One of the hardest things we are all faced with in the digital age is the eternal “contact me here” plight. How many appointments or leads have you missed because you were contacted the wrong way at the wrong time?  This quote from the movie “He’s Just Not That Into You” sums up my frustration with the digital age:

“I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It’s exhausting.”

How do we fix it?

There are a couple of ways to do it. The easiest way to do it is to simply tell all your contacts how you want to be contacted. For example, many companies are now using Twitter for customer support. Including information on when that account is active, “online M-F | 8a-6p,” is incredibly helpful and sets up the appropriate expectations for your customers. As an individual, why not set the same kind of expectations for your friends, family, colleagues and business partners? Set the guidelines for your availability and stick to them.

Also, there are many services that now streamline data dissemination. If you are using the basics (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn), try using Hootsuite.com. It’s a great way to set yourself up on multiple websites, and multiple accounts. It even has it’s own analytics tracking and you can set up teams to manage each account. If you are an artist or musician, I recommend checking out ArtistData.com as well.

If you don’t like using Hootsuite for your personal information, try using Threadsy.com. Threadsy, unlike Hootsuite, actually aggregates both your social media profiles AND your email addresses. It’s great for personal use. I haven’t tried it for business use yet, but I can definitely see how it would help smaller companies!

If you are like me, you have a profile on every different social website for not only yourself, but your company(s). How do you maintain them all?