Socially Doing More

For me trying to be more social is not a trivial task. But you can learn so much if you just put some effort into it. In my last blog post I mentioned a service called Buffer. Buffer seems pretty good so far. Still need to play with it more but it is nice that I can just put something out that isn't time sensitive and Buffer will send it towards Twitter and Facebook. While the Twitter side of Buffer is pretty nice as it gives some analytics as to what has happened with your post, the Facebook side of Buffer seems a little irrelevant at this point other than scheduling posts. But I think I've found a better way...

Because Buffer only currently deals with Twitter and Facebook I still need to manually update the other social services I belong to. Enter If This Then That! This tool allows you to do a LOT of social site management automatically. (I'm really limiting what the site can do - check it out yourself.)

Using If This Then That (ifttt) I've re-used Recipes and some Tasks that automate posting to multiple sites. Here is what a ifttt Task looks like:

To give an example here is how this blog post will be announced.

1. When I post this blog Blogger will ask me if I want to post an announcement to my linked Google+ account, I will do that
2. An ifttt Task will see that I have a Public Google+ post and stuff that into my Buffer account as a Twitter update, it will prepend #li and #fb in that Tweet
3. The Buffer service will post the newly created Tweet to Twitter at that pre-determine time by Buffer
4. When Buffer posts to Twitter the Twitter post will have #li and #fb in the Tweet
5. #li will be recognized by ifttt which will trigger another Task that will repost that Tweet to my LinkedIn profile as a status update
6. #fb will be recognized by ifttt which will trigger another Task that will report that Tweet to my Facebook profile as a status update

Of course this really only works if you WANT to repost everything to every social site you belong to. In this case I do and the main trigger here is that the original post was a public post. That works for me!

Updating My Social Life

For years I've been talking about social networking and expressing my thoughts on how things should work. But how much did I really use social networking... not much.

So in 2012 I decided I would be more social. I would try to find the best tools for someone like me to stay connected on the different social networks I belong to - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Foursquare. Here is what I've got so far:

• iPhone 4
• Apps to access Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Foursquare.
• Other apps to support and provide tools for those networks: 
• Buffer - post to Twitter & Facebook on a predefined schedule
• MyPhone+ - sync my Facebook friends and their information with my iPhone Contacts
• Contacts Sync For Gmail - sync my Gmail contacts with my iPhone Contacts
• Other apps that integrate into one or more of the social networks. Such Waze, which is social GPS application that allows you to check into Foursquare.

So how does an update go that I want all of my networks to see?

1. Use Buffer to update Facebook and Twitter
2. Use the Google+ app to update Google+
3. Use the LinkedIn app to update LinkedIn

All on my iPhone. Not so bad.

What happens if I want to update my profile information...

Forget the iPhone for most of the profile updates. Web is the only way....

1. Log into the social network of choice
2. Update the information
3. Rince and repeat until all the social networks are updated

(Sure three steps but times five networks!)

This still doesn't address replying to comments on the different networks, having common friends between the networks or checking into a location.

Are my experiences common? Is this what people do or do most people just limit themselves to a single network and don't worry about the rest?