The End of the Social Media Tunnel!

Well, what an adventure we have had navigating the murky paths of Social Media, but I think we've come to the end of the journey!  I have discovered a great tool called Seesmic from which you can manage and moniter multiple social media streams all at once.  So you can post once, but in many places simultaneously, and you are offered many more options than just Facebook, Twitter and so on.  It is not perfect, but it is a good enough solution to my posting issues (which included both duplicate posts, or no posts depending upon which time you're referring to in my trials and tribulations of syncing things!)  Seesmic has also mentioned other forms of social communication that I've not heard of but to be honest, at this point in time I do not have the inclination or the necessary oomph to explore those options at this point in time.  I think my roller coaster ride into the world of Social Media has just about reached it's final conclusion - and I shall leave those avenues unexplored for now.  I am happy to report that my venture into Flickr was relatively harmless and quite painless in comparison to previous forays - I managed to sort out my photos and upload them with a minimum of shrieking and gnashing of teeth, and I have to say I am quite satisfied with the result.  More importantly, I now have a gallery on my website again showcasing some of my work - which, you may recall was the whole reason for my initial foray into Social Media - I wanted to overhaul and revamp my website, which is now complete, and therefore, dear reader one is quite a happy bunny!

The Futher Adventures of SpireFp in the World of Social Media

So, you didn't really think that I would be able to successfully navigate my way through the confusing world of Social Media unscathed in just one day I hope!  Naturally I was determined to clear the fog from my mind and have everything sorted tout suite!  Yes, well, more tout suite and less Hoot Suite let me tell you! How something that seemed so brilliant yesterday was today just a  big big mistake.  This miraculous-seeming app decided to not let me log in despite the fact that I was using the correct email and password.  And just to make sure, I logged into my email and found the confirmation e-mail they sent to the "invalid e-mail; e-mail not in use" - so I know for a fact it wasn't me making a typo - there was something fishy going on.  It must be said that as I was only using the free version, so to ensure it wasn't just a beta bug or something that you have to cope with in freeware, I went investigating,  and was shocked to find that many paying customers had fallen foul of this same issue.  I'd like to point out that I wasn't complaining quite so loudly after that little discovery.

So I retraced my steps and returned to the Google guru to hunt down those articles on syncing Facebook and Twitter which in my dubious wisdom I decided against reading yesterday.  Let me just preface this part of the adventure by saying that after much searching, I discovered a disclaimer explaining that if you unlink a Facebook account which has a Fan page attached to it from Twitter, at this moment in time, there is no fix for re-linking the page.  The frustrating part about that little snippet is that I only unlinked my Twitter from my Facebook page because that was number 3 or 4 in the "this might solve your problem" list in the FAQ from Twitter.  So it would have been helpful to have known that beforehand as I would have just left my Twitter/Facebook settings as they were.  However, I didn't, so, dear reader, I shall carry on with my tale of woe.

The most helpful article I discovered was one outlining the top 5 alternatives to Hootsuite.  But to my dismay, one by one, these wonderful options were falling by the wayside.  Brizzly is closing down, so I saw no point in pursuing that at all.  TweetDeck looked brilliant - but while you could manage multiple twitter accounts, you could only link to one Facebook account - and more importantly, no way (that I could see) of linking to a Facebook Page.  CoTweet looked similar to TweetDeck, so I thought I'd shelve that one and come back to it - but the blurb said that the free version was quite limited compared to the commercial version, so I wasn't really inclined to think all that hard about it.  Next one was Buzzom, and that had quite a writeup - but when I went to the webpage, I couldn't see any clues as to how to set up an account, much less how to log in to one, so I blew a raspberry at that (not literally of course - I do have a modicom of refinement!) and moved on.  The last one left (which was actually number 3 of the top 5) was Seesmic, and I have had a go at that one as well, and while it's extremely early days, at this stage, I'm almost quietly confident that it might just do what I want it to do.  There are a couple of things I haven't quite fathomed as yet, but all in all, I'm relatively happy with it.  But watch this space - because that could very well be subject to sudden change!

The annoying thing is this all came about simply because I wanted to update my website and improve it - and I just wish I'd decided to sync my social media channels last thing - rather than first off!  Ah well, I suppose this way I've (in theory) learnt alot... mostly of "what not to do Small Bear"!

Just as an aside, I've discovered that while it's extremely easy to upload photos to Facebook, it's no longer an easy thing to download them.  In fact it's nigh-on impossible.  There are a couple of clever apps out there, but no one satisfactory tool.  This again has only been highlighted because the widget I was using on my webpage is no longer supported, so I need to create a new photo slideshow - and I'm now delving into the wonderful world of Flickr and maybe even Picasa  Who knows what dangers are lurking in those dangerous waters... but that is most definitely another story!  Night all.