Updating Process

Recently I have been attending a lot of very interesting lectures at Texas State University. As an advertising major I am constantly looking for ways to stay informed and trying to stay in touch with trends. I have started updating all of my profiles to represent a more professional theme across all social networking sites.

These days, maintaining your online identity is just as- if not more- important that your real identity and reputation. I have also been thinking of ways to grow my networks and reach the people I want to stay in contact with the most. In advertising, brand awareness is critical for the success of a company. The same applies to individual identity, after all perception is reality and ones own personal image is a brand. Thus, when growing ones network such as my own I must consider who am I reaching and what perception do they have of me.

At a lecture on "Your Social Media Toolkit" this past Wednesday, I learned of some really great sites that are (mostly) free that can help gauge brand awareness and effectiveness. Here they are:

•   RSS feeds are a great way to keep in the know with important brands (Google reader)

•   Radian6 graphically displays frequency of posts regarding clients and displays all public posts.

•   tweetreach.com shows how many followers a tweet or topic was reached to.

•   compete.com gives website analytics so you can see how influential a website is

•   quantcast.com also gives analytics but also displays demographics

•   klout.com measures personal influence on social networking sites

•   alltop.com provides links to blogs of a particular topic. Allows you to find influencers that may affect your brand.

•   TweetDeck displays all your social network feeds in one app.

In addition to updating all of my pages, I have started using these tools as well. I am going to start blogging more so that I can keep my audience in touch with what is going on. This post is a bit off topic as it is more personal than most of the future ones will be, however it does relate to technology in terms of websites and new social media practices. Expect to hear more from me!