How do I get to a point where I can be present, involved and fostering community on my three blogs, respond to comments effectively, and manage all the other administrative-type stuff I need to do for them? -Sweetney

It’s all about your workflow. To foster community we must create containers for our online behaviors. As unsexy an answer as this might be, these containers must be set up and working in an airtight manner in order to be most effective.

Yours will work differently than mine, but this should give you an idea of how to do it.

For brainstorming, have lots of ways to capture your great ideas. To capture I’ve used/use:

-Moleskines
-OmniFocus
-Hipster PDA
-Great Ideas notebook

(These all have their pros and cons. I’ll cover those at a later date.)

For blog creation, capturing is the first piece. The second part is implementation. Here’s how to implement:

1. Once a week* go through your capture piles.
2. Turn legible notes into digital bits. (I use TextEdit but anything works. Anything except Stickies on the Mac. Those deplorable bits do nothing but clog workflow, IMHO.)
3. Create a folder on your desktop called “Blog Stubs.”
4. Put bits in said folder. (In Sweetney’s case, I’d recommend the bits go into a Blog Stubs folder w/sub-stubs for each blog.)
5. Once a week, visit blog stubs and flesh one out. Think about them during your week.

Ok, that’s the writing end of things. Once your pieces are fleshed out, copy and paste them, then code them, into your blog editing software (I use and adore WordPress).

For photos, my workflow goes like this:

1. Take photos. More than you think necessary. Especially of random things that you think you’ll never use.
2. Upload photos daily. I never have more than 100 photos on a memory card. This serves two purposes: I get fresh pics up to Flickr/my blog quickly and 2, it takes less time to do uploads.
3. Get photos edited as soon as possible after transfer. Get from edit (I use iPhoto for minor edits, Picnik for fun) to upload immediately. Longer you wait, more likely you’ll forget.

Comment flow looks like this:

I try to respond to comments (on blogs and twitter - both “@s” and DMs) quickly. It’s like having a conversation and you have to be vigilant to keep up.

1. Monitor comments.
2. Reply in a timely fashion.

One way I’ve learned to respond quickly to comments it to moderate all the ones that come onto my blog. As soon as a comment comes in, I receive an email. Unless it’s the middle of the night, I approve comments quickly and then reply if it needs responding to.

For Twitter, I monitor search.twitter.com with the keyword: gwenbell. This tells me when I’ve been “@”ed and allows me to keep a finger on the pulse of my stream. Finally, for global comments across the web, I use Filtrbox. It catches most mentions of things related to me/projects in which I’m interested, around the web.

I also just got an iPhone after four months living mobile-free. I hope this doesn’t mean the end of my life off-line. Perhaps we can dedicate a future post to finding balance with our mobile devices. Questions? Comments? Let us know! Thanks to the prolific @sweetney from Sweetney, MamaPop and WeCovet for this first in a series of questions on best social media and healthy online living practices.

In conclusion, these containers and work flows take time (sometimes years) to set up and use effectively, but they are crucial to living the digital life well. Find a group of supportive folks that will help you stick to this schedule. Use the comments section to share your ideas, tips and questions. We’re here to help.

Good luck.

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*I incorporate a lot of the principles from the Getting Things Done productivity system (including the principle of “capturing” information before you forget it). Much of what I’ll refer to in this series builds on my hacked version and understanding of GTD, Sark, OmniFocus, the cult of the Moleskine and my old standby, trial and error.

{Wondering how to get started with all this? Try it out. For your most recently published blog post, think backwards. It’s published now, but how did it get that way? What was the most frustrating part about getting it published? Start there to see how to tighten up your workflows.}

{This series is done in collaboration with the ever-freshest Sweetney. I’m in awe of her creative titling abilities, evidenced in her alternative title for this series (feel free to use if “The Hipster’s Guide to Life Online” bores or offends you): “The Social Media Zombie Ate My Brain: How To Wrestle Your Soul Back From The Gaping Maw Of Interweb Timesuck.” Or, *clears throat*, TSMZAMBHTWYSBFTGMOIT for short. *wink*}