Some of you may have businesses to run, and hopefully a successful website to go along with it. You also may, or may not, understand how integral social media has become in today’s technological world, but if you are constantly active with the likes of Facebook and Twitter you will be aware, with everything else going on around you in business, it can be a drag and sometimes time consuming updating status and tweeting each individual social network you wish to advertise on. So consider TweetDeck….

TweetDeck is a social media dashboard – an all in one program that can be downloaded (for free) from the Internet, and will help you manage the ‘big’ social networks – Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin – in one sitting.

Originally developed by Iain Dodsworth in 2008, Twitter obviously saw the use and potential in this product and bought it for a rumoured $40 - $50 million in May last year. Kudos to Mr Dodsworth!

The beauty of TweetDeck is the ease and accessibility you get in managing your entire social networks in one single interface. And if you prefer, you can combine multiple twitter accounts – like personal and business. Once downloaded you are presented with “core” columns that you wish to see on your dashboard – is it friends’ updates? Mentions? Trending Topics? It’s up to you. Once you are set up, you are ready to go.

All you do is type in what you would like to share with your followers and then select the different networks you wish to share it across. It’s as simple as that.

TweetDeck though, is not the only ‘all in one’ social media dashboard available. Hootsuite is another, and is actually used by some of our team members here at AsOne - it usually divides opinion in the office as to which one is the best to use.

But don’t take my word for it, have a look for yourself at both www.tweetdeck.com and www.hootsuite.com and see if it can help you!

Social Media is where you want to be when it comes to helping your business expand, as it is a priceless asset in the marketing world. Social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin attract so much continual attention from Internet users, it has become a phenomenal and powerful venue for advertisers to create interest and traffic. Here are five reasons to use social media for business.

1. Help Increased Search Engine Rankings:  Social media profiles frequently rank highly with major search engines. Using brand names and keywords in your profiles can help you to generate traffic for your social media sites and company homepage.
2. Generate Site Traffic:  By updating regularly on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with posts that link back to your site, you can create additional traffic to your site.
3. Find New Customers Through a Company Profile:  Your company profile is a great opportunity for you to post regular updates on your activities, but also about important news and trends in your industry. It’s critical to post regularly if you want to increase your followers or fans and convert them to potential leads.
4. Brand Monitoring:  Having a social media presence allows you to better understand what current and potential customers are saying about your product or services.
5. Networking:  Through social media you can quickly build a network of core supporters, which is essential for any up and coming business to keep growing and expanding. It is that group of loyal followers that will keep bringing your company business and referring it to others if they are pleased with what they are finding.

Following on from this, here is a little bit of ‘New News’ - Introducing Tokkster, a new type of chat room.

Tokkster is a new type of Internet chat room, which enables users to chat with other people over the same webpage. Pretty Unique.

All you need to do is sign up with a Tokkster account (and yes, it’s free). And that’s it. Once signed up, you browse websites like usual. What you will notice is a Tokkster Status bar in which you are able to see other peoples faces that are browsing the same page at the same time. Of course, if you don’t feel like chatting, either minimize the app (to become invisible) or don’t log in.

Only available in Internet Explorer version 7.0 and above (other version coming out soon).