My Social Media Toolkit
There are so many tools out there right now for communicating and building community. Some folks use one set, and others use something different. Each have their strengths and weaknesses. I thought I’d share my personal set of tools for building and nurturing a community:
Blogging Software: WordPress
I use the distributed version of WordPress as my blogging software, because it’s so flexible, and because the hosted version lets me customize all aspects of the code. You can also use the free version of Wordpress by going to Wordpress.com. It works swell, and it’s easier to set up. You can’t customize it as much, but maybe to start, it’s just fine for you.
Podcasting Software: Audacity and GarageBand
For cleaning up audio, I use Audacity (which works for Windows, Mac, and Linux). And then for editing into a final podcast product, I use Apple’s GarageBand (free and built right into your Mac software). I host the final products on my website, and then I use PodPress to play it inline on the site.
Video Editing Software: iMovie
I use Apple’s built-in iMovie software for most of my videoblog work. It does what I want it to do, though if I got good at Final Cut, I probably would want to switch to that eventually. Maybe. Who knows? Windows Movie Maker isn’t that bad a product either, I’m told.
Video Hosting Software: Blip.tv
There are TONS of places to host files, but I like Blip.tv, New York’s own quality team. What I like most about Blip are the people, but they make a killer product, too. Mike Hudack is one of the most personable business leaders I’ve ever met, and responsive to no end. Sure, you can use YouTube, but will their President call you up if you’ve got a compression problem?
Messaging Platform: Twitter
In the age of Pownce and Jaiku and several other competing platforms, I think Twitter is the best. Why? Partly because the crowd is there. Partly because it’s simple, with no bells or whistles. And I think also because it’s got an easy SMS interface, meaning I can take it mobile with me, too.
Social Network Platform: Ning or Facebook
There’s a tie here in my heart. I love Ning for being much more open-faced, for letting me use technology my way to build my community, for allowing 3rd party apps, RSS, and all kinds of great technologies that make the platform better for me.
But the people are definitely still on Facebook, and there are multiple ways to interact with people there. For that reason, I keep my feet in both pools at present. I’m in love with Ning, but I haven’t been able to stop using Facebook for what it’s allowing me. If I were a business, I’d consider the same thing: a dual strategy.
Email: Gmail
I use Gmail for my primary email platform because it’s easy, lightweight, manages to block lots of spam, and makes searching for messages easy. I keep a backup version of my mail by loading Gmail to my computer via the Thunderbird email application by Mozilla. It’s free, open, and easy to configure.
Calendaring Software: Google Calendar
What I like about Google Calendar is that it just works. Simple. It’s easy to throw something in there. It’s especially easy to move things back and forth between days, switch hours, add more data, invite others, etc. I can do LOTS with Google Calendar.
Event Calendar: Upcoming
Slightly differently, I use Upcoming.org to keep track of events I’m visiting, and to find events I *should* attend, by following friends to see where they’re going next. It’s a great tool, complete with a widget for my blog and my Facebook.
IM Client: Adium
If you’re on a PC, I guess I’d use Trillian, or Meebo from the web apps side of the house. Adium is a great way to allow me to span multiple platforms for instant messaging, though I don’t use this form of communication often. It’s just easy to use. Easier still might be Meebo as it’s online.
News Reader: Google Reader
I much prefer Google Reader to any web-based or app-based software for reading multiple blogs and RSS feeds. It’s easy, fast, lightweight, and has lots of features (except, uh, search. WTF, Google?). I love the app and use it to read through hundreds of posts quickly, until I find the ones I want to take a deep dive into.
Listening to the Web: Technorati and Google BlogSearch
I use both Technorati and Google BlogSearch to determine who’s talking about me. I’ve baked all the searches I want about the things that matter to me into RSS feeds, and then dumped them into Google Reader, so that I can know quickly who’s talking about things I might want to jump in and talk back about.
Wiki: PBWiki
There are times when I need a place to store static data, but that I can edit as I might wish, or share with others. I use PBWiki for my wiki of choice. You could probably go through life without needing a wiki, but if you want a lightweight, simple, editable web page, that’s my vote.
Online Document Sharing: Google Docs
I just think that Google Docs has cornered the market on easy-to-use online document sharing. They have spreadsheets and text documents covered. Rumor has it they will be doing presentations online very soon as well. This makes for easy remote working.
Photo Sharing: Flickr
I love Flickr for sharing photos, because it’s got a lot of built-in community tools right there. I think Flickr is horribly underrated, and could be used for much more than simple photo sharing. It’s a fascinating product worth more of your attention.
Presentation Sharing: SlideShare
To see completed presentations online, check out SlideShare. I think it’s a swell application and allows people to interact with slideshows, and makes for a fun way to embed some different content on your blog.
Your Adds
What would you add to this list? What replacements do you offer? Where have I steered you wrong? I’d love your thoughts.
Up next, HOW I use these all to build a platform out of it all, for branding, for building community, etc.
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Comments
Chris, that’s a great run down of some of the services being offered. The only thing I don’t see you posting is ‘why’ you use all these services. What are the benefit to using each of them? By that I mean, how do you, “Chris Brogan” use these items to better what you do? Do they add to your bottom line? Or just to your ability to express yourself? Bottom line it for the newbie users/ beginning wannabe bloggers… What’s the point of including these services in your daily work?
Chris, you might want to look at this post to see if you might want include monitoring tools:
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/26-free-tools-for-buzz-monitoring.html
Has anyone ever checked out eyespot.com? It lets you upload your video, audio, and edit them using an AJAX based platform and then spit back out to Blip, etc. I was pretty impressed by it. Still, I’d really like it if there were a basic video editing app for my mobile, so I could cast wherever I am.
For Live and Interactive Podcasting, I recommend Talkshoe.com Less quality, then if you would do it yourself, but if you get enough people involved, it’s quite fun to interact live with your listeners.
For news reader, I recommend FeedDemon. I use FeedDemon on windows XP and it’s the best damn feed reader I have ever used. I subscribe to a ton of feeds and then, I can set up detailed searches within FeedDemon to look for specific topics or keywords within the feeds. Talk about being specific. It looks to me, like you already know how to harness the power of RSS to stay IN THE KNOW.
RE: RSS … Flock is really amazing, the drag being that it is locked to a machine. That said, it has one of the best feed interfaces I have used.
I’m glad that you asked Chris!
Microsoft’s Live Writer makes Wordpress better! I can compose offline, embed images with copy/paste, more text options, manage multiple blogs, automatically ftp’s images & the list goes on. It opened up the world of blogging for me.
Evernote is also a MUST have. Those 2 are essential for me. Clicking & dragging in url’s & images to create live links allow me to browse the net quickly & later organize my notes into a highly structured system. (I can find things quick!) http://digiscrapinfo.com/wordpress/2007/06/17/evernote-20-a-great-organizational-tool/
I prefer the google alerts to rss because the rss misses so much.
Firefox is a must have too with tabbed browsing set up. http://digiscrapinfo.com/wordpress/2007/08/16/daily-reading-using-tabbed-browsing-in-firefox/
Just got a quick question- what advantage does the second step into Garage band offer over doing the whole editing process in audacity? Is it just the ID3 tagging, or is it something else? Just curious.
Chris —
I found my way into your digital orbit via your Tweets, and it was quickly apparent to me that you were really stretching the scope of the app’s utility — not just “here’s what I’m doing” but lots of crowdsourced questions, requests for feedback, etc. From there I discovered you were just as busy giving all the tools above a workout as few others have. All this to say that readers ought to treat your issuance of this list as an E.F. Hutton type thang — you may just be the hardest working man in this social-web show business!
Just as useful as the picks themselves is the breakdown of what elements the standard-issue social media toolkit ought to contain — your list coveres the key bases without getting bogged down in more services than any one person could possibly feed. (Although in your case I don’t know — I’ve no idea how you manage to be so prolific across so many fronts.)
There are a only categories and/or specific services I might add to your list:
* you’ve got a few more in your own sidebar, including social-news sites (for me, newsvine and digg) and social bookmarking sites (for me, del.icio.us or ma.gnolia.com).
* Social-networking platform: For me LinkedIn is still a necessity as a professional networking tool — imo Facebook needs add a “user template” or two to allow grown-ups to center their Facebook experience around the relationships that are most relevant to them, e.g. the ability to make an affinity group or a profession/field the central “network” associated with one’s profile. (I’m 41 and have an established career — my “college network” has zero relevance to my life today.)
* screencasting tool: I recently tested a bunch of OS X options and IShowYou is my fave. (For Windows users, I’ve liked Camtasia…)
* Finally, whoever you are and whatever your interests there’s probably a niche social-web tool that will be a godsend to you but would be irrelevant to others. Love finding new music and connecting with others who dig what you do? last.fm. Scientist? How bout connotea, a specialized social-bookmarking tool. Environmentalist? don’t miss gristmill.grist.org’s thriving community, keep an eye on Hugg.com (a green Digg), and (warning: shameless client promotion ahead) connect directly with experts at http://switchboard.nrdc.org.
Solid collection of tools, Chris.
I’ve just recently started using chat, GTalk. I want something more private, for business. Might you sometime shine a light on Chat choices for business apps?
Thanks.
@ Luke: Rumor has it that JotSpot’s debut as an integrated Google App is imminent (http://urltea.com/1dtd); I’m also a JotSpot fan who’s been waiting impatiently for this to happen.
Hi Chris, I just wanted to say thanks for such a detailed list, pointers and explanations of how you use these various things (for want of a better word). I’m trying to find my feet in the world of social networks beyond the blog and it can be a bit (= understatement!) overwhelming. This stuff really helps.
Joanna
Podcasting: We use Ubercaster. It’s not free but is a great all-in-one tool for Macs
Video Editing: Quicktime Pro for the basic stuff like screencasts
Screencasting: SnapZPro - cheap, gets the job done, actually pretty neat.
Chris,
Great list! It’s probably no surprise to you that I’m using most all of the same. I’ll add a couple more, though:
* del.icio.us - I use http://del.icio.us/ to bookmark and tag all the various sites I find in the course of daily work. My del.icio.us feed is then a sidebar on a blog, posted to a link blog, etc.
* Feedburner - I use http://www.feedburner/ (now owned by Google) for all my RSS feeds, both for the stats and also to add links (”FeedFlare”) to the feeds so that people can post my items into other services.
* Windows Live Writer - I’ll second the comment made by Connie Benson that Windows Live Writer truly ROCKS for an offline blog editor (if you are on Windows). It has *greatly* increased the ease and speed with which I can post blog entries.
* Screen captures - A recent addition to my tool set has been SnagIt from TechSmith. It lets me (on Windows) very quickly grab a section of the screen and copy it to the clipboard - which I can then paste into Windows Live Writer. It has again greatly accelerated the speed with which I can make blog entries that include graphics, logos, or other parts of a screen.
Again - a great list - thanks for posting it.
Chris Brogan’s …
If you are looking to get started in “social media” - or are interested in how others survive and thrive in the world of social media - Chris Brogan’s post today, “My Social Media Toolkit”, may be of great help…
I like Plugoo much better than Meebo. I found meebo to be unstable, slow to load, and it did not take messages when I was offline. Have not had a problem with Plugoo, and I can logon to it through my im program instead of having to open another tab in firefox.
Chris here is a tutorial on Audacity from my Podcsasting site!
http://www.all-podcast-secrets.com/external/audacity.html
Some really great adds here. You guys rock at making this even more helpful. I sure did miss a few tools in this discussion. I should’ve talked about LIVE products, like TalkShoe and BlogTalkRadio and uStream and BlogTV.com . I should’ve covered tagging services like del.icio.us and RSS help like FeedBurner.
But I didn’t have to. You did. : )
Chris I forgot my Favorite Mac Journal
http://www.marinersoftware.com/
Also Mariner has Win Journal ! Priced right great software !
Article on Mac Journal from Apple-of-my-i !
http://www.apple-of-my-i.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=127&Itemid=37
Chris one more item http://www.apple-of-my-i.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=91&Itemid=37 Joe Taylor Jr did this Screencast for me ! It has a lot of tech tips and free software suggestions ! It also has an index of the Script in case you don’t want to watch video!
Chris the folks may find this one usefull also
http://www.apple-of-my-i.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=133&Itemid=37
[…] Brogan has posted a good list of social media tools on his blog. I thought a few were worth commenting on […]
Great post, even better commentary!
Only piece I would consider adding is CoComment. Up until this version, they did track comments very well. Now for some reason, it is only tracking mine and not the others. I hope they fix it soon.
[…] My Social Media Toolkit : [chrisbrogan.com] Chris Brogan may well be the James Brown of the social web — who works harder at squeezing maximum value out of participating in online communities? So listen up when he delivers a list of his basic toolset. (tags: socialsoftware socialmedia socialweb socialnetworking onlinecommunities community nptech bestpractices web2.0 webapps) […]
[…] I gave you my social media toolkit (and if you’re extra clever, click that link to read the comments section, because folks made […]
Chris, you’re gonna start to think I work for these guys, but, once again: Operator11.com is the shiznitz for live streaming with multiple participants. See you there tonight for Jonny’s Par-Tay! Gr8 list, thanks 1MB!
[…] My Social Media Toolkit : [chrisbrogan.com] Chris Brogan lists the tools in his social media toolkit. What are yours? (tags: Tools SMT10) […]
Hi Chris,
Thanks for adding us to the list. I’m happy to know we have your vote :)
Kristine
PBwiki team
Well, Chris, by now you’ll know I’m going to add at least ONE thing.
First off, good list. Covers all the basics and I find that you and I use most of the same tools.
Wiki: I love Jotspot, but ever since Google procured them, they’ve shut down accounts for new users. I like that you can password protect the wiki so that only authorized users can see/edit. Hopefully they open that up again.
Podcasting: Never forget The Levelator by Gigavox that automatically levels any inconsistent voice volume for interviews. Couldn’t live without it.
Also, BlogTalkRadio’s platform (disclosure: I work for BTR) allows for live streaming and interactive podcasting via phone. I love it for the ways people use it to build communities and demonstrate new, innovative uses for it.
Photosharing: I’ve gotten into Photobucket recently, which I thought I’d never do. Dead easy to use with linking/embedding options on every photo. Great tools.
Nice post, Chris, thanks for sharing.