I firmly believe that the more I immerse myself in good social media content, the better employee I become. When I began my job at Omniture, I started following just about any blogger that wrote about the company. Then I expanded my Google reader to include anyone that talked about competitors. It has been a very quick way to understand complex industry issues and how our customers use our products.
Organize Your Feeds
My RSS reader has various folders such as web analytics, online marketing, search marketing, social media, PR, news, sports, friends blogs, and a few others. It really has become the starting point for everything I do on the web.
Share
You don't need to write a blog to create content on the web. Sharing things you find interesting is a great way to start. I share items that I think others might find valuable. If you're interested, here are my Google Reader shared items. I forward other articles to coworkers or to my Gmail (which I automatically tag and archive for later use. I star others or send them to my Google Notebook for possible blog topics or an idea to share with my team. Steve Rubel has some awesome posts on how to use Gmail as your personal nerve center on the web.
Make Your Google Reader Your Own Customized Database
When I need to find an item later, it is easy to run a quick search. Since I have subscribed to a lot of blogs for a couple of years, I have an amazing repository of valuable information that can help me do my job better. When I need to find advice about a particular topic, I usually just search my Google Reader. I currently follow about 400 different feeds. Even though sometimes I get overwhelmed and I don't actually read every word, it is easy to find information later. Since I subscribe only to content that can help me, I rarely get off-topic results.
Make Social Media a Priority
Even if you can just dedicate 15 minutes a day to social media, it will pay off if you do it correctly. If might make sense to block out time on your calendar every day for it.
You Can't Be Everywhere
Just join the most strategic conversations. Pick some expert bloggers to follow and star out by reading each post. Slowly add more to your reader. Leave a thoughtful comment if you can add to the conversation. As you get comfortable with that maybe take a look at getting some accounts with other social media services. I'll talk about some of the services that are worth considering in future posts.
