How to build a social media cockpit with Firefox

Posted April 20, 2009
25 Comments

Helicopter, tropical ocean view from cockpitYou are a heavy user of Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, Digg and Delicious. You’re trying stay current with your blog reading, trying to organize source material for future posts and stay active in a dozen social media sites. You had your “strategy compass” set on due north but now you have gotten lost. You work even harder to keep up but find that you are slowly going mentally insane. :-)

On top of all this, you have no bandwidth to nurture the relationships that you’ve worked so hard to seed.

Building a  social media cockpit

The good news here is there are hundred of web applications designed to help you manage social media tasks – all within a single browser. The central console of my social media cockpit is the Firefox Browser, which has the largest choice of these third party add-ons.

I’ve listed below several add-ons that I use, followed by three tips for organizing your FireFox browser into a kick-ass  social media cockpit:

Firefox Add-ons for Social Media:

  • Stumbleupon: Quickly discover content with once click. See Stumbleupon reviews with one click. Submit, review and “like” content with Stumbleupon users.

stumbleupon toolbar How to build a social media cockpit with Firefox

  • Shareaholic: This add-on lets you quickly bookmark web pages on up to 30 different social media sites. See what others are sharing as well – all from a single icon in your browser.

shareaholic add on How to build a social media cockpit with Firefox

  • Delicious Bookmarks: It integrates your bookmarks and tags with Firefox and keeps organized in an easy to use sidebar. You can also tag content without leaving the web-page being tagged.

delicious sidebar How to build a social media cockpit with Firefox

  • Tweecious: This is a very cool Firefox add-on that goes through your tweets, find those with links and post them to your delicious account. It works automatically after it’s configured within your Delicious account.
  • Digg Toobar: Totally diggin’ this one! Alerts you to popular on Digg small window at the bottom of the browser. I’ve found this is a great way to be the first to find out about content that might be useful to your friends. It also has Digg stats displayed on every web page you visit.

digg toolbar How to build a social media cockpit with Firefox

  • WiseStamp: I got turned on to this one by Danny Brown. WiseStamp extension enables you to easily customize & add personalized email signatures on Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and other web-based email accounts. It also lists your social media profiles at the bottom of your signature.

wisestamp How to build a social media cockpit with Firefox

  • Three must-have Bookmarklets:
  1. TwitThat – Share content on Twitter right from Firefox.
  2. FriendFeed – Share content on Friendfeed right from Firefox.
  3. Posterous – Share content on Posterous right from Firefox.

Three Tips For Organizing Your Cockpit

1. Organizing Your Firefox Bookmark Toolbar

Three quick tips that have saved me a hundred headaches:

  • Use folders: I have at least 45 Twitter web-applications that I need to have at my fingertips (including Blip.FM, iTweet.Net, MrTweet, Twitter-friends, Tweetlater, Twitterfeed). Within my “Organize Bookmarks” console, I’ve created a folder called “Twitter Stuff” for all of these bookmarks. I have them organized alphabetically. This way, I am able to access the site I need directly from a drop-down list in my toolbar.
  • Split your tool bar horizontally: Firefox allows you organize bookmarks by them to the left or right. I’ve grouped together my Bookmarklets (mentioned above) on the right-hand side and marked them with a “->” so that I can easily locate them when I need to.

firefox tool bar How to build a social media cockpit with Firefox

  • Organize often: On Sunday afternoons, while I’m listening to music, I’ll spend 15 minutes cleaning up my bookmarks within Firefox.I call it “weeding my Garden”.

2. Relationship ReMinder

If you’re like me, you have an increasing number of relationships that you want to continue to nurture. After reading “How to Win Friends and Influence People With Excel“, I created a Google Doc to centralize important details about my friends. It already has enabled me to focus and deepen more than a few important relationships.

3. Tear down and rebuild

What I’ve shared here works for me. For now. New tools will show up, and some will eventually become redundant. Try things out, see what works. Take your time searching for the Firefox add-ons at Mozilla that will work for you.

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How to build a social media cockpit with Firefox

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  • Very nice tips, I am using "Shareaholic" for firefox, works fine for me!

    <abbr>Hisham’s last blog post..Why I will ask Jeeves or be a Fan of his New Facebook Page?</abbr>
  • @Hisham - Shareaholic rocks. I like using the others as well only because of the added features.
  • I just got a copy of ePostMailer from http://Spryka.com and I would recommend to anyone who needs to send out an opt-in email mailshot. Its the best free desktop based email marketing software I have used so far.
  • Great article and tips!
    Thanks for the recommendation :)
    WiseStamp
  • Ann
    Hi thank you for the info I have just started on this SM and Twitter road so I am soaking up all the info. Ann
  • @Josh / Wisestamp - You're welcome!
  • @Ann - You are very welcome!
  • Stacy Monaghan
    I am also a huge fan of Shareaholic! What will they think of next!?

    Great tips :)
  • @Stacy - It would be great if Shareaholic could show more stats about the number of people sharing and bookmarking particular content. It would be like having a "Social Proof Odometer".
  • I love tweecious. Many times I've Retweeted a link and then wanted to find it a few weeks later and couldn't (since Twitter only keeps so many weeks of data per profile). With Tweecious I know that I'll always be able to refer back to any great links that I retweeted with no extra effort on my part.

    Looking into Wisestamp right now, I've got way too many social networks to list them all via text in my email signature and have been looking for something like Wisestamp. Thanks to you and Danny for the tip.
  • Hi John, this is a terrific list which I too recommend! The only one I'm missing is Tweecious. I love the idea of automatic posting to Delicious and was using @Twitchboard but their service seems to have stopped. Glad I read your post!
  • Tweecious I recently ditched because it pulled so much junk into my Delicious account (which I use mainly to store research material and other articles).
  • Nice article, John. There's a new Tweet-from-the-page item I just adore, called "TBuzz" (http://tbuzz.arc90.com/) - it's a simple bookmark on your bar, which you just click on any page and it'll access your Twitter acc't, open up a little dialog, search for any tweets already pointing to the page (in a few seconds), insert a shortened link, show you the letter count, and leave space for your comment! If you select text on the page before you hit the bookmark, it'll also insert that text in quotes. Just fabulous.

    I used to use TwitThat, but the interface is just too clunky and confining (it mandates intro text...why??). Check out Tbuzz to compare the experience!
  • John - TwitThat no longer requires an intro.
  • Why not just download Flock which is the Social Media browser built on Firefox technology?
  • Mark - After I received your comment, I went and downloaded Flock and loved it - initially. However, after giving Flock a good go - for about two weeks - I went back to Firefox.

    Why? Although it has some great features that make it potentially more social than FF, many of my favorite FireFox add-ons don't work in Flock (TwitThat, Posterous, Evernote). Plus it seemed to be a serious memory hog. But what made me ultimately go back to Firefox was when I found so many unanswered support questions. Flock might be great for some people, but not for what I wanted to use it for. Thanks, Mark.
  • Hi John,

    Thanks for that feedback. I have found that it is a memory hog as well but I
    alleviated alot of that by going to their site and doing the under the hood
    tune ups they recommend. I am running Evernote on my version of Flock but I
    don't use it often as I seem to have fallen in love with
    SecondBrain<http://www.secondbrain.com>.
    Heard of it?

    I also use WordPress to blog and pushing content in Flock to the Blog editor
    is flawless. As you can see from below I don't work for them, never even
    talked to anyone at Flock, just an evangelist.

    I wish it wasn't as buggy as it is and I use Google Chrome to search and do
    research (even though I have 12 open now with Flock)
    to help hold down on the buggy flock issues. It tends to freeze up for 30
    seconds at a time maybe three or four times a day.

    I have never had to ask for support from them but have noticed that their
    Blog is dated and they don't seem to be pushing much out there in the Social
    Media. Where you would think they would thrive with the product they have.

    Take care,
    Mark
  • Great again hope lots people taking advantage of a social media maven like you.
    DaraBell
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