Wanted: Productivity Tips for the Swamped Search Marketer

Being a blogger, it’s crucial that I’m in the know and on top of the news. I’ve been using a number of tools to help me do this. RSS is obviously a big one, but if it’s been more than a few days since I last opened my feeds, I’m almost afraid to check. The info overload is daunting.

On Twitter today, my buddy @chuckallied chirped:

chuckallied tweet

For those who understandably don’t want to type out that URL, you can find the article by Will Critchlow over at SEOmoz.

So there are two important things I wanted to point out in this story. To understand point number one, first you gotta read it. Will has summed up a fascinating observation about the obfuscated effect of the nofollow tag. But that’s a piece of news for another time. The reason I’ve woven Will’s article in this tapestry of a diatribe is to highlight this choice bit:

Many people are leaving their RSS feed readers untouched and getting their news via links their friends drop on Twitter.

Hey, he read my mind! I’ve been getting my dose of daily news from Twitter for the past few weeks. And it’s really quite entertaining. I’ve found a healthy mix of the funny, outrageous and educational just by following the shrunken links coming through the timeline. And by picking out the juicy ones, I always end up with more than enough to fill a Friday Recap or five.

But it got me thinking. What other productivity tools am I missing out on?

A couple weeks ago Vince Blackham asked if anyone’s using Tweet3, and ever since it’s topped my list of productivity tools that kick major booty.

Using Tweet3 you can read the timelines, replies and direct messages of multiple Twitter accounts all from one place. There’s also a URL shortening tool right on the page, complete with a link to statistics for how many people have followed a link you tweeted. From my point of view, I’m only missing the capability to see who I’m following or who my followers are. To me, it’s a small price to pay for all that functionality on a single page. As for Susan, she’d be happier if they could stack the timelines next to each other so you could check them all out at once. [And reply to them without switching. That part is important. I’m very lazy. –Susan]

Another tool I’m digging is called WhosTalkin, a sweet site that seems to find a bunch of brand and name references that slip through alerts. I’ve also been advised to pick up TweetDeck on my iPhone to help me become a Twitter power user extraordinaire! [Twitterberry is similarly indispensible on my shiny new BlackBerry. –Susan]

In the meantime, I thought I’d ask if anyone has a must-try tool or two that has helped them be more productive during the day. I’m not just looking for Twitter tools — time tracking, news aggregating, and search tools, among others, are all welcomed! My guess is I’m not the only one standing to gain from good suggestions. Some nudges in the right direction would be much appreciated!

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.

Comments (7)
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7 Replies to “Wanted: Productivity Tips for the Swamped Search Marketer”

chuckallied

Thanks for making me Internet famous Virginia! Now I owe you a Diddy Riese next time I’m in the valley. Hopefully it won’t have melted by then! As for Twitter, it makes sense that it’s useful for cutting down on the noise because our friends and associates vet the articles for us, or at least we can see how popular a story becomes even if it’s low on comments. Still, there’s definitely a place for feeds, but often times they’re woefully unoptimized (guilty) to best suite personal reading and selection.

Virginia Nussey

No problem, Will! I think the new ways we get our news is a fascinating topic, especially because I always wanted to be a journo when I grew up. :) And I didn’t even graze the issue of the wider implications you mention! There are a lot of layers worth deconstruction in this story.

Thanks for the shout about my article, Virginia. I wondered about making a bigger deal of that trend – a few people have commented about it to me in discussion. Interesting thoughts… I think there are much wider implications for blog readership and audience development.

Another vote for TwitterBerry. So handy to separate out the replies, etc. I like being able to view the public timeline once in awhile too. On the computer, TweetDeck is my new favorite because it does the same thing as TwitterBerry does for my Blackberry.

Thanks for this great post. Though I knew about Tweet3 but WhosTalkin is a new tool that I cam across, thanks to your post. Hope it works for me.
Wendy

Virginia Nussey

Hey Meg! Oo, that’s good to know. It sounds easier than what I’ve been doing. Thanks!

Actually I use iGoogle for my feeds. I’ve set up tabs for different types of pages, SEO, AdWords, Domains, Affiliate stuff, News – whatever – and that way I can just tab through, look at the headlines, and see what’s happening; if something catches my eye, then I can read it, if not, move on.

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