I’ve become a convert to Marylou’s coffee in the last year, and I’ll never turn back. As a staunch new englander, my first choice was always  Dunkin Donuts, and then whatever else, they were all the same. That changed when I switched jobs to Scituate; There was a Marylou’s right next to the commuter rail station. I was amazed; The coffee was great, the staff was SUPER friendly, and the branding, with it’s bright, bold pink was strong and outgoing.

Seeing how enthusiastic they were about engaging their customers in their locations, I couldn’t wait to follow them on twitter, like them on facebook, and connect with them in any other way possible. I was so disappointed when I saw that their twitter was so inactive; following 3, followed by a couple hundred, hardly any tweets, and absolutely no engagement. I thought to myself “maybe Facebook will be better” it is, a little bit, but there’s still no interaction. The website they’ve created is all right, but definitely doesn’t create a level of engagement that keeps people coming back. A quick twitter search highlighted so many missed engagements, some missed customer service opportunities, and an overall feel that their online presence is being neglected.

I couldn’t help but think “I would love to do something with this.”

I’m putting a call out to Marylou’s- I’ve got a great recipe for creating an engaging social media plan that can help your online presence feel more like your stores. I’m chomping at the bit to work with you, and I know that I can bring more people into your stores, create a better online image and keep your customers just as happy as your incredible staff makes them.

C’mon Marylou’s, let’s brew up a social media success, together.

I’ll be honest… I tweet, A LOT.

None of my tweets are automated. I pick and schedule every one myself. Yes, I schedule; and you should too, because the world and the internet run 24/7. I’ve come to enjoy the interactions with such a wide variety of people that social media allows me to have. For a while I felt like I was chocking on social sites, that the return wasn’t there and that I was wasting my time. As it turns out, I wasn’t wasting my time, I was just wasting time. I’ve since found a few gems that have helped me cut a ton of time out of my social media routine, and I hope that in sharing them with you, you can streamline your social media interactions as well!

Organization is key; if you have things fed into you, you’ll have more time to find and create great content, and more importantly, to listen to what people post. Here are a few of my organizational tools that I think you can use to help you as well!

Social Media dashboard- Hootsuite (pro)

Hootsuite is a great way to keep everything organized. It allows me to see my home feed, mentions, retweets and direct messages all on one screen. If you run multiple twitter, facebook, facebook fan pages or linked in accounts, Hootsuite can’t be beat. I run 4 twitter accounts, a facebook, fan page, linked in and ping.fm through my hootsuite, and having it all in one space is indispensable.

One of the greatest innovations in Hootsuite is the “Publisher” tab; It allows me to see when all of my content is scheduled for, and make adjustments as needed. I can filter it by one account or all of my accounts, and it is a HUGE time saver. I strongly suggest going pro; it allows you more than 5 linked accounts, analytics, and bulk scheduling for less than 6 bucks a month.

RSS reader: Google Reader

One of my biggest time expenses was trolling the internet for great content. I realized that over and over again, I went to the same 100 or so sites to get stuff to post. Visiting 100 sites a day, and all of the sidetracking that goes a long with it takes a hell of a long time. I found that feeding those sites’ RSS feeds into google reader had cut hours out of the amount of time that I’ve spent on social media.

I have a 45 minute train commute to work each day, and thank to the wonders of mobile wi-fi, I’ve got an internet connection the whole way. I used to just play a game, or listen to music, now I use that “dead” time looking over content, starring what I want to post and spend less “live” time looking for content.

One of the things that has made this so easy for me is Hootsuite’s chrome extension; I’m now 2 clicks away from sharing content found through google reader.

Follower Management: SocialBro

SocialBro is a new addition for me; it has however made finding new followers, unfollowing those that don’t follow back, and figuring out when to tweet pretty simple. I used to rely on #followfriday recommendations and Retweets of good content to find my new followers; with SocialBro, I can say” find all the people on twitter that have 1000-10,000 followers, a follower/follow ratio of no more than 2 that have tweeted in the last 3 days” and boom, there they are. I can target in on tons of indicators as I deem important, browse the profiles of those that come up, and meet a ton of new, interesting people.  Who follows me that I don’t follow? There’s a filter for that. Who do I follow that doesn’t reciprocate? There’s a filter for that too.

SocialBro is in Beta right now, but the potential is there for this to be a wonderful addition to any social media toolbox!

Those are my big 3 right now; What do you use to make social media more manageable? If you’ve got suggestions, I’ve got time to check them out now that I’ve freed up all of this time!