Schedule Posterous Posts With SocialOomph

SocialOomph, previously known as TweetLater, is a productivity tool that I use on a regular basis.  It allows me to save and control my tweets with ease.  Since I started using it there have been many useful tools added, including the ability to schedule blog posts for WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger as well as any blogging platform that supports APIs for Atom Post, metaWeblog and Moveable Type.

SocialOomph has also recently implemented a free default URL shortener (dld.bz) and allows all users to review statistics.  One less step in the process of tweeting.

Some features at SocialOomph are for Professional users, but if you are serious about your social networks or a professional blogger it is well worth being able to organize and distribute postings, RSS feeds and status messages in one place.  

Since I've registered with Twitter there have been many related websites I've taken for a spin.  SocialOomph is one that I've used almost since the beginning.  The interface is user friendly and I've never had a problem.  I highly recommend even just the basic features as a way of boosting productivity. Visit their front page for the very long list of tools available, many free, many more available to SocialOomph Professional users.


The following is a list of just the basic features:

	Free	Professional
Schedule tweets — Plan, set & forget Schedule tweets and keep your Twitter and StatusNet streams ticking over with new tweets even when you're not in front of your computer. Publish tweets when you know your international followers are online and you're asleep.
Track keywords — Empower yourself  Set up alerts and track keywords in the public Twitter stream. We will monitor the Twitter tweet stream and periodically email you a digest of the tweets that contain those keywords. You can also use this to track your @replies.
Extended Twitter profiles — Promote yourself  The profile area on Twitter is very limited. We enable you to write your own long and detailed social profile (including pictures and hyperlinks), and link this extended profile to your Twitter account. When folks click on your "Web" link in Twitter, they come to your extended social profile that is hosted on our site. Check out our extended profile as an example.
Save and reuse drafts — Save hours of typing Save draft tweets, frequently used text snippets and URLs and reuse them in your scheduled tweets. Save tons of time by avoiding repetitive typing. Save a draft once and use it as a template for updates on Twitter and StatusNet accounts, plus other types of accounts for Professional users.
Send DMs to new followers — Automate Send a nice non-promotional DM to new followers that focus on them and your future interaction with them, or simply to thank them for choosing to follow you.
dld.bz URL shortening — Track your clicks  With our own in-house URL shortening service, dld.bz, you can track the clicks on your shortened links, and get all kinds of useful and insightful click statistics.
Follow those who follow you — Automate  Automatically follow people who follow you and save a ton of time while your Friends list builds itself.
Unfollow those who unfollow you — Automate Automatically unfollow someone when they unfollow you if that is how you prefer to manage your Friends list.
Vet new followers — Semi-automation  Even though you've selected to auto follow new followers, we will interrupt the process for 72 hours and give you an opportunity to manually review new followers and decide if you want to follow, ignore, or block each new follower. What's more, you vet both your Twitter and StatusNet followers on one integrated console. On Twitter accounts, you can add new followers into any of your Twitter lists, straight from the vetting page.
View @Mentions & Retweets — Efficiency  With more than one Twitter or StatusNet account it can become a real chore to keep track of your @mentions and everyone who has retweeted your tweets. We make it a breeze for you by showing your @mentions and/or retweets for all your accounts on one page, in one integrated timeline. Yes, that's correct, you see your StatusNet tweets integrated with your Twitter tweets.
Purge your DM Inbox — Keep it tidy  You will probably agree that it's a bit of a pain to manually delete DMs from your Inbox, especially since they accumulate so quickly. You can run a purge on your Inbox to delete everything, or DMs older than 7 days, or DMs older than 30 days. This feature is not available on StatusNet accounts because their API cannot delete DMs.
Secure Twitter access — No password required We use Twitter's secure OAuth method to access your Twitter account. That means you never have to give us your Twitter password.
Personal status feed — Your own tweet engine  Grab your own personal 140-character tweet scheduling engine and RSS feed. You can schedule and publish tweets that don't go to Twitter, they go to your personal tweet stream, which is available in RSS, XML and Javascript formats.
Respect StatusNet site limits — Be nice  Some StatusNet site owners set update limits, such as a maximum of 20 updates every 10 minutes, per user account. Our system fully respects those limits and will not allow you to schedule tweets more frequently than what the site owner will allow. In addition, our system also prevents excessive duplicate updates from being sent to a StatusNet site. Nobody likes a StatusNet account that stutters the same text over and over again. The same update text cannot be sent to your StatusNet account more frequently than once every four hours.
Unlimited accounts — No charge  Add and manage as many Twitter and StatusNet accounts as you want. We don't charge you a dime.

Read more about updates and news at SocialOomph's blog.

Viddler: Good for Fun, Good for Business

It took me a few years to finally bite the bullet and sign up for a video based community.  I now have hundreds of subscriptions and probably close to a thousand favorites.  I even got brave and uploaded a few videos this year, though you won't find my face on them!

I've been thinking of spending more time on serious subjects and creating more in depth videos to get my feet wet with gaining exposure for my blogs and social sites. With the long term issue of actually being able to post comments it was a reminder that I need to diversify.  I don't live exclusively on Facebook, and so I should not live exclusively on YouTube.  I've put my eggs in one basket for far too long.

This is where I had to think back to video communities that my friends have mentioned.  Viddler was the first one that came to mind  I was surprised to find that they have complete business solutions as well, including white label video hosting.  This is definitely advantageous should I wish to make the leap into marketing with videos or using videos as part of the value in a product or service. I don't have a need for quite yet for Viddler's video streaming hosting service business solutions, but it is nice to know  I can have complete control of my videos, analytics, and Viddler will even help you manage ads directly on your videos for small business. Best of all you can control who can view your videos!  Hosting and services starts at $100 a month, but with included unlimited tech support and the ability to recoup funds with embedded ads, this is pocket change for websites like CNN Video, where videos are usually the main attraction for their visitors.

I've just signed up for Viddler and you can find my profile here. Feel free to share some of your favorite videos with me! If you have any hints or suggestions on how to get the most out of Viddler for a completely new user, please post your comments below.