As today is apparently "social media day" and as I’ve done this meme before, I thought I’d give a quick update on my most indispensable social media resources, with a little bit on how, why and where I use them. Note: not all of them are social media platforms, necessarily, but they all help me connect or interact with the social web in some sense or the other.
My blogging toolkit
Evernote is my ultimate offline note-taker. The fact it syncs back into the web and maintains consistency across my many devices (3x personal PCs, 1x work PC, 1x personal Mac, iPhone & iPad) makes it persistently and pervasively useful. Most of my blog posts are drafted in Evernote on the train commute into the office.
Google Reader – is my RSS compendium. I share stories on here (which syndicate out to Twitter and Buzz) and read hundreds of stories a day without spending hundreds of hours a day browsing through multiple websites.
Flickr – for sharing and sourcing images. Enough said – love its embed capabilities.
Windows Live Writer – for editing, polishing and publishing the blog posts. One of the last vital bits of Microsoftware I use.
WordPress – what you see here. Love it – equipped especially with Jetpack, and backed up by Google Analytics, it lets me share, disqus, and keep tabs on what people are reading. Also use it for a number of clients.
I’m still in two minds about Tumblr.
My research tools
Quora is a remarkable resource for finding out expert insights into products, people or brands. There’s a fantastic amount of valuable content on there and its appeared remarkably quickly. I owe a h/t to Tim for pointing me at this earlier this year.
Google Realtime (alongside Google News, Trends, Blogsearch and beyond) are awesome for figuring what’s going on in the world and testing the validity of a perceived trend, finding out what people are talking about etc.
Oh, and Wikipedia, of course.
My comms and productivity portfolio
Google Docs – is my productivity and collaboration powerhouse. I love Apps too.
Chrome – my browsing masterpiece, complete with Tweetdeck (tying together Facebook, Buzz and Twitter)
Skype – the iPhone app is beautifully deployed, although the desktop app has become bloated
Dropbox – ultimate tool for sharing large files, collaborating on projects
Twitter – I struggle to find as much time as I did to keep up with people but dip in every now and then and use it to let people know when I’ve written about them elsewhere
Facebook – for all that people hate it, I do think its boss, and one of the most powerful tools for me to keep in touch with people. Emily’s life is catalogued in pictures on there, and I rely on its ‘closed’ nature to maintain a certain level of privacy (aware of the irony here). I’m v. curious about Google+ though.
My health check
RunKeeper and DailyBurn are my apps of choice on this front, providing fitness monitoring and tracking and diet monitoring and tracking respectively. Now if only they talked to each other…
Mobile+
Camera+ fits into this thanks to its awesome sharing features. I use mobile apps for Evernote, Tweetdeck, WordPress, Skype and a few others, but this is the stand-out social app.
Right, phew, more than I thought. What do you use that I’m missing? What do I use that you think is rubbish?