Social media can get pretty complicated. I have a relatively small social media presence – the links/icons in the sidebar at left, plus Flickr – but at times I’ve forgotten how each of my pages or sites are connected.

Take, for example, the video blog below, which I uploaded to Youtube yesterday and intended to post here today. A few hours after the video was on Youtube I received a message from my sister on Facebook saying she had watched it. I had forgotten that I had a feed from Youtube to Facebook, and it probably cost ianhillmedia.com a few pageviews.

It’s something I’ll keep in mind in the future. Perhaps I need to create a flowchart mapping out the connections between my social media pages.

Over the past few months I’ve been intrigued by the growing popularity of the free blogging platform tumblr. In some ways – OK, many ways – it resembles Blogger.com; tumblr and Blogger both bring together blogging and social networking in a site that is incredibly easy to personalize and use. They allow users to modify and create their own page themes while also following their friends and keeping up with their blog posts.

Blogger and tumblr differ, however, in their presentation and how they are being used. Unlike Blogger, where the text is the star, Tumblr focuses on visuals and design. Many tumblr templates feature dominant, chunky fonts on simple yet eye-pleasing backgrounds – like American Apparel ads without the nudity.

Tumblr users seem to have picked up on this idea and are focusing on visuals on the site. Take, for example, former 209Viber and local musician Dan Faughnder’s tumblr page, which has a large image in every post.

I’m sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning monitoring three Twitter accounts, a Facebook page and a MySpace page (all via Tweetdeck) as well as two Google Waves. Combined, they reach a total of between 4,000-5,000 social media users, mostly in Stockton and San Joaquin County.

It’s gotten me thinking about the effective use of social media in the news industry (as well as my crazed obsession with the Internet, but that’s a different post for a different time.) We in the online media world like to jump on the latest, coolest social media technologies and try to put them to work at our news organizations. Our theory is that social media will play an important role in the future of communication, and we in the online world need to be progressive when it comes to using new technology.

I don’t disagree, but given the number of social media sites out there, and the still relatively small audience for social media in some markets, I’ve been wondering how we can organize our limited schedules and resources to best take advantage of those technologies. Is it worthwhile to spend hours Tweeting when there are less than 500 Tweeps in your community? Should we focus on providing new content to lure users in, or should we be doing more to look for new marketing tactics to let users know we’re available online? Does social media’s success at targeting niche markets mean we should be moving away from providing general news coverage online?

I’ve been on hiatus from ianhillmedia.com for the past week or so to focus on writing entertainment posts for Recordnet’s LENS blog and building Twitter.com/209Vibe (left), a resource for music and entertainment fans in Stockton and Modesto, California. The latter is the fourth active Twitter account that I run or help maintain.

209Vibe on Twitter is designed to serve as a local entertainment wire. Promoters and musicians Tweet or send me information about upcoming concerts and events and I (re-)Tweet it. I also re-Tweet entertainment stories from local news organizations and occasionally interact with performers.

My goal is to make Twitter.com/209Vibe the first stop for local residents who want to know where they can go for nightlife in their community.

In its first five days, Twitter.com/209Vibe attracted 85 followers and been added on three lists. It may not sound like much, but considering there are probably less than 40 active Tweeters in Stockton, I’m very happy with the results so far.

It’s gotten me thinking a bit more about best practices for print reporters who Tweet. Reporters who have a smart, realistic approach to Twitter can use it to reach readers and build the sense of community that’s vital in the new media world.