Ruby

David-You make such a good point. I think that companies can get a bit overzealous in their efforts and now with the ability to find 10 other choices at the click of a button they really need to rethink how they are contacting people. “The Smothering Effect” is a great phrase by the way.

In fact, I can think of times when I have signed-on with a company’s marketing list just out of casual interest, but after being inundated with phone calls and personal emails I have unsubscribed just so they would leave me alone.

Their approach (for me at that stage in the process) was far too intense. Whatever potential there might have been for me doing business with them in the mid- to distant-future was [unfortunately] lost due to “the smothering effect.”

Naturally, how would they be able to predict that? However, we can be sensitive to “The Smothering Effect” on the whole in regard to our marketing plans and devices.

David, I agree with you totally! I hear arguments on both sides of the quantity vs. quality issue. I think both are very important. A millions friends, fans and followers will do you no good if none of them are your prospects. On the other hand, what good is it if all of your friends, fans and followers are solid gold prospects if you only have a handful?

And about relationship building. Believe it or not, every prospect out there does not want to build a relationship with you. Thank goodness there are plenty that do. But how can you tell ahead of time which are which? You can’t. So there is safety in numbers even though you will get some chaff with your wheat. It ain’t perfect and sometimes not pretty. :-)

You can monitor several accounts at once. It just depends on how you set up your columns and tabs. I currently have 8 twitter accounts, 13 Fan Pages, my personal Facebook, 2 other Facebook profiles for clients, my Linkedin, my foursquare, my twitter lists, and several on-going searches.

For posting I have all those accounts plus my ping.fm account so I can post to places that are not supported for monitoring within Hootsuite (yet).

There are even features I haven’t tested yet, such as the team collaboration (I am the team right now *smile*), but I am sure it will be great for when I need it.

LaVon, Posterous.com is useful for posting to several networks at once, but it is not an application for monitoring. It is a blogging platform that you can post to from email and then it posts the link to the blog to your other networks. If all you are wanting to do is auto-post blog entries and have the links automated to your social accounts it is great, but it doesn’t offer any way to monitor the individual accounts. I used it when I first got started, but doesn’t work for what I am wanting to do now.

With any of this there is no cookie cutter way that is going to work for every person. You know what feels right to you and what you like. Try things out and if they work I say use them. If not…well you get the picture:)

I usually learn about something new from reading blog posts. Without that, I’d probably never know about it until it became a star! :-)