In case you haven’t noticed, social media is part of every aspect of your life, even if you choose not to participate in any social media outlets.  Almost every TV show now has a Twitter hashtag running in some corner of the screen throughout the show.  Movies that are coming to the theater now have Twitter handles or Facebook pages on their commercials, instead of traditional website url’s.  And, any company worth a grain of salt is now on Pinterest, Google+, and Instagram.

Social media can certainly become all-consuming.  It’s even a natural to assume that if you are new to a certain social media outlet, that it will be all-consuming for a while, until you’ve “settled in” and become somewhat of a veteran.  I know this has happened to me almost every time I’ve joined a social media outlet, despite my best attempts to prevent it.

These days, blogging and social media go hand-in-hand.  So, for those of us who blog, getting our blogging and social media organized is a must, otherwise, I don’t think any of us would ever sleep!  And, for those who don’t blog, but maybe run a business, getting their social media in tip-top, easy-to-handle shape is ideal!  Lastly, even if you are just a regular person using social media, getting your social media or blog reading organized is vital to preventing it from consuming your life!

You don’t want to be THAT person.  You know THAT one, who never puts their phone or computer away.  THAT one who is always “checking” something.  No one really likes to spend time with that person.  So, let me share some easy ways to prevent that from happening!

Enter, my blogging and social media app list!  Let’s get things organized!

BLOGGING

Google Reader. I don’t know what I did before Google Reader on my phone. It’s so much easier to stay on top of what all my favorite blogs are up to and make sure that I don’t miss any awesomeness… and trust me, there’s a lot of it! And thanks to Michelle from Décor and the Dog, I’ve been categorizing my blog reading for some time. By prioritizing the categories, I can make sure I hit certain reads, and get to the others when I have time. Michelle is a life saver- love that girl!

WordPress. For blogging on the go, this is really the easiest for a WordPress blogger. There’s really not much to it, so if you blog with WordPress, you may just want to check it out!

SOCIAL MEDIA

Hootsuite.  Hootsuite is a social media maagement dashboard that allows you to streamline and monitor posts on services like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, WordPress, MySpace, mixi, and Foursquare.  Whew… that’s a lot of management all in one place!  It’s super easy to use and you can see all of your streams in one place!  And, the mobile app is great too!  Another great thing about Hootsuite is the scheduler- you can actually schedule when things will post instead of having their publication suffer due to your availability.  You can also create custom reports and track statistics.  It’s pretty cool!

Tweetdeck.  Tweetdeck, though I don’t use this one, is pretty awesome, according to a lot of people!  It’s also a social media management dashboard that allows you to monitor and publish posts to other platforms like Twitter and Facebook.  Unlike Hootsuite, there is no stat tracking or reporting.

Pingraphy.  Pingraphy is a web-based service that allows you to schedule your pins.  Seriously… I haven’t used this, but it’s getting added to my “must use” list for sure!  Like any social media outlet, Pinterest’s traffic peaks at different times of day, and using a scheduler could totally allow you to increase your like, repins, comments, and follows.  This is particularly helpful, if you are not able to pin during peak times.  And to make things even easier, they’ve made the app function similar to Pinterest, so all you have to do is install a bookmarklet in your browser bar, just like the “pin it” button, and then just find an image, click the button, and schedule it!  Easy as pie!  Oh ya… and, apparently it has a stat tracker too, so you know how your scheduling is performing… NOT BAD!

Statigram.  Ok, so this one isn’t so much for organization as it is for understanding your time and efforts, so that way you have more time for organizing.  Statigram is a web-based service that provides a comprehensive overview of your Instagram stats, as well as allowing you to view, like, and comment on posts in your Instagram feed.  Though, if you have Hootsuite, you can do all of this from there too.

As you can probably tell, these apps save me tons of time and energy.  The ones I use actively are Google Reader, WordPress Mobile, and Hootsuite.  I’ll be adding Pingraphy to my list very soon though!

OK, WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE APPS FOR BLOGGING AND SOCIAL MEDIA?  ANY SOCIAL MEDIA YOU’RE TOTALLY TIRED OF OR CAN’T WAIT TO JOIN?

This blog post is part of the series, Operation: 30 Days to an Organized Home. To see the posts in the rest of the series, go here.