SocialCPAs

Do You Monitor Your Social Media?

My last article focused on various mobile apps that are available for today’s leading social networks. These apps allow you to post content and status updates from your smartphones. They also allow you to follow your friends, connections and followers from your mobile devices.

The volume of social media activity makes it essential for CPAs and businesses to monitor brands and products. Several social media monitoring tools are available to track and search content. This article focuses on these applications.

HootSuite

HootSuite touts itself as “the leading social media dashboard to manage and measure your social networks.” You can use HootSuite to schedule your tweets and social media posts, monitor your brand, manage your social media profiles and search for keywords.

Information is arranged in columns or streams that include information from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Myspace, WordPress and others. Your Twitter stream, for example, can include your home feed, mentions, direct messages, retweets and scheduled tweets. In addition, your Twitter streams can include search terms, keywords and lists.

HootSuite offers mobile apps for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and iPad. The mobile apps include the following features:

• Customizable user interface
• Easy navigation
• Scheduled tweets or Facebook updates
• Foursquare check in
• Statistics tracking
• Photo sharing

The iPad and iPhone apps can be found in the App Store, the BlackBerry app can be downloaded from the HootSuite website and the Android app can be found in the Android Market. Information about the HootSuite mobile apps can be found here.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is another application that allows you to monitor your social media feeds, receive notification alerts and schedule tweets. TweetDeck allows you to monitor your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Like HootSuite, the app allows you to create columns based on timelines, search terms, mentions, direct messages, lists and trends. TweetDeck was acquired by Twitter during 2011 and has been revamped using HTML5.

All indications are that Twitter has decided not to release a mobile version of TweetDeck. According to the Twitter and TweetDeck websites, the product is available on the Web as a Chrome app and as a desktop application that supports Mac OSX and Windows. A Twitter app is available for the iPhone, Android, iPad, BlackBerry and Windows Phone.

Other Options

TweetDeck and HootSuite are not the only social media monitoring options. There are numerous other choices, including Seesmic, Social Mention, Google Alerts and Google Reader. These tools can help you monitor your brand and follow social media discussions.

Whether on your desktop or mobile devices, these social media monitoring apps can provide powerful information about your customers, supporters and critics.

Start using one today!

 

 

This article was originally published in the AICPA's CPA Insider newsletter. 

 

 

Thanks for Your Help!

Happy New Year!  I want to thank everyone who helped make 2011 a successful year for SocialCPAs. 

During 2011, I published the second annual SocialCPAs Social Media Survey.  I hope the survey results help you assess your social media efforts in relation to other members of the accounting profession.

This past year I had the opportunity to provide social media training and consulting services to accounting professionals and small business owners.  It has been enjoyable helping people understand how they can use LinkedIn and other social media to develop business opportunities.  Please let me know if I can help your firm or your clients with LinkedIn training, blogging, social media policy development or social media strategy. 

Thanks again for your help!

 

Check It Out - LinkedIn Adds Polls to Groups

Just yesterday, LinkedIn announced that they will be adding their first application to LinkedIn Groups.  This is a great idea!  Here's an excerpt from the LinkedIn blog:  

"A key reason our members use LinkedIn Groups is to share insights with like-minded professionals. Voting on polls now provides the same quick convenience of clicking “Like”, but with also the richer point of view of a comment."

You can see the entire post here.

This will be a quick and easy way to engage group members.  I just added a poll to CPA Tech Connect to find out what type of tablet group members plan to buy next.  The poll can be found under the Manager's Choice section.

Add a comment below and let me know how you might use polls within the groups you belong to.

Social Media for Your Smartphone

Quick, look around. How far away from you is your mobile phone? If you’re like the rest of us, the answer is not very far. Our phones are wireless but somehow we feel like they are always attached to us or, more correctly, we are always attached to them!

Social media vendors have obviously recognized this trend and have produced some cool apps for our smartphones. Let’s take a look at what these vendors have released.

LinkedIn Mobile

LinkedIn Mobile offers solutions for the iPhone, BlackBerry android and Palm. You can find a link to LinkedIn Mobile at the bottom of any page on LinkedIn or by clicking the image to the right.

LinkedIn’s mobile apps allow users to access LinkedIn profiles and updates. LinkedIn for the BlackBerry, for example, integrates with BlackBerry Contacts, Calendar and Messaging. It supports the Tour, Bold, Curve and Storm models running on operating system (OS) 4.3.0 or higher.

The latest iPhone version, 4.0.2, can be found in the iTunes store and allows users to access updates and view your profile, Inbox and your network. It also provides access to LinkedIn Today. The Android version offers similar features and can be found in the Android Market.

Facebook Mobile

Facebook offers support for a large number of devices including the iPhone, Palm, BlackBerry android and Windows Phone. The Facebook mobile site is easy to navigate. Simply select your phone from a dropdown list and you’re redirected to a Facebook page that has been setup for each type of smartphone. You can Like the page to receive updates and participate in conversations. In addition, each page includes a Download App button that links you to the appropriate download site, store or market.

The features of the mobile apps vary based upon your smartphone. For example, Facebook for BlackBerry includes Facebook Chat, notifications, messages, access to your friends list and the ability to share updates via BlackBerry Messenger, short message service or text messages (SMS) or e-mail.

In addition to its smartphone apps, Facebook offers two other mobile options:

1. You can use e-mail to post status updates and send photos.

    

2. Facebook users can also receive notifications and update their status via text messages.

Twitter Mobile

Twitter has mobile apps for the iPhone android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. From your smartphone, you can browse to m.twitter.com and access the apps. The mobile version of Twitter allows the user to tweet, send messages, share photos, send links, search tweets and see trending topics.

Some of the more popular Twitter clients like HootSuite and TweetDeck also offer mobile solutions. HootSuite offers mobile solutions for the iPhone android and BlackBerry. TweetDeck has mobile solutions for the Android and iPhone.

Google+ Mobile

Relative newcomer, Google+ offers mobile solutions for Nokia, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry android and iPhone. Mobile users can use Messenger (formerly known as Huddle) to converse and share photos with a group. The Google+ mobile app includes Hangouts that allow video conferencing with as many as nine people. You can use Stream to get updates from your Circles or use the Check-In feature in the Nearby view to see what’s happening near you. Finally, you can use SMS to subscribe to notifications, post to Google+ and participate in conversations.

The Pitfalls

Our smartphones have allowed us to communicate in ways that we never thought possible. It seems like we are never out of touch. The same can be said about social media. It allows us to keep up with all the things that are happening with our friends, followers, connections and circle members.

It is obvious that the lines between our personal and professional lives have blurred over the past decade. One of the reasons is that our employers have provided us with smartphones and created the expectation that we will be available outside our normal working hours. I advise that you approach social media mobile apps with caution if you have an employer provided smartphone. You just might find yourself in a situation where your personal information resides on a phone that you do not control. A well-defined smartphone policy should be implemented to avoid any issues.

Conclusion

Adding social media apps to your smartphone will provide a great level of knowledge and interaction. We learn things in an instant and get an overwhelming amount of information delivered to us wherever we are!

 

This article was originally published in the AICPA's CPA Insider newsletter.

Do you know the 5 Common Millennial Myths?

Today's workforce includes members of four different generations.  Each generation has very different viewpoints on work, life and a whole lot of other things!  Does your firm struggle with generational issues and tension?

Do you know the common myths about the Millenials?  Check out this great post by my friend, Rita Keller and see if her suggested Action Step might help your firm.