At Vestor Logic, we use social media apps and platforms in a number of different ways.  Some create efficiencies for us in the daily work flow.  Many help us accelerate our learning curve about new technologies and tactics.  Others give us insights into trends and breaking news that we would be hard pressed to discover without the help of social apps.  And some of the things we do/use are for pure enjoyment.

The following is an inventory or sorts.  It is a list of the tools that we use everyday and a description of how we use them.  We are sharing this to give you a better idea of how we are embracing social media to make our business better but is not intended to be a blueprint for your business.  Your needs and goals may require that you rework this mix of tools and maybe even how you use them.

Tell us how you are using social media to benefit your business by commenting below.  We want to learn from you and your experiences as well.

The Vestor Logic Blog

Certainly the hub in our business model

The Vestor Logic blog serves up our original content and allows us to share our insights into the ever-developing social media landscape.  We post weekly and will increase our frequency now that we have finished the development of a few other internal projects that have been huge time-sucks as of late.  Our model is simple: create content on the VL blog and syndicate it through the various social outposts that we have created.  Though our team has been at the forefront of social media for a number of years (we launched the first social network dedicated to real estate investors in Feb 2004: see The Investor Nexus), our Vestor Logic brand is relatively new having just launched in August 2009.  We are still building out our foundation and further defining our marketing strategy just like many other companies.

The Vestor Logic site and blog are powered by a Content Management System (CMS) called WordPress.  We host the site on our own servers and recognize the effort as one that will never truly be complete.  We constantly tweak pages, add new widgets, and refine the message for our visitors.  WordPress as a CMS makes this process easy.  The learning curve is short and almost anyone can master the basics in a short time.  The other big benefit of WordPress for us is the collection of plugins that offer social functions like Sociable, Tweetmeme and WWSGD.  These plugins provide great functions to our site and cost nothing to use.

Facebook Profiles

We post to our personal profiles several times a day

Jessica (Jessica’s profile) and I (Tim’s profile) both have Facebook profiles that we use primarily to stay in touch with our friends.  Of course, this counts for business too as many of our clients are friends or are referred to us by our friends.  We post multiple times throughout the day on a variety of topics but try to keep the business talk to a minimum.  Of course, we do share cool tips and tricks with our friends for some of the more popular social platforms like Facebook and Twitter.  Both of us are passionate about other things.  For me it’s hiking and I share pics and accounts of my trips on my profile page.  Jessica has artistic roots.  Her posts cover the spectrum of cool and unusual topics.  She is a great follow for anyone looking for a laugh or smile during your workday!

Facebook Fan Page

We update the Fan Page a few times each day

The Vestor Logic Fan Page is a testing ground for us.  We test different tactics relating to design and functionality in an ongoing effort to stay ahead of the curve and provide the best advice for our clients.  We regularly post links to interesting articles from our favorite blogs, thought leaders and news aggregators.  We post links to our new blog entries and maintain an active stream from www.TimMiner.com covering my ramblings on everything from social media to hiking to kids and family.

Twitter

I use Seesmic on my desktop and my Blackberry to check the Twitter stream multiple times each day

Our Twitter account is used primarily to research the current trends in social media and uncover the news sources (i.e. blog posts) that are covering those trends.  We use Twitter to test drive concepts with other social media pros and to syndicate our own content from the Vestor Logic blog.  We see Twitter as a news source and a testing ground for ideas.  Our experience suggests that the value is far greater for those activities than it is for generating sales.  But to be fair, we mostly follow social media people and do not focus on building a following for potential customers.  Your experiences may bear more fruit from sales initiatives if you target more individuals that could be potential customers.  Our Facebook page also posts to our Twitter stream.

LinkedIn

I visit the site several times a day and try to post at least one update each day

We have a company listing on LinkedIn for Vestor Logic and I also maintain my own profile.  We connect with other social media folks, each of our clients and prospects, the members of our past projects like Investment Riches and all of our referral sources.  I participate in various groups and maintain close ties to many of my classmates from college on LinkedIn.  We have had a fair number of referrals come from our relationships on LinkedIn, most coming from connections made years ago that now see what we are doing in social media thanks to the updates that we publish regularly.

YouTube

Our YouTube activity is just beginning – look for our new video series “Social 60″

There really isn’t any excuse for not posting video on a regular basis.  I wish had some great reason for not doing it.  But I don’t!  We have been busy building our Vestor Logic outposts and YouTube fell to the bottom half of the list.  But we are working on it now.  We are launching a video series called “Social 60″ which is a video format that will allow me to rant on the top social media issues for 60 second clips and encourage responses and feedback.  I don’t expect these videos to provide clearly defined answers up front but rather to create a place for us to discuss the hot topics of the day and encourage others to share their opinions.  Together we will reach more of a consensus and perhaps all learn something.  Look for a few new videos each week.

Micro-blog: www.TimMiner.com

This is my safe place to test ideas

It usually takes Jessica and I a few days to work through a new idea or concept or to reach an opinion on a new platform (like Google Buzz) that just launched.  The micro-blog allows us to do two things: explore the value of Posterous (which is the backbone of the micro-blog) and test ideas that are not yet ready for the Vestor Logic blog.  I also post pics from my hikes and backpacking trips, share interesting links to stories I find, and share my joy as a father of a 19 month old little boy.

Yammer

Yammer is our own private Twitter platform

I jumped on Yammer the middle of 2009 and have found that its value to Vestor Logic is really that of a link repository.  I use a bookmarklet labeled “Yam It!” to archive links to interesting blog posts or articles or web pages and then check back later to review them in more detail.  The most effective practice however is to use hashtags to organize my link submissions by topic and most importantly by client.  I am working on the structure of a one day Discovery Workshop for a client right now.  I have more than 25 archived links that point to blog posts and articles that are relevant to their event.  I will go back about a week before the event and revisit each one turning many into slides for the event.  I have found this practice to be very effective and it allows me to share all of it with my team.

Picasa + Flickr

I love photos!

I have nearly 15,000 images on my laptop (and a backup copy on Google using web albums in Picasa for just $20 a year!).  I take pictures at each event we are part of, all presentations, every hike I embark on, all family events, and just about anything else I can think of.  Up to this point, I have been storing all the personal stuff on my laptop install of Picasa.  But recently, I changed my strategy to incorporate Flickr.  Moving forward, I will use Picasa for personal images mostly and Flickr for the business stuff.  Of course, there will be some spill over as I find it very difficult to delineate between work and personal.

Google Docs

A great way to share and collaborate on documents

Jessica and I have been using Google Docs for a long time.  We collaborate on project specs, new page content for the website, new blog posts, just about anything you can do in Word or Excel.  We use the Form tool to create presentation evaluations.  Now that Google Docs allows you to upload ANY file to Docs and the storage is so cheap it makes it very easy to aggregate most of our docs on the Google platform.

Google Analytics

The best free tool for website owners in my opinion

We have a Google Analytics account that monitors all three of our web properties which provides priceless insights into visitor behavior.  This application allows us to make changes and modifications to our websites to improve on the experience for all of our visitors.  It also provides feedback on which social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Email Campaigns, AdWords) are referring the most traffic.  We look at Analytics every week.

Google Reader

RSS feeds are our lifeline!

I currently have 138 subscriptions in my reader.  They produce somewhere between 400-500 new articles a day and cover social media, real estate, general interest, business, hiking, and even our ECHO.  Our ECHO folder is a collection of RSS feeds that monitor platforms like Google Blog Search, Google keyword alerts, Twitter Search, Icerocket Blog Search, and each of our own RSS feeds for mentions of our brand.  This is a great way to establish a basic listening channel for monitoring the chatter about your company.  I spend about 90 minutes a day scanning the feeds, starring items, and reading about the topics that matter to me.  This may be one of the most important functions I perform each day.

SlideRocket

SlideRocket is PowerPoint on steroids!

We use SlideRocket for all of our presentations and also for the image galleries on our site like the Portfolio page.  They just recently released some social plugins including a live Twitter stream that can be integrated into live presentations.  The best feature for us is the portability of the presentations and the fact that they are housed online accessible from any web browser.  Of course, there is also the choice of linking to your presentations online using a link or simply embedding it into any blog post or web page.  Very cool application!

Seesmic

Our desktop and mobile Twitter and Facebook interface

We have used many of the popular Twitter clients including HootSuite and Tweetdeck but have found Seesmic to be the most comfortable.  They all do most of the same things and there are tons of reviews out there already for each, but I think it is a personal preference.  Bottom line – I like Seesmic!

Feedburner

RSS management and promotion made easy

Each of our three web properties is armed with a Feedburner feed to manage the subscriptions and promotion of the site RSS feeds for posts and comments.  If you want to step up the value of your feeds you need to take a close look at Feedburner which is another Google product.

Mobile Apps on the Blackberry

I use mobile a great deal but I expect that usage to increase

I find that I am using my Blackberry Bold more and more to connect to my social outposts.  There are apps for almost everything.  It will only get better (for Blackberry users specifically) as the development of apps continue to provide a functional experience similar to what we get on our laptops or desktops.  Currently, I use mobile apps for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Google (which includes Picasa, Docs, Maps) and WordPress.  I access a least half of these everyday if not more.

bit.ly

Keep it short!

Bit.ly is a URL shortening service that allows you to take those really long URLs and shorten them into something manageable.  The service also tracks the metrics for each of your links showing you which content has the best reach or was most effective at reaching an audience.  We see this as a nice compliment to the data we track using Google Analytics.  I don’t visit our Bit.ly account as much as I should but will certainly do so more often now that we are running at full steam.

In testing…

Both of us are constantly testing new apps and programs.  Currently, I have a list of about 25 that I am getting to know better and the following three have excited me the most in recent days.  Feel free to check these out too and see if they fit for your business strategy.

• Swix – a social metrics dashboard of sorts
• Social Network Integration in Outlook – a cool way to connect Outlook to LinkedIn (and Facebook soon!)
• SpredFast – a cradle to grave social marketing platform created by friend Scott with robust management and analysis capabilities

So what are you doing?

How are you managing your social marketing efforts?  Are you doing the same things we are?  What are you doing differently?  We want to know…besides, I showed you mine so now you need to show me yours!