This post originally appeared on Service Magic’s blog Pro Connection. See our weekly blog posts there every Thursday!

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The times certainly are changing. Not only is social media something that a majority of small businesses recognize they should be using, but the medium is changing faster than ever. Truthfully, who has time to sit at their computer all day monitoring Twitter and Facebook? It just isn’t practical. After all, someone needs to be running the business. Here are three ways you can easily manage and create social media content from your smart phone:

1. Set up instant email alerts so you won’t be stuck monitoring all day

Postling offers instant email alerts to all Plus and Premium members. So what exactly does this mean? Well, to put it simply, as soon as someone @ replies you on Twitter, writes on your Facebook wall, or comments on your blog, Postling will send you an email showing what the person wrote. Better yet? You can reply to the email to directly respond to the comment. No need to go to the social network, or even Postling. See the email, respond, and Postling will send it off to the right account!

2. Social networking apps bring the conversation to your fingertips

Twitter and Facebook have their very own apps for smart phones. This way, on-the-go professionals can do their work and check updates on their phone when they’ve got a free moment. Maybe this means you pick up your phone and scroll through new tweets during your coffee break, or while you’re waiting in line for lunch. We highly recommend exploring the social networking apps that are available for your phone.

3. Create engaging content with the press of a button

There are dozens of new and fun to use apps out there that make it so easy to share photos across various social networks. One example of this is Instagram, which allows you to easily take a photo, apply filters, and then send it out to all of your social networks with a text caption and location information. In under a minute you can send a photo out to Twitter, Facebook, your blog, Flickr, and Foursquare. Photo sharing apps make it easier than ever for you to create interesting and engaging content for your community of followers.

Do you think bringing the social media conversation to your phone will ease the burden some? Were you aware tools like these existed? Do you have tips we didn’t think of? Let us know in the comments! 

Alexis Lamster