned in a previous Lesson - Delicious is the tool that I use. I like the ability to apply different tags to sort/slice to make retrieval of the information easier. I also like the ability annotate occasionally articles of interest.
