As the greatest band AC/DC once said, “It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll.”

If you want to rock your social media, it takes time and attention, but there are a few tools that will save you loads of time, helping you to stay on top of your social media and online presence.  You already have a million other things to do, right?

This one’s great if you’re on multiple networks, like LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.  Rather than logging into each individual site to reply to comments, check out Nutshell.  It tracks your accounts and a summary is emailed to you daily.

For instance, if you’re on Twitter, the summary will show your mentions, new followers, and quitters.  You can tweet, reply, and retweet without leaving your inbox.

Google Alerts

This one is a great monitoring tool and huge time saver.  Use this to do a quick scan for your name, your business, product, or brand terms.

To get started, enter your search terms.  You have the option to get updates as they happen or in a daily digest. So if someone mentions you, your business or products in a blog, an alert is emailed.  And if you like, you can choose to read about those and respond immediately.

Google Reader

How do you keep up with the latest industry news? Visiting a variety of different web sites and clicking through information can be really time-consuming.  You don’t have to do that anymore.

Similar to monitoring your other social networks, your Reader is a great place to centralize your searches and get the daily reads in one spot.  Set up RSS feeds for searches of your industry or competitors or simply use it as a news source. The front page lets you see new items at a quick glance.

If you have a favorite social media tool for small business, I’d love to hear about it.  Please share in the box below.

Cheers!