1. The market for online tools and programs to help you manage your business’s social media marketing efforts is booming. There are countless “dashboards” and tools to determine “reach” and “influence” and other metrics.
2. Small  and large businesses alike know they have to start getting social with customers and clients.
3. But nobody’s exactly sure how to measure success, or what;s being called Social Media ROI (Return on Investment).

This can create a confusing array of choices for small business and online marketers alike. In response to that I’ve listed a few of the more established companies below. Please keep in mind, these are not recommendations. I pulled most of the information for each entry from the website of the company. This list is meant to give you an idea of the range of prices and features that are available if you decide to go it alone and handle the social media marketing for your business. Also, these are not affiliate links. I don’t get paid for clicks or sign-ups. I just thought you might like the information in one place.

Argyle Social
$300 – $1100 per month
The Company
Argyle Social is a marketing software company based in Durham, NC, USA. It was founded on December 15, 2009 and received a grant from NC IDEA in January, 2010. After building a prototype and signing several early-adopter customers, Argyle closed a $325k seed financing in October 2010 and launched its V1 product in December of 2010.
Features

• Post to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
• Post Photos, Links, and Status Updates
• Post Now, or Schedule Posts in the Future
• Push Updates From Your Blog Automatically
• Publishing Content Workflow
• Integrate With Your Web Analytics Tool
• Custom Short URLs
• Custom Publishers

Hootsuite

$6 – $216 per month
Company
HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard. Launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audience, and distribute targeted messages using HootSuite’s unique social media dashboard. Streamline team workflow with scheduling and assignment tools and reach audiences with geo-targeting functionality. Invite multiple collaborators to manage social profiles securely, plus provide custom reports using the comprehensive social analytics tools for measurement.
Features 

• Multiple Social Networks
• Custom Analytics
• Team Collaboration
• Schedule Messages
• Mobile Apps
• Automated Reports
• Assignment
• Monitor Mentions
• RSS Integration
• Custom Dashboard
• Themes
• Secure Profile
• Ow.ly Custom urls
• Browser Extensions
• Upload pictures and videos
• Localization
• Twitter Lists
• Tabbed Layout
• Manage Followers
• Message Draft

radian6
$600 – $10,000 per month
Company
Founded in 2006, Radian6 was created with the idea that companies need to actively engage in Social Media Monitoring. Intelligence about online conversations is critical: companies need to know what’s being said about their brand, industry, and competitors online. So we built a listening platform designed to help companies do just that.
Features 

• Listen
• Measure
• Engage
• Discover
• Applications
• Customers

SproutSocial
$40 – $900
Company
Sprout Social is headquartered in Chicago, IL, where our team of 35 passionate employees work tirelessly for our customers. Sprout Social was founded in 2010 and is backed by the venture funds of NEA and lightback. Our web application integrates with Twitter, Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn, Foursquare and other networks where consumers are engaging with businesses and brands. In addition to communication tools, Sprout Social offers contact management, competitive insight, lead generation, reporting, analytics and more – all in a package that’s intuitive and easy to use.
Features 

• Publish & schedule updates across social channels with a single click
• Monitor your brand & competition across social channels and the web
• Connect with highly targeted customers through our Discovery tools
• Measure success with robust reporting and analytics
• Collaborate with our team, tasks and permissions tools
• Monitor Check-Ins and Visitor Loyalty
• Manage it all on the go with Sprout Social For Mobile

Ultimately, the best advice for handling your social media accounts without spending a ton of money is to simply be authentic online. Create good content, add value when you can, support others by passing along their discoveries and knowledge. Ask and answer questions.

There are many free tools that focus on individual tasks or social media websites. I will list some of those in a future post.

What comprehensive dashboard-type tools does your company use? Leave your suggestions and experiences in the comments box below. Thanks!

UPDATE 4/12/2012:  Of course, you could just save a lot of money and go with this suggestion from the Oatmeal on how to get more Facebook likes.. Touché Oatmeal. Touché.

• Did a load of laundry, hung it out to dry, brought it in, folded it and put it away.
• Fed the fish.
• Refilled the swamp cooler for the plant room.
• Made lunch.
• Swept the patio.
• Ran the loop from behind my apartment to the river and back again, and did a quick 10 minute fitness routine.
• Added Account and Lead information to Zoho CRM (which I’m still learning to use).
• Played with the cats that we’re fostering for Felines and Friends, New Mexico. Anyone in the Santa Fe, NM area looking to adopt a pair of American Short Hair cats? Mom Eve and daughter Dawn. They’re a little timid, especially at first, but warm up over about a week. Probably best if they don’t have to live with dogs or children.

Typically I struggle with procrastination. I recently posted about yet another technique I’m trying in order to trick myself into taking action. But today? Today I’ve been feeling great! And it occurred to me. This is the real reason I value working from home. This efficiency.

When I was working 9-5 at an office I would seldom take breaks. Where would I go? There wasn’t anything of interest nearby and I just didn’t feel like spending 5 minutes walking somewhere only to turn around and walk back again. The consequences of that were, among others, a sore back, a sore wrist, headaches and tension. But working from home I actually have things to do  Stuff that needs to get done that I can take 10 minutes to jump up and complete. These are typically boring and mundane tasks like I listed above. Laundry, etc. Now they are opportunities to take a break from the computer! They suddenly become more compelling. Almost a relief. Then I get an extra shot of dopamine to the brain when I realize that it’s one less thing on my to-do list. I managed to put hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that saddled us humans with a brain hardwired for reward-seeking to work for me, not the other way around. I can’t believe I was going to an office all day and then coming home and having to take care of the tasks that were still not finished ! Like a sucker!

Well, I’m working my butt off to generate leads, set up small income streams and land new clients for my business so I can continue to work from home as I am now.

Wish me luck.

UPDATE (6:15 pm): OK, the perfect day was somewhat marred by getting caught up in writing this post and letting the homemade vegetable stock burn. Char, while tasty on some types of meats, does not make a good base for soups. I am not looking forward to scrubbing that pot out either. Sigh.

I’m a procrastinator and I love research. I put those two points in conjunction purposefully. I’ll let you come to your own conclusion as to how they are related. Chicken or egg? Either way the results are the same: inaction.

I Google. A lot. “how much time should I spend playing with my cats to keep them healthy?” ”what is the proportion of coffee grounds to water for the perfect cup of coffee?” “best way to place art on the walls?” “how do I come up with blog post ideas?” Then, “how do I make myself write them?”

Oh Problogger and CopyBlogger, I love you.

All the answers! Only $9.95!

What do I find after I click the search button? The experts are crowding the gates, they’re knocking on the doors, they’re shouting through the window. They hold up bullet-pointed signs and infographics stenciled on cardboard: “3 Steps to Financial Independence”, “10 Ways to become fulfilled, rich and beautiful”, “I can teach you to be snarky: and make people love you for it”. Score! Hours pass and then it’s dinner time.

My name is Chris and I’m addicted to advice-ohol

I love advice. Actually, I would say I’m addicted to it. Back when I wanted to be a fiction writer I would glide through the aisles at Barnes & Noble for hours fingering the nylon covers of books by famous and semi-famous authors offering sage advice. I curled up on the hotel-patterned chairs. The spines of books creaked open in my lap. I’ve got really bad eyesight, so I hold books very close to my face. I inhaled the old-cabin scents of glue and ink. I felt protected, mentored by the likes of Ursula K. Le Guin, Orson Scott Card and Stephen King. What a team to have on my side!

Maybe, on the way home I would buy a notebook. I would jot some ideas down. Lines of dialogue with harmony. A plot idea or two (if I was lucky). I would put it next to my bed and dream of journaling.

Math can be your friend

The equation was off. My appetite for guru-isms was out of proportion to my actions. In many ways it still is. I still grapple with my advice addiction. What is now a Gooogle-read-click-google-read-click method of inspiration seeking behavior.

However, I realized that if this is really an issue of proportions – essentially a math problem – then couldn’t the solution be as simple as changing the amount of time I allow myself to spend on each category of task?

The Categories

So, I essentialized the hell out of my actions and came up with two categories (my professors at UC Santa Cruz would be pitching fits). Creation vs. Consumption. Turns out, when I took a hard look at my actions, I really love to consume. I’m not proud of this since I believe that the insatiable desire to consume things – new products, resources, meat – is at the heart of our issues as a nation. But then again there’s nothing quite like shame to inspire change, and I really want to be someone who, on the whole, creates rather than consumes.

So, for my solution I figure that activities that take some sort of action that in part or in whole create something new such as: write, outline, build, make, run, plant, draw, etc. are productive / creative. Actions that do not are consumptive: watch, read, research, etc.

OK, research is a tricky verb, but since the whole point of this exercise is to get me doing, not reading, I put it in the Consumption category. Since it is also something that I find fun and pleasurable, tying it to the reward system of my equation seemed to be the best way to fuel this strategy.

What reward system, you ask? Well, it’s a simple issue of proportions. For every two hours of activities I indulge in from the Creation side of the equation, I allow myself an hour of wonderfully relaxing and edifying Consumption. That’s a 2:1 ratio there. I’d at first thought to hold myself to a 3:1 ratio, but I have a tendency to go overboard and not be able to sustain a new habit. Take small steps now to reach a larger future goal. I think that’s a guru-ism. Also, as Ramit Sethi likes to say, you don’t have to get 100% of something done. 85% will do. Then move on. Continue to monitor your solution and make small tweaks as needed over time.

What about you? What are your strategies to overcome procrastination? To adjust the equation of Creation vs. Consumption? Leave a comment because I’m always looking for new advice.

Back in the day when I was first futzing around with blogs and decided to move from a free hosted Blogger account at somethingsomething.blogspot.com to a slightly more professional (in my opinion) self hosted WordPress blog I would have to venture into the MySQL database. The process of moving the blog and subsequently applying updates  of new  Wordpress versions and plugin upgrades  caused premature gray hairs to sprout from my temples.

Ironically, now that finding gray hairs is just a fact of life, I’ve moved my blog once again from a San Francisco-based server hosted by a company that I really love to Yahoo. Though I feel guilty for abandoning a smaller business for a much larger one, I have to say the upgrade process for all the compponents of the blog: database, administration psoftwre, and plugins is sooooooo much simpler. Click-a-single-button simple. For me, this makes a lot more sense. It saves me a ton of time and aggravation, and I can turn that energy to writing posts.

What combination of host and software works best for you? Let us know in the comments section.

It’s called “Write in the Rain” because he is down here to complete his dissertation for his PhD. However, with all the amazing people who live here and present us with wonderful opportunities to procrastinate, I’m not sure how sucessful we will be with focusing on our own projects.

After all, yoga practice, acting opportunities (and here), organic and craft markets, potlucks, tapas nights,and  hiking are activities that are much much more compelling than sitting at our computers writing!

But we battle procrastination and keep our extracurricular activities going while maintaining a balance (we hope) between fun and working toward our goals.

We love food, so in our four nights in Panama City we hit a few restaurants. Below are y impressions of each and the approximate cost for a meal for two.

• New York Bagel Café
  $12 for 2 coffees, omelet and lox and bagel sandwich.
  New York Bagel Café is located near a giant statue of Einstein’s head. Yes, Albert Einstein. The statue is prominently displayed in a small triangular park across the street from the café at LOCATION. We walked from our hostel to the café. By the time we arrived I was drenched in sweat and blissfully happy to discover that the café provided air conditioning. The space itself is a cavernous hanger-like box. There are aluminum tables and chairs in the back, and several comfy-looking couches arranged within convenient conversational distance. The cafe serves a lot of recognizable favorites such as omelets, scrambles, and bagels. Many of the items are in English, though the person who took my order did not speak English. His manager did, though and he was very helpful in clearing up a misunderstanding or two. Apparently ojos does not mean “eggs.” There is wifi.
• Niko’s Cafe
  $6 for 2 plates of 3-4 items each.
  This was my first introduction to what I would soon learn is a beloved Panamanian institution: the cafeteria style restaurant. Score! Not only did it have ice-cold air conditioning, for a traveler on a budget you cannot do much better than these prices. Open at several locations around town, we ate at the one at LOCATION. The food is cheap, plentiful and edible. You grab an orange tray, start at one end and point to what you want. The lunch lady serves you up a big spoon of it and you move along the line. The stewed chicken (pollo guisado), white rice and plantains were good. They had mango juice. Did I mention the air conditioning? Recommended.
• Loving Hut
  $15-$18 for two meals and two weird avocado shakes
  We passed this place on LOCATION while looking for a farmacia. We decided we had to try it because we’ve been in a couple others in California. One in San Diego and one in Palo Alto. Also, we knew the food pretty well (or, thought we did – turned out we were wrong) and we knew that the place was no only vegetarian, which is very hard to find in Panama City, but VEGAN.
  OK, truth be told, the biggest reason we wanted to go n is because we are fascinated by Supreme Master Television and its eponymous founder Supreme Master Ching Hai. As close as I can figure, this is the parent company of Loving Hut and you can read more about it here and here.  The staff was very nice, and the food was fine. We were expecting a more California-style vegan menu with offerings of carefully crafted treats made to be as decadent as their animal-fat infused counterparts. However, the food was basically Chinese stir fry mixtures of veggies. Fine, but not great. We ordered a pair of avocado shakes out of pure curiosity. They were extremely rich and overpoweringly avocado-y. To try to get more of that milkshake decadence and fruit flavor our of them, we added sugar. This helped make them slightly more palatable. Our server told us that she recommended that the owner add sugar, but he said if customers want it sweeter than they can add it themselves. Either way works, but we couldn’t really finish them anyway..Even if the food wasn’t amazing you can’t beat the message: Go veg. Be green.
• Machu Picchu
  $55 for two entrees, two appetizers, four pisco sours and a slice of chocolate cake,
  This place came highly recommended by both travel books we brought with us. They serve Peruvian cuisine. The chef owns two restaurants, one in Panama City and the other in Boquete. We have since been to both. I have been nauseous after each visit. Jonah has not. He rather likes them. For our meal in Panama City we both ordered cold ceviche as the appetizer. The fish was velvety and tart. Delicious. The pisco sours we ordered complemented the ceviche marinade quite well. The drinks were strong and our heads were swimming by the time the entrees arrived. Jonah had the squid and rice cooked in its own ink. I had more fish with rice and coleslaw. There was plenty of food, but I felt it was overly salted.  We ordered the cake for desert because we confused our restaurants and thought it was the warm chocolate cake made with organic chocolate from Bocas Del Toro. It wasn’t. It tasted a bit like Hershey’s syrup over a slab of cafeteria cake. See below for the La Posta review for the cake.
• La Posta
  $80 for an appetizer, two entrees, a glass of wine, two mojitos and two slices of chocolate cake
  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED – OK, I’m writing this nearly a month after eating at this restaurant. To be honest, I don’t really remember what we ordered. However, I do remember that the mojitos were refreshing and filled with fresh mint muddled with local rum and simple syrup. The wine was delightful and the food, whatever it was, was delicious. Yes, it was expensive, but if it’s in your budget I highly recommend this place. The stand-out for me was desert. Warm chocolate cake made with organic chocolate from the Bocas del Toro region of Panama. So good: not too sweet with a prefect crumb.

• Upgrade Your Health and Fitness Routines this Weekend
• Achieve Your Goals More Easily by Creating Related, Sustainable Habits
• The Stupid Things You Do at Work (and How to Fix Them)

Just one quick piece of advice in case you don’t want to read all the above. Learn how to trick yourself.

I hate to keep you in suspense, so I’ll just blurt it out. We survived. The flight and landing were both pleasant and uneventful. We never even broke out the Xanax. We watched the King’s Speech (thank goodness for noise cancelling headphones) and an episode of Misfits. We read books, joked about the fake dogs in SkyMall magazine and I chatted with my neighbor in broken Spanglish. Boring, I know, but that’s how I like to keep my plane flights. Uneventful.

After we landed we gathered up our luggage and discussed whether our hostel would really have a driver waiting for us. We would be staying at Hostal Urraca. Their website says they can send a driver to pick us up for about $25, which seemed a bit steep to me, but sounded simple. It would be worth it after a long plane ride. If he showed up. Since our arrival time and date had been communicated via telephone, we had our doubts.

We stood with our luggage in one mysterious line to have our passports absentmindedly fondled as the immigration officer yelled over her shoulder at a co-worker and waived us through. We then stood in another mysterious line to have our list of declared items collected and our passports summarily stamped. I loaded my luggage into an enormous machine . No one was attending it, nor was anyone paying any attention, but it seemed like the thing to do, The machine swallowed and spit it out and I was in Panama.

Tocumen airport is far from town

As we rolled out of Tocumen’s secured area my husband scanned the crowd of expectant faces and spotted our driver. He was holding a hand lettered sign with Jonah’s name on it. It made me feel like a celebrity and I decided that I liked this place. I didn’t know it then, but that warm magnanimous feeling would come and go over the next few weeks alternating with intense bouts of irritation. For me Panama is not an easy country to love. For now, though we had our driver. Ricardo was an older Panamanian with an easy disposition and a ready smile. Not too chatty. When we saw our first dog of the trip wandering around in the parking lot (why, WHY is Latin American completely overrun with stray dogs?) Ricardo joked that it was airport security.

Stepping out of the airport into the Panamanian air was like being wrapped in one of those towels they give you for your face at a fancy salon, except all over your body. You know it’s supposed to be relaxing, but it’s really just hot, wet, and a little hard to breathe.

Tocumen is about 20 miles or so from our hostel, so it took longer than I expected to get to the city and I understood the price point for the taxi ride a bit better. We passed through a green tunnel of tropical vegetation. The thunderstorms we’d feared would throw our plane to the ground finally popped up and it was as though someone had turned on a faucet. We were driving 40 miles an hour through a car wash.

Traffic and skyscrapers galore

The rain cleared and the city rose up out of the vegetation. We thought it looked a bit like Vancouver with its rounded condominium towers bum rushing the ocean. It looked like the center of commerce that it is. The gateway between the oceans. That canal sees a lot of traffic and makes a lot of money. With the cranes dotting the city you could tell that there is more money and  more architectural ingenuity and fervor than there are regulations. We were from California, my husband’s parents own real estate in San Diego; he could smell the scent of a housing bubble wafting off those empty skyscrapers.

As we passed, Ricardo pointed out the Hard Rock café, the Multiplex mall and the new corkscrew tower rising above the lights, the ultramodern cubed buildings and the mud. The traffic moved in surges and eddies. There was a toll booth (luckily the taxi driver paid) along the bridge that passes over the bay of Old Town. We found out much later from a handsome Venezuelan couple, both of whom were architects leaving the rural life in the highlands of Panama for work in the city, that the city had only recently installed traffic lights. This article seems to imply that traffic lights were merely upgraded and several new ones added. Either way, be careful when crossing the street while you’re in the city.

Also, don’t worry if you notice cars honking for no apparent reason. Everybody honks. Seriously, They honk to say hi, they honk if  you’re in the way, they honk if things are taking too long. Jonah figured out that taxis honk at you if they are available. And always remember to ask a taxi driver how much it will cost before you get in the cab. This avoids unpleasant surprises later. There is no standard fare.

Where we stayed

Sandwiched between a pair of those shiny new highrises I mentioned above, I highly recommend Hostal Urraca. However, note that this is a low-end, bare bones choice.  If the term hostel scares you, all I can say is that I feel you. I’m not 25 anymore. But our experience here was low-key and enjoyable. There were even older couples here shuffling to the shower and using the free internet to phone their friends back in France.

We paid for a private room and it thankfully included air conditioning. The staff is attentive and helpful, but most of them only speak Spanish. The grounds are secured by a gate and the staff at reception can buzz you in. The bathrooms are shared and there should be one just a couple doors down from your room. But they are clean and spare, much like the bedrooms. The hostel is located a half block from Parque Urraca in the  Bella Vista neighborhood  near El Cangrejo and within walking distance of clubs, bars, restaurants, casinos, banks and cafes.

We stayed there four nights while we explored the city. In future posts in this series I will review restaurants and sites. Stay tuned!

However, as Adam Serwer of Mother Jones points out,  it’s important to remember that the fight for equality for lesbian and gay people continues.  Many still struggle to build families, careers and friendships because of lingering discrimination in U.S. laws, namely DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act).

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is dead. But the fight for equality in the military is nowhere near finished”

via There’s More to Equality Than Asking and Telling | Mother Jones.