People have been saying we living in a fast-paced world long before cell phones became life lines. But today, in 2010, there’s such an emphasis on what’s latest buzz that it’s easy to get swept away by, well, the current.

Establishing Connections

There are so many ways to get connected and stay connected it can be overwhelming. Especially for Internet and affiliate marketers. As a marketer, you’re working hard to establish a connection with your audience, potential clients and return customers. Unfortunately, so is everyone else. You know how crowded the social media field can be, probably because you’re signed up for multiple alerts, watching your RSS feeds, monitoring your Facebook page and trying to respond to tweets while getting new Twitter followers. Then there are all those emails in your inbox…

That’s why there’s a growing market in filters. There’s no denying the concentration on social media and instant communication, but you need to know what’s actually relevant.

People tend to respond to chronological order. And our social media communiqués are arranged that way. Twitter scrolls the tweets by latest posting, so it’s easy to miss something important if ten people have tweeted in the minute since it was posted. And email is the same way.

Filters like Xobni, Rapportive and Gist provide context to communications so you can see if the latest email needs to be answered first or if it’s really the one that’s six emails below it. These filters also work incorporate your social media network information so you can see all the ways you’re connected to your contact without having to check other sites or jog your memory.

Xobni

Xobni works with outlook and connects your emails to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and contact lists like XING, Hoovers and Salesforce. As you can see from the picture to the right, Xobni creates profiles for your contacts. It’s searchable, like your inbox, and tied to your accounts. It’s an add-in for Outlook, and the basic version is free, while Xobni Plus costs just under $30.

Rapportive

Rapportive does for Gmail what Xobni does for Outlook, and it’s free. Rapportive give your emails context, by displaying the information pulled from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more, on who you’re emailing with. The young company is working on integrating their filter with services like Salesforce, MailChimp, and ConstantContact. As you can see from the picture, their profile appears next to the email.

Gist

Gist takes a different form. It ranks your contacts in order of importance, using the amount of communication and your input to judge. Pulling from social media networks and your Gmail account, Gist sorts your correspondence, any tweets, news (it pulls RSS feeds) or blog posts by the contact or about the contact, events or other relevant data and puts together in one place. You can see from the picture below that you work through a Gist site and your information is presented on a Dashboard with a listing of your contacts.

These filters are just one response to the growing noise from social media. But while social media is still creating buzz, it’s worth trying to capture some of it. These filters can help make the latest news relevant, which enables you to use it powerfully.