#8: Social Media Management Tools

I've got the social media thing figured out on a personal level.  I have the sites I use, and the sites I don't plan to use because you just have to stop somewhere.  I am a very "devoted" Facebook user and a somewhat devoted Twitter user.  I have an Instagram account, but don't use it, and I am not on Tumblr.  I use Edmodo to "socialize" with the kids at work.

The idea of trying out an app to put things into one place seems unnecessary to me, but I know a lot of people do it......you can tell because the same posts that appear on their Facebooks show up on Twitter.  I don't tweet very much, and say more on Facebook because I get more than 140 characters to do so. I used to teach English; I like words.

I decided to download Hootsuite, but when I searched for it, NewzSocial came up as well.  When I read about it, it claimed to be similar to Flipboard (which I love!)....so I downloaded it too.  After getting "in", I wasn't that impressed.  I have no "friends" on it, so there's no point....unless I want to annoy everyone by inviting them in to join or "follow" my channel.   It's basically a personalized magazine app with social components, but if I read an article I like, I'd much rather share my like of it by Twitter or Facebook. Oh well....learned something new.

Okay....Hootsuite. This was easy enough to get set up, as I just connected it to Facebook and Twitter with my account names and passwords, but once it was up and running...we'll, it was "okay". If someone was running social media for a company or organization  and had to post the same things to multiple places, this would make sense.  For me...not so much.  It was easy enough to figure out, but it wasn't beautiful.....and I still had to click between my two social networks anyway, so why not just have two apps?  It only had two and a half stars in the reviews, so I wasn't surprised it was pretty basic....and some of the complaints of the reviewers were pretty understandable.

Cloze had some much better reviews (4+ stars).  They say the following:

*We learn who is important to you and put them up front, filtering out the rest. 

*Everything about the people you know in one place, pulled together for you.

*Circulate the best of what you discover on social media with your team. 

Sounds good.

I made my account on Cloze, then added Twitter and Facebook easily (not LinkedIn, as I don't use that one). Then, I added my Hotmail account and personal Gmail account . 

Then I got this....at 4:45 pm:

By 4:49 it said we were ready to begin!

Cloze had my "people" grouped the way Facebook has them in groups....but I didn't find the navigation to be easy or hard...just meh I guess. I know they use some special algorithms to determine who is the most important to me, but I don't like that they have determined who my "key people" are.  I also didn't like that in reading my mail I had to archive messages but couldn't delete them. The whole "sharing with your team" stuff didn't fit with what I would use social media for, so those are lost on me.  Again, I can see this being a cool app for the right person, but I'm happy accessing Twitter and Facebook separately, or getting to my Facebook via Flipboard.

It's nice to know these apps are out there, and to have played around with them enough to have some background if students or staff ever have questions, but I don't see myself using any of them in the future.

#7: Content Saving & Sharing

Saving and sharing is most definitely NOT a hardship for me.  I share stuff online quite a bit with Facebook, my personal blog, and Twitter, and I do have a Pinterest account, but rarely look at it.

I'm engaged to be married in about eight months, and the only reason I ended up on Pinterest is because my best friend found these wedding ideas and I kept getting messages about things getting pinned for me......so I have a few things in there, but not much.

Mostly it's because I'm scared. I don't need another app to be addicted to.  And I know WAY too many women who admit to HOURS on Pinterest.  This is the same reason I don't do Instagram or Tumbler.....you just have to say NO to some things. My media assistant finds TONS of great ideas on Pinterest for our bulletin boards and library decorations and I think it's a real cool source for things like that...and it has given me a couple wedding ideas.

So...I'm only going to look into Pinterest to learn about it....NOT to get addicted.........stay tuned.

The next day:

So, I created some boards.....I have some "funny" boards, a wedding one, a book one, recipes, and a travel one.  I find it funny that I have "followers" on Pinterest, and I'm not sure what that really means....I suppose they just pinned things I pinned? I was given the option of "secret" boards...and I suppose those might be nice for Christmas gift ideas or things I don't want to publicize to others.

 

What do I like about Pinterest?  Well, if I had 10 hours to do nothing, I could totally surf Pinterest....it seems completely endless.  I like all the ideas that are available to non-cooker-non-baker-non-crafter people like me....but it can get pretty overwhelming because it never ends.  It also can get repetitive at times, as you see the same pins over and over and that gets old.

I think the best part is that I get to make my own categories and that it saves the picture of the idea for me......it makes it easier to remember why I pinned it in the first place...and removing stuff I decide I'm not all that excited about.

I can see myself spending more time here over the next eight months of wedding planning.....but I REALLY don't need to be addicted to another app.....unless I let go of Candy Crush :)

#6: Creating & Editing Docs

I admit it.....I was not all that interested in trying out the apps in this "thing" (I like to use Keynote and Pages on my iPad......as I've admitted before, I've been drinking the Apple Kool-Aid for quite some time), but I am VERY happy about something I discovered that might come in quite handy next year with my students.

I downloaded Quickoffice rather than CloudOn, solely because of the Google connection.  My kids are users of Googledocs/Drive and any time I can connect more into Google, the happier we are because the password is the same for everything....with middle schoolers, this is a big deal. We use Google to connect with Khan Academy and Edmodo already, so connecting here would be great......

For ONE. BIG. REASON.

POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS.

My kids have access to Keynote, Haiku Deck, and Prezi, but there are many who would like to do Powerpoint styles of presentations......iPads don't let kids create presentations within Google Drive...just documents and spreadsheets, so this could provide that for them.

I like that this app has lots of tutorial help in it (though it's pretty intuitive) and would be relatively simple for kids to learn to use. I'll likely add it to the 1:1 iPads next year.

I also downloaded SignNow, just to test it.  Getting an account took all of thirty seconds, and figuring out how it works is pretty straightforward.  At this point, I can't see a need for it in my line of work or personal life, but I can see how someone who has to send around a lot of important documents might need it.  I may keep it on my iPad just in case....you never know.