I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they aren’t active in social media because they see social networking sites as overwhelming, time consuming and repetitive. These people ask me how I keep track of my social media – keeping everything up to date and staying on top of it.

One of the things that worked for me was choosing a few social media channels and doing them well (or at least, trying to), as opposed to attempting to be a part of everything social. I’ve decided to put my allocated social media energy into two blogs (this one and this one), a Twitter profile, a Facebook profile and a LinkedIn profile. I’ve tried to get involved with Delicious, Digg and a bunch of other social networking sites, but they just weren’t for me (right now).

So, if you don’t have time for every social networking site under the sun, stick to a few and do them well.

So, lets say that you’re involved with the same (or similar) sites as me – or that you want to be. How do you keep track of them and keep them current?

There are a number of ways to stay on top of your social media:

• You can link all your status updates to each other so that every time you update one site it updates everything. Some people like to do this, but I opt not to for reasons explained perfectly byKelli Matthew in her blog post “Why I Don’t Link My Social Media Profiles.”

Instead, I try to make it as easy as possible for me to access my social media, so that it doesn’t feel like a chore to update it.

• For Twitter I use a program called TweetDeck. It translates the Twitter website onto my desktop so that it’s easy to be on Twitter without going out of my way to do so. It’s free, downloadable, and user-friendly. To learn more about how to use TweetDeck, check out this article from 1stwebdesigner.com.
• For Twitter I also use an Iphone app called Echofon. I’ve tried a number of applications, including the official Twitter app, but I like Echofon because it’s easy to update and makes adding pictures to your Tweets practically seamless. Check out Mashable’s comparison of 29 different Iphone apps for Twitter.

(If you’re having trouble getting into Twitter, stay tuned for my next blog post where I’ll make some suggestions as to how to get the most out of your Twitter experience.)

• For blogging I use WordPress, a free blogging platform (but I have the upgraded, paid-for version – hence, my having my own domain name). Blogging is something that is sometimes hard to stay on top of, but I promise that it becomes easier the longer/more you do it. My advice is to blog about a topic that you already love talking about, so it doesn’t feel like work (because you already talk about it!). For me, those topics include beauty products and public relations/ social media. For you, your topic of interest may be politics, running, technology, photography, books, working out… whatever! I’ve also found that reading other people’s blogs makes me more excited to write my own. For more blogging insights, check out my post “Corporate & Personal Blogging: How to Do it Right.” In my next point, I’ll talk about  the easiest way to follow blogs.
• For following blogs I use a reader. Readers allow you to read all the latest posts on blogs you follow in one convenient place, as opposed to visiting all the different websites. I use Google Reader, which works fine. Every time I find a blog I like, I simply add it to my reader and following it becomes cake. Kelli Matthews has some good advice on organizing/choosing a reader, so I suggest reading her post “My Top 5 Shortcuts: #1 Use a Feedreader.”
• For following blogs I also use an Iphone app called MobileRSS. It connects to my reader and allows me to read all the blogs I like from one place on my phone. It makes it very easy to keep up with blogs.
• For Facebook I use the standard Facebook Iphone app. I’m guessing most of you don’t have a lot of trouble remembering to update and check your Facebook, so I’ll skip over this bullet.
• For LinkedIn I use the standard LinkedIn Iphone app, too. But I have a confession to make. I rarely check my LinkedIn. However, it still gets a lot of activity because my profile is “100% completed,” with links to my Twitter feed and everything. So, my best advice is to get in there and take a few hours to fill everything out. LinkedIn will instruct you on how to do this and tell you what percent is completed. Then, hopefully, you’ll become more enthralled with LinkedIn than I am.

By no means am I an expert on organization, but I wanted to share what has worked for me! How do you stay on top of your social media?