It is no news that social media is taking over. With apps galore, we are wandering the world, while there is an entirely separate digital world lighting up our pockets. According to Digital Trends, the average American spends 4.7 hours a day on the phone. Luckily, with the demand to be virtually social, there is a demand to organize, too. Nurses and other experts are sharing their expertise on all types of social media including Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, and many more resources. These experts bring you instant access to an unlimited amount of information. Here are the top tech tools to keep your media clean and organized:

1. HOOTSUITE

Hootsuite monitors various social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, via keywords and mentions. It allows management of up to 100 social networks. No other tool saves as much time as HootSuite. You can share also your lists with others. Hootsuite also allows you to upload posts to the same platforms you read all in one place, saving lots of time.

2. FEEDLY

Feedly is my go to place for reading blogs and web news. Set up folders based on your nursing courses or speciality interests. Feedly allows you to access the entire feed at once or by topic.

3. KLOUT

Klout collects content data and interactions from across different social media platforms. It can track the performance and reach of posts you’ve made. You can search for expert advice from Klout’s established categories. If you are posting to social media, as well as reading it, Klout will assess the reach of the posts you are making.

4. ALLTOP

Alltop is a different type of social media organizer. You can query Alltop and get answers to questions that are organizers in specific ways. Unlike other search engines, the returns are divided into categories and are easy to read. Because AllTop monitors many social networks and blogs, the search results are very valuable. It collects recent headlines and social media posts which provide an “information filter” to identify trends in an area of interest. If you don’t want to subscribe to blogs through Feedly or HootSuite, AllTop might be a suitable substitute.

5. PINTEREST

In order to stay on top of changes in all fields, Pinterest is one of the most popular and useful social media sites. You can start your own “boards” or follow others. You will find an impressive number of boards dedicated to nursing, studying, art, death and dying. You name it and nurses will find useful information there. Because the boards are very specific, Pinterest is an interesting and time saving way to collect information for easy retrieval.

6. EVERNOTE

Evernote is the most essential tool many professionals use. It is the backbone of what I use to keep organized. You can write, find, share and present all the social media and other resources you have collected from this one application. Evernote also allows for all types of files to be collected.

7. TRELLO

Trello is a new information aggregator that has many uses. Trello allows you to create boards that include lists and cards, which you can use and share with your team. You can create a board of a topic, include links to social media posts, add some comments to the cards to remind you why you saved the link. You can also organize the cards in any order you want. This would allow you to write an outline for a paper, create a presentation and download it to finish it according to the requirements of your project.

There is a small investment in time to create an account and get familiar with each of these tools but the dividends are priceless. It is impossible to stay up on every new development in nursing, but there isn’t enough money, and investing in paper materials is abusing a resource. Social media provides the best solution to knowing what is happening in your field. These tools make it practical to make sense of the vast array of resources on the internet, all while saving time.