Even if you’re the ultimate hybrid project manager/content creator and community-engager, reality is, you’ll probably develop Social Media Manager Multi-Personality Disorder (SMMMPD)* at least once in your career.

(*Totally made this up)

Reblogged from Mashable here, Kelly Meyers offers up her favourite tips for Social Media Managers everywhere. I believe it’s all about structure, time management and keeping one step ahead of the game. Social Media today is one of the best venues for marketing products and services. Why? Because humans are social by nature! It’s digital word of mouth. Most companies employ social media experts to handle their online presence, reputation, promotions and branding. It’s important to remind yourself that it’s all about keeping your client’s brand alive and relevant, as well as connecting with readers in a compelling way to cultivate a strong community around a valuable service or product. Strengthen brand awareness, extend your network, attract new audiences and engage old ones. Bottom line – get business! Bottom bottom line – get feedback! Always aim to innovate, transform, evolve and create. Build on what you’ve designed to manage your clients accounts by using the suggestions below. I believe these tips will be a great resource for you. Enjoy! And be sure to check out my Social Media Management board on Pinterest ❤

1. Pain: So many accounts, so few browsers, so slow Internet speed.

Every day, we log in to our Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr accounts, our work email, Google Drive and our internal communities, not to mention those of all our clients. We open our desktop versions of Tweetdeck, Twitter clients for Mac, Chrome for our personal accounts, Safari for our brands’ accounts and Firefox for our work accounts. Twenty minutes later, mid-tweet: not one applications is responding.

Remedy: Behold, Chrome profiles. Create as many Google Chrome profiles as you need — one for work, personal stuff and each client — and you’re free to toggle among multiple accounts at once. Each is fully customizable with account-specific bookmarks, Chrome apps, saved passwords and more. No need to use Chrome’s “Incognito” mode or multiple browsers at once.

2. Pain: You can’t find a buried document, and you keep opening the wrong version.

Your desktop is a mess, your download folder is bursting at the seams and your “organize screenshots later” folders (come on, every community manager is guilty of this) are about as useful as a junk drawer.

Remedy: Download FoundApp. Immediately. FoundApp simultaneously searches all basic file types in your folders — Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive and Gmail attachments (even the ones you never downloaded). My favorite feature is preview, which allows you to easily scroll and view each document without having to open it. (Fingers crossed that its January YouSendIt acquisition doesn’t make it another Sparrow.)

3. Pain: Photo fatigue.

Cross-posting Instagram photos to Twitter is a time-suck, and Instagram photos take up too much space on your phone. Any community manager knows that time and space are of the essence. And so is seamlessly optimizing content for each social platform.

Remedy: With IFTTT (If This Then That), you can literally put the Internet to work for you. Use one of its pre-created recipes, or make one of your own to cut down on social media cooking time. Two recipes I love: auto-publish Instagrams as Twitter pictures, and save tagged Facebook photos to Google Drive or Dropbox. IFTTT currently support 62 platforms, which means options are endless.

4. Pain: Creating an actionable to-do list just isn’t happening.

No matter how many to-do list apps we try, there is still something special a colorful Sharpie and a notebook. Many times, the action of writing solidifies memory. When you’re juggling communities for several brands, the key is how you define and prioritize each action item.

Remedy: Snag an Action Method notebook from Behance. Each page feels like a blank slate, organized just like a digital note-keeper: date, action items, project titles and even a “backburner” section. Action Method offers a digital version, but I’m sticking to pen and paper for now.

5. Pain: You can’t see your Tumblr post in the context of your brand’s custom theme before publishing.

Getting a true feel for a concept in social media can be challenging if you don’t display it in context. An Excel sheet full of pasted images and suggested copy just doesn’t have the same effect as the real thing.

Remedy: For Tumblr, try creating a secondary password-protected blog under your account, using the custom theme code from your actual blog. This way, you can use it to test posts internally and easily send around to your teammates for feedback.

6. Pain: Taking and saving screenshots of everything.

If your client hasn’t yet requested, you do it anyway: screenshot everything awesome or horrible on social media that you see. After all, it could disappear moments later. But organizing, archiving and annotating these screenshots isn’t easy.

Remedy: Skitch, now a part of Evernote, is the greatest screenshot tool you will ever use. It’s a departure from those “Print Screen” keyboard shortcuts you’ve grown accustomed to, but once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s worth it. You can store screenshots in Evernote, tag, categorize, share, edit and annotate. Skitch is the best way to annotate anything else you keep in Evernote, too.

Photo: Death to the Stock Photo