Making the Social Media Nightmare a Little Easier

I must say that being without a computer for the last few weeks has been rather eye opening. I've been reassessing EVERYTHING I do online and realizing what a time suck it is. I'm 46. I'm over halfway done with life. Do I REALLY want to spend this much time online, especially if is does absolutely nothing for my glass bead sales??

Hmm... thoughts to ponder for sure!

And so I've been looking into things that will make my online life a little easier. One thing that I've tried and LOVE is Qwitter. Let's face it... everyone on Twitter has something to promote. I have serious doubts as to whether or not ANY customers use twitter at all. And unless I find someone's website offensive or they are in a business I care NOTHING about (like all the wigmakers that follow me... OY! I have enough hair for me and three other people. I doubt a wig is something I will EVER need!), I will follow anyone that follows me.

But many people will follow hundreds of people trying to get follow-back suckers like myself and then go around and unfollow us. Qwitter sends you an email within a few days of someone unfollowing you! Why follow those people??? It's a great service; just minutes to sign up and has both free and premium options. I use the free one and love it!!

And... YES, I NEVER look at my twitter cause it's so full of junk I care nothing about.  It's a jumble of ads...other tweeters just self promoting. It difficult to find the stuff I'm interested in - say my friends, fellow designers or those amazing choreographers from Dancing with the Stars - vs. the stuff I'm not - say, uh, wigs.


But right before my crash, I found HootSuite. From the dashboard, I can tweet, schedule tweets, read all tweets and direct messages and mentions and... I can create lists. It even picks up the lists I created within twitter and I can add other beadmakers on the spot. I can also follow and unfollow. HootSuite is the interface you WISH Twitter was! It's also fairly easy to search. Wow!

Click to see larger image.

I hope these time savers help you reclaim some of your life as well! And THANK YOU for spending part of that time with ME! See you next week here on the bead blog.