Hootsuite.com has made it easy to manage your social networks and keep your sanity doing it. The site offers more than just a website link shortener for users to utilize.

The Twitter focused site lets you add and update your social networks including Facebook, WordPress, LinkedIn, Myspace and Ping.fm.

This site has recently streamlined its interface to make it easier to use. You can now customize your streams, tabs and columns on the dashboard.

The Professional Podcasts offer a broad range of public relations and communications services to help clients enhance their professional image. We have extensive expertise in new media technologies and “social media” such as blogging, podcasting, social network sites, and microblogging tools like Twitter.

Q) Tell us a little bit about your site. What inspired you to start it?

A) I’m a former corporate PR guy. Left the corporate world at the end of 2004, and realized after listening to many podcasts that there was a lot of poor quality production being done. I had background in radio, and know how to produce and edit news stories for radio. I learned digital tools and began focusing on podcasting as the core competency of my consultancy.

Attention indie  bands and artists, Headliner.fm wants to help you connect with other musicians and ultimately reach new fans and better promote your music. The website is a “promotion exchange” for bands and artists to help build awareness for each other.

Bands who sign-up on Headliner are able to join forces with and promote other bands on each other’s Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace profiles. Members are rewarded a number of “band bucks” (proportionate to how many followers they have on their social media sites) which can be used to buy requests from other bands to give your band promotion on their social media profiles.

Twitter is a great tool for musicians to market their music, but many musicians are unsure how it can be helpful to them. The typical musician spends much of their time being musically creative, but many musicians who should be using Twitter to market their music aren’t sure where to start or how to use it to its full potential.

Luckily, Twitter is simple and easy. The only work that really needs putting in is a little thought and some time on a regular basis, and I’d like to share a few ways that this popular social network can supercharge your music career:

Find New Fans of Your Music

Many people are on Twitter these days – and many of them are music fans that live in your town, and the cities you visit. With Twitter’s search function, you can find local music lovers who enjoy the style of music that you play. Twitter also allows for two-way communication via replies and direct messages, so you have the opportunity to make true connections.

In an ideal world, the music is all that would matter. You would play and the legions of fans would come. This is not, unfortunately, an ideal world, which means that you need to market yourself if you want to be successful. Fortunately, we are living in a time when marketing your music and yourself has never been easier. The Internet has brought the whole world closer together, and this has made it easier and cheaper to both contact your fans and potential fans as well as made it easy to give them a wide variety of stuff to sell. But marketing can seem overwhelming, so here are six ways to market yourself and your music:

Have an Online Presence

TrekWest5 is a podcast that strives to bring thoughtful conversations to television, books, movies, music, and pretty much anything else they want to talk about.

Q) Tell us a little bit about your site. What inspired you to start it?

A)
Peter: We love television, but the idea of just turning off your brain for mindless entertainment never felt right to us – it seemd to close to the Looter mentality.  We feel that you can have intelligent and entertaining discussion based on the subjects that television shows handle.  Our aim is to facilitate such conversation in ourselves and our listeners.

This is the year of revival and resurgence for Cute Is What We Aim For, and like everything else this band does, the release of the first track will be anything but ordinary. Taking advantage of the rise in social media in the immediate age, Cute Is What We Aim For will release their first new song in over two years via Twitter tomorrow. Follow Shaant here: @Shaantastic.

With one tweet (to be release tomorrow at NOON EST) the first 10,000 followers will receive the new song called “Harbor” automatically downloaded onto their computer or wireless device.

Shaant Hacikyan, the founding member of Cute Is What We Aim For has come full circle.  After struggling with alcohol addiction and successfully completing treatment, Shaant began writing music again and will be releasing a new album with a fresh reincarnated version of the band.  He is also prepping for a headlining tour with The Friday Night Boys, The Bigger Lights and Down With Webster, which kicks off May 11th in Boston.

USA TODAY, the nation’s top-selling print newspaper, announces the results of the #AmericaWants Twitter hashtag campaign for charity. With the most tweets of support, To Write Love on Her Arms will receive a full-page, full-color ad in USA TODAY, valued at $189,400.

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for those struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. The movement exists to encourage, inform, inspire, and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery. Since 2006, To Write Love on Her Arms has responded to more than 150,000 emails and messages from over 100 countries, in addition to giving more than $700,000 directly to treatment and recovery.

Non-profit organization To Write Love on Her Arms is in the running to win a full page ad in USA Today (worth $189,000) and all they need to win is your tweet! To win, TWLOHA needs the most tweets to USA Today.

To help TWLOHA win this great gift, simply tweet: “#AmericaWants @TWLOHA to get a full-page ad in USA TODAY!” Re-tweeting it and spreading the word could only help TWLOHA, so tweet up a storm for a good cause!

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.

Social media is the buzz phrase of the web today, however, ask any two web professionals what “social media” actually is and you will get two differing answers. In fact, social media means different things to different people including the most important group of all, the users.

Users are bringing change to the web because of how their web surfing habits are evolving. This is leading to new and creative ways to satisfy the changing demands for how information and content is searched and used.

Social Media Defined

The World Wide Web was conceived as a medium for information exchange between users, however, it is only with the advent of Social Media innovations this has become reality for ordinary users as individuals and collectives including businesses. Social Media is not defined by “What It Is” but more by “What It Does” – it is the enablement of any user to share information whether uploading it to the web for others or viewing and downloading content for their own use.

Online music promotion is an essential part of any artist’s successful marketing campaign in the “new music” business model.

The music business has been forced to change its business model as a result of the internet. This in the long term is good for musician’s bands and artists as they have more control of promoting themselves online using the various platforms of web 2.0 and are not as beholden to record companies as they were.

So how do we market music online?

When people ask me what Google Buzz is, I simply say it’s a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter. You apply live updates to your profile for your followers, similar to Twitter, and then add links or photos. You also have the ability to make your updates public or private.

Why should indie bands or artists use Google Buzz?

It is another excellent way to gain exposure for your band or project. You can apply custom links and have your profile showcased during Google searches of your project’s name.

Having a link back to your Web site is a solid reason to create a Google profile. Google also gives you the ability to add multiple links to your other social media sites, store, blog, etc. For instance, I currently have five links on my profile to the sites I want my followers to visit.

Mixcloud.com launched their new “Category” pages, which feature some of the finest stations, shows and DJs (Cloudcasters) on Mixcloud across 10 music and 6 talk Categories. The new update also includes an interesting integration with Twitter and Facebook.

The Category pages are a selection of editorial picks, designed to help listeners browse through the wealth of content on Mixcloud and discover high quality shows more easily. The Categories range from indie to house to comedy. In addition to the editorial picks, the Category pages include a section for “community picks”, empowering the community on Mixcloud to choose the Cloudcasters they would like featured – an interesting model for crowdsourced editorial. New user picks will be revealed every week on Mixcloud Monday!