A Social Media Swiss Army Knife: Five More Essential Tools and Tips

Alright, sticking with the "five things" theme that I began last week, here are a few more tools and tips that I thought of that I have been really thankful for over the past year or two: 

1. Link Your Stuff Together

This is probably both a tip and a tool. The tip part of it is the fact that no one should spend their time updating site after site after site. Granted there are cool sites to visit just for the sake of visiting them, but there are enough tools out there to link together your different sites that you shouldn't need to update more than one or two EVER. 

Here's how I do it: 

• I use tumblr, blogger, facebook, twitter, and linkedin. 
• I've got my tumblr hooked up with my twitter so that all of my tumblr posts appear as tweets. You can set that up through the "customize" button that Tumblr gives you in your dashboard. Once there click on "services" and you'll get an option to link your twitter account to your tumblr. 
• I've got my twitter hooked up with facebook so that my tweets come out as facebook status updates. Since my tumblr is hooked up to my twitter, that means all I have to do is update my tumblr and both my facebook and twitter will carry it. By the way, they leave out certain tweets automatically so you don't have to worry about your direct replies via twitter appearing as nonsensical facebook updates. 
• I have a gadget on my blogger blog that carries my 5 (there's that number again) most recent tweets. I also usually put a link on my tumblr whenever I update my blogger. Yes, that means I have to update two sites instead of one, but two's far more convenient than five, and there's hardly any work that goes into it. By the way, right now the most traffic I get on this blog by far comes from my tumblr links. 
• Finally, to top it all off, my blogger and twitter are both linked up to linkedin, meaning people can read both whenever they visit my linkedin profile. Usually this is a pretty different crowd from my other 4 sites, so this helps me keep connected to them. Again, linking the three sites together is as simple as just following the directions that linkedin gives you directly on your home page. 

2. Know When to Stop Consuming and Start Creating

I give KJ a lot of credit for putting this idea together nicely into a life philosophy. He put it slightly differently, but I think our points remain essentially the same: basically, in our day and age, we have an infinite amount of material to read, watch, and listen. IMDB alone can suck you in for hours. But there comes a point when we're to "consume less and create more" (that's how KJ put it). 

Actually, Seth Godin (and I got the link from What's Best Next) makes a really similar point here with regards to productivity. It used to be that you'd go into a library, research for a day, and then you'd run out of books and have to start writing. True no longer. Now you could spend the rest of your life researching and still not be done learning about a topic. 

The trick now is to know when to put the book down, turn off the screen, and begin writing/doing/creating. C.S. Lewis used to advise writers to write one page a day, regardless of what it was about or whether they'd keep it later or whether they were feeling writers block or not. You may not be a writer, but the point is your life wasn't meant to be spent just absorbing material. You were meant to create, and that means knowing when to stop consuming, and when to start doing. 

3.  Beware of Multitasking

I've been reading over and over again about what "search" does to our brains, and it isn't pretty. Basically the research is starting to show that our attention spans are shrinking, and with them our ability to really focus and concentrate. That means we're getting better at skimming over the top of a lot of things, but we're getting worse at digging deep. That means things like in depth analysis and insightful commentary are becoming harder and harder for us. 

I experience this problem first hand. All it takes is one tangent and I could be lost for half an hour (on a good day) just barking up the wrong tree. Multiply that by a few tangents, and by the end of the day I feel like I've wasted it. The solution, I think, is to intentionally know when it's time to be focusing on one thing, and when it's time to be flexible to search and research whatever you think you need to. 

All this, by the way, feeds right into the fifth thing, but let me slip in one other thing first...

4. The Written To-Do List

I discovered this truth recently. 

It turns out that written to do lists are just a whole lot more effective than electronic ones, in part I think because of the points I've just made. It's too easy to get caught up in the whole web of the internet when you're working with electronic to-do lists (more syncing, more effective apps!). On the other hand, keeping your to-do lists on a piece of paper (I like to keep it in my ministry notebook) serves to automatically pull you back into a time of focus and concentration away from your phone and laptop. 

You can find corroborating evidence from one of the many people who suggest something along these lines here. 

5. Last and Most Importantly: Time With God

Our men's discipleship group at United Life has made a commitment to spend time with God, in his word, every day throughout the course of our discipleship group. It has resulted in some great devotional blogging that has really encouraged me and I know others. 

For myself, it is amazing how easy it is for me to go a whole day with God on the back burner. This is ironic when my vocation is to make him known. Imagine Steve Jobs forgetting that he's working for Apple as he meets with his board to come up with their next product line. 

But it is no less incongruent for any follower of Christ to try to do life without Christ. We all need daily time with him if we are to continue to follow him. There are just too many other attractions and gravities in our lives that pull us away from the path that he's cleared for us. It really doesn't even take 24 hours for us to be fully turned around and off course, so even once a day might be too little. 

You get my point. 

All of the rest of this stuff is just kids playing in a sandbox unless we're first anchored in Christ. We need to spend time with him daily. We need to read his word. We need to hear the message he has for us over and over again, with this being a good place to start. 

A Social Media Compass: Five Must Have Resources and Links

Alright, so, truth be told, the fact is this post isn't going to actually be as comprehensive as the title suggests. But I do think there's going to be some useful stuff in here for you. For example, one of the many tips and ideas you'll get by checking out some of the links and resources that I'm going to post for you here is to make a title engaging enough to be worthy enough of a click. I'll let you be the judge of the example I put above.

No, this post won't list everything you'll ever need, nor is it even exactly all oriented to social media and blogging. Some of this has more to do with how to stay in touch with today's constantly shifting cultural landscape than it does with specific things bloggers and such need to know. But I do think it'll be worthwhile, not to mention the fact that this will give you an idea of where I go for inspiration and, at times, deeper understanding of the world around me. 

Okay, so my Five Must Haves:  

1. An RSS Aggregator 

So I started using Google Reader as my RSS aggregator a few years back, and I've been pretty pleased with what it's been giving me. Basically, if you don't already know, what an RSS aggregator does is it takes the URLs of different blogs and news sites that you give it and it compiles them all into one list. That way you don't have to open up a bunch of different tabs or go spending hours visiting site after site. It also lets you skip over sites that don't have anything good that day. In other words, it's very similar to a blog dashboard which puts together everyone you're following into one place, but it isn't limited to your particular .com (tumblr, blogger, etc).

Another cool thing about RSS aggregators is they also usually have a list of "suggested" sites, meaning you get content that you wouldn't normally have heard about otherwise. This is key to getting out of your own network and seeing what other people are seeing. 

Finally, I've synced up reader.google.com with an app on my phone (the one I use is NewsRob) so that I can check these articles and blogs wherever I am, whenever I feel like. This makes for a nice 5 minute break that informs and sometimes even entertains. It adds something to my day without consuming a large block of time. 

All of this helps build your next must have which is... 

2. Your "A-List" 

RSS Aggregators really help you keep track of people who you think have interesting things to say. In order to use this great feature, however, you've got to take note of when someone says something interesting! Using something like Google Reader, all you have to do is grab the URL of whoever impressed you, input it under "Add Subscription", and, presto, you've got yourself a constant feed of whatever they publish. 

Yes, you may get tired of what they have to say after awhile, at which point it is more than easy to drop them from your list. But, in the meantime, you'll fresh, updated content from them, which means fresh, updated ideas and insights if you've picked someone good, all without lifting a finger. 

Also, when you find someone good, share them with your readers! I've found most of the people on my "A-List" because of other people who put a link to them on their blog/website. Share the wealth.

My next must-have is an example of someone I've started learning from in this way... 

3. Seth Godin


Okay, so there's way too much to say about this guy that you can find out for yourself if you're interested. For here all I'm going to say is that Seth is really on top of what social media is all about and how to use and understand it. And, by the way, what he says is true across a wide variety of disciplines, although what he says is generally directed towards business execs. 


As a pastor, I find what he's saying useful because he not only shares good insights about both technology and leadership, he also has a knack for seeing broader truths that apply to a wide swath of people. What's more, he's also really good at breaking down the process of turning ideas into reality, especially the part about what to do when you're finding yourself losing motivation and/or productivity.

I actually found out about Seth from a guy that I'm following on my RSS aggregator named Matt Perman. He has a blog called whatsbestnext.com and he does a great job of looking at technology, leadership, and productivity from the perspective of a Christ-follower. I think any pastor or Christian in business ought to check him out.  

4. A Desire to Improve

There is a lot of good advice out there, and people are learning new things every day (not to mention that's how fast the technological landscape changes). Don't let making "the perfect blog" (there isn't such a thing) get in the way of what you're actually called to write, but do lift your head up now and then to see what's working for others and why.

Here's one great post that really hits the spot...for today. Check it out, get what helpful principles you can from it, and keep track of what the author's up to so that you can keep learning from him. By the way, I can't remember if it was that link or another that helped me realize the role of a good post title in making your post visible to people who haven't visited it before, but you have them (whoever they were) to thank for my post's title today.   

5. The Ability to Read 

Now this is an example of something that might not be totally useful to bloggers and social media types out there. My apologies. I could have mentioned something like "create synergy by syncing tumblr, blogger, twitter, facebook, etc", or I could have talked about which sites offered the best tools depending on what you're trying to do, but the post I've linked to as my Fifth Must Have is something that has really stuck with me ever since I read it.

So if you're reading this, you obviously know how to read.

Or do you...?

I've linked to the above post (which was written by an old professor of mine at Swarthmore College) both because the author, Timothy Burke, has a really great point to make about something we all kind of take for granted, and also because this demonstrates one of the really great uses of the blog format. It's the kind of essay that might've been passed around after being xeroxed a million times a few years back (I have a few of those as well), but is now available for you whenever you are. All you have to do is google something like "how to read in college" or have it passed on to you by someone who thinks you might have a use for it, and your life is changed. Let that be an inspiration to you as you write your next post.

Along these lines let me put a link here to a post about why every pastor should blog. This post is another one of those that has stuck with me for awhile. For you pastors and church leaders out there, I encourage you to check it out.