Pssst: Want to hear a secret to save time on social media?

Want to learn a quick trick to save time on social media? 

Two sumo wrestlers

Me wrestling with social media: I'm the cuter one.

Anyone who has been following me for a while knows that I have a love/hate relationship with social media.  I love the opportunity social media provides to stay in touch with friends, family and contacts and to get my work out there to home buyers and sellers in Montreal West Island.  But I hate how social media sucks my time away without my even realizing it. I wrestle with this daily.

Well, 10 days ago, at a seminar on developing a social media strategy that was organized by MiB Networking Group and delivered by Nancy Overbury, I learned of a beautiful secret.  OK, I suppose it’s not so much of a secret as a treasure, really. 

Have you heard of Hootsuite?  It’s a site where you can update your status and post it to as many social networks as you want.  And each time you do it, you get to choose which sites you want your update to go to.  You first have to set up an account at Hootsuite (I have the basic/free setup) and then you add the social networks that you want to be part of your account.  My Hootsuite account links to my Facebook profile, Facebook fan pageTwitter account, and LinkedIn profile.

As an example, if I feel like sharing something that is more personal and less business-related, I may not want my status update to go to my LinkedIn profile nor my Facebook fan page, but I do want to it go to my Twitter and Facebook profile.  After I type in my status update at Hootsuite, I just click on the profiles/sites I DO want it to go to. 

If I write a blog post, I likely want it to go everywhere, so I pen my status update at Hootsuite and provide the link to my blog, and then click on all four social networking sites.  And voila!  An update goes to all four social networking sites announcing a new blog post.

Hootsuite also counts the number of characters you are using and lets you know if you’ve gone beyond the Twitter limit of 140 characters.

It’s so simple, and a real time-saver.  And it’s easy to set up.  I mean, if I can do it…. :)

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Did you know?  I stage all my listings…at no extra charge.  It’s part of my service package as a Montreal West Island real estate agent/broker.  I also hire a professional photographer to take photos of your home for the MLS.  

Professional home staging and professional photography: two critical factors to making sure your home looks its best, both in person and on the Internet, and neither of them cost you more when you list with me.

Amused to Death?

I’m feeling philosophical this Monday morning.  Roger Waters is coming to play the entire album The Wall here in Montreal at the Bell Centre.  Hubby is going, but I’m not.  Though I’m a huge Roger Waters fan, it’s his solo stuff I prefer and so I just couldn’t justify the price tag: a cool $250.  The Wall is Ritch’s favourite album, so he must go.

I’m feeling philosophical because I’ve had to ask myself some tough questions about how I’ve been spending my time lately.  I’ve spent the better part of a year investigating and experimenting in social media, including blogging.  It’s been a huge learning curve for me, and though I’m not done learning yet, I know I need to be more focused in how I spend my time. 

It’s just so easy to convince myself that what I’m doing is “work.”  And most of the time it is; at other times, it’s purely social — and I need to be honest about that and figure out whether I can afford that time to be social or whether I should be working on other things.  Or here’s a thought: how about being social with the real live friends and family who are already in my life?

I was on Facebook a while back when Jared James asked the question:

“Is what you’re doing right now productive?”

The quote in today’s Montreal Gazette was from Dante:

“Heaven wheels above you, displaying her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground.”

And from Roger Waters’ Amused to Death, a beautiful, mystical, passionate and prophetic song (subscribers: the link to the song will come up if you open up my blog instead of reading from the e-mail):

“No tears to cry. No feelings left.  The species has amused itself to death.”

So here’s to having our feet planted firmly on the ground, to looking for – and seeing – the beauty that surrounds us, to spending less time plugged in and more time just being…and to being honest about why we do what we do.  

Have a great week, my friends.

"Hey, you should blog about this."

A picture is worth a thousand words.

This has nothing to do with Montreal real estate, Montreal home staging, or plans for 2010.

It has everything to do with: 1. Being in Key West last year on vacation with Mr. Man; and 2. Mr. Man finding this picture on the computer the other day and saying, “Hey, you should blog about this.”

Yes, he actually said those words: “You should blog about this.”

What does this mean?

I think it means that he no longer sees my blogging as “the other man” in our relationship! Finally!

Does this mean an end to the glares he sends my way as I type, blog,  comment and laugh out loud while on Active Rain, my fav on-line real estate network, or other parts of cyberspace? One can only hope.

But at least the private detective he hired to tail me should be a thing of the past. I’ll keep you posted…



JJJ RealtyRESACSP logo

Tanya Nouwens is authorized to pursue the activity
of real estate broker in the Province of Quebec.