So it’s been a few weeks since I attended the fourth annual Pod Camp Western Mass. (PCWM). This increasingly popular “un-conference” provided me a plethora of information about social media, online networking, and all things related. Perhaps with an expanded sense of purpose, I walked away from the day-long event immediately motivated to put what I’d learned into practice at work the following Monday.

There were a number of PCWM sessions relevant to the work that I do, and while a few starting times conflicted, I overall was able to attend the ones I wanted. My career involves social media in a public relations capacity for companies based in the Berkshires of Massachusetts; with technologies and social networking platforms constantly changing and evolving, keeping up is essential.

My job’s social networking reaches people across the U.S. and Canada as well as several countries in Central and Eastern Europe, and across several popular platforms—among them, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. When I started, it took a bit of time to post to these accounts individually. I knew there had to be a more efficient way… cue: TweetDeck, a social media dashboard that allows for posting to multiple outlets simultaneously.

There are many similar sites now, as I learned in this first of the sessions I attended. I’ve been using HootSuite for the past year or so, and it’s worked quite well. I am able to not only post to multiple social media accounts at the same time, I can also schedule things to post months out, include photos and links, and even track users, site visitors, etc. It’s a great thing, and a great time-saver.

But as great as HootSuite has been for my work, I was introduced that day to several other similar services, such as Buffer. This offers a more efficient way to “handle sharing on social media.” While I am still going through and learning about this one, it seems to make life a little easier—I can fill up my “buffer” with statuses, photos, videos, and links to all kinds of things at the start of my day, and Buffer “automagically” posts them for me throughout the day. Bam. Done. Keeping my “buffer” regularly full keeps my companies’ social media presence strong.

Photo Source: Pat Brough
Tweetcaster is another multitasking social networking site, although this is focused specifically on Twitter.

Social networking is just that: networking, with people near and far. TweetChat is one site that helps accomplish that. It’s kind of like a traditional conference call or gathering on a long-forgotten party telephone line, only online. Sign in to your Twitter account, and choose a hashtag to follow—once you’re in, you are connected to others who are chatting about and monitoring the same topics. I plan to use this one, too, as many in one of my company’s networks are across North America and Eastern Europe, particularly during our busy season. We will be able to chat about topics relevant to our work, and easily, too.

Overall, PCWM was a great experience for me. And not only did I walk away from it with new skills to enhance my work, I also got a self-filtered water bottle courtesy of the Businews Channel. Not too shabby.

– Justine Murphy, PR Specialist, Winstanley Partners