I just got back from a fantastic day at the 20th annual Dynamic Women in Business Conference at Harvard Business School. What an incredible event! If the students who organized it weren’t going to be busy running the world’s next generation of startups, non-profits and multinational companies, you would definitely ask them to plan your next conference.

On a day that featured inspiring and thought-provoking speakers like  Nancy Barry and Susan Smith Ellis, I was incredibly honoured to be part of a social media pane. In the course of our conversation about social media, we covered a wide range of issues, strategic consideration and tools. In this blog post, I round up a bunch of posts (mostly mine, a few from other folks) that can help you get started with social media, deepen your practice or discover new social media tools.

Essential platforms

Evernote: Once again I made an impassioned case for this indispensable note-taking tool, which will not only whip your laptop or desktop notes into shape, but keep them synced with your smartphone, your ipad and the web; it can even recognize photos of type or handwritten text, so it’s great for making that pile of business cards or notes into a searchable resource.

Twitter: Twitter is now a must-join social network for anyone who is building a professional network or brand. Here are a couple of posts to help you make the most of this:

  • Twitter 101: learn the basics, including how to choose a username, how to find people to follow a Twitter glossary. This piece originally appeared on Oprah.com.
  • Twitter 201: find out how to use private Twitter lists to focus your online attention on your most crucial relationships and priorities

Delicious: This social bookmarking tool does a lot more than keep track of your favorite websites: you can use it to stay on top of the news in your field, find experts and search the unsearchable. If you’re still storing your bookmarks in Explorer or Firefox, it’s time to find out what social bookmarking can do for you:

Facebook: The question is not whether but how to incorporate Facebook into your social media strategy.

More tools

  • Foursquare: There was a lot of curiosity about FourSquare and other location-based services like it. 6 tips for getting the most out of Foursquare is a useful guide from Mashable (a great resource for learning about all sorts of social media tools).Facebook Places is a similar service; if you’re uneasy about FourSquare, you may want to read my post on how to keep your location private on Facebook.
  • iGoogle: If you’re using social media, you need a way to keep track of what people are saying about you and what you might want to write or comment on. iGoogle is a great way to create a social media dashboard for tracking all your latest news and social media coverage. My list of 9 feeds for your iGoogle dashboard can help you set up your dashboard.
  • Pinterest: Use Pinterest to collect pictures of web sites or clothes or furniture you love, or cool gadgets or beautiful logos or whatever you like. Organize your images into pinboards, and discover new sources of visual inspiration from other people. Here’s my overview of Pinterest.

Strategy questions

Three posts to address three strategic issues that came up in conversation:

More about the social media panel

The social media panel was organized by Alexandra Bochicchio, Abigail Chambers & Valerie Galinskaya, and chaired by publishing dynamo Andrea Chambers. The other panelists were:

  • Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project,
  • Cammie Croft, Senior Advisor and Director of New Media and Citizen Engagement, U.S. Department of Energy
  • Julia Roy, Vice President of Marketing, Manilla
  • Katherine Tasheff, Executive Director, Digital Media & Marketing, Hyperion & Voice Books
  • Thanks to all these women — and to the very lively audience — for a terrific conversation.