Social Schmoozing

When I announced to Twitter that I was doing a blog on the “best business apps on the iPhone”-little did I know that I was engaging on an adventure far more cumbersome then any adventure James Tiberious Kirk and company could find in their rebooted universe!

Thank you to numerous Twitter folk who made recommendations on what apps I should put into lights in my humble little solar system. Pondering….I came to the conclusion that this mission was far too large for one episode. Instead I am going to break it down into a trilogy with an eye on 5 in each post.

I set up three rules:

1. No reading anyone else’s blog posts on iPhone apps!
2. Limit of only 5. Any more than 5 bullets is blog over kill!
3. Find new apps-not pointing out the Twitterfon’s of the world. We all know the “must haves”.

With that I was off!

I decided to focus first on the Social Media & Social Networking apps. With all of my Social Media Consulting clients, I make the recommendation to have any staff who is working on a destination community to have an iPhone. After all, when you are the mayor of a community, you should be wired as much as possible. So it made complete sense to focus on a blog I can refer my clients to:

1. Nimbuzz – Allows you to chat with your co workers, peers, partners and customer on AIM, Facebook, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, MySpace, Skype and Yahoo.  It will also provided VoIP calls via Wi-Fi. Keep in mind that Skype requires Wi-Fi as well.
2. iCloseBy WiFi – A location-based way of meeting folks  whom are accessing the same WiFi hotspot as you.  It is a great tool in that it doesn’t discriminate on what laptops and other WiFi enabled devices the users are using. This is a great way to break the ice with locals and share the social channels you are passionate about. You never know what serendipitous business opportunity exists within your friendly neighborhood coffee shop!
3. ShoZu – Love this app. It allows you to work with well over 50 different social entities -Facebook, Flickr, Twitter being the big guys! Whatever channel you decide to tread in, this app is likely to tee up easy access.
4. Evernote- Note taking goes mobile and social. Share it to the people that matter as soon as you are done. You can even record audio. I haven’t been able to figure out if you can podcast yet. But I will comment here if I am suave enough to figure it out!
5. OmniFocus-If you are a community manager, this is a must have app for task management. I have started using it when I am on the road with clients. It keeps me on task with my “gotta do’s” by EOD. If you are a project manager-this is for you as well.

In the end, all of us Social Media types have loaded our laptops with the tools we need to be successful. Chances are, we also are under the impression we have the most  pimped out  iPhone of them all. But in case you haven’t heard of these “off the beaten path apps”-give them a whirl! I have little doubt they will make your life easier.

My next post will focus on the Real Estate industry and how iPhone apps will have a game changing effect! Till then-live long and prosper!

I had to show this fantastic Photoshop work!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 7:13 pm and is filed under 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.