Do all of these social media networks make you dizzy? Do you have the feeling that you are lost in a maze of blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, Four Square etc? Posts are everywhere and sometimes they are repeating the same things. It may annoy your followers and friends and eventually you will get ignored. It doesn’t have to be this way when you know how to simplify and untangle the links that join social media networks together.
I’d like to show you one simple way to link the connections between your social media accounts so that you do less work and still spread your efforts to these social media channels.
1. Blog – This is where you provide value to others by sharing your viewpoint, expertise, and experience. Blogging is also a great way to get organic traffic from search engines and allows others to reference to your posts.
2. Twitter – Twitter is the springboard and the broadcaster of your social media networks. Connect your blog to your twitter accounts to make your blog automatically send messages to other social channels you have.
3. LinkedIn – LinkedIn has partnered with Twitter. When you set your Twitter name in your LinkedIn account, your tweets will automatically update your LinkedIn status. You can also add your blog’s RSS feed to one of the links in your LinkedIn profile and add Blog Link app to your LinkedIn account to share your blog posts with your connections.
4. Facebook – I don’t think I need to explain much about Facebook. For me, it’s primarily for my personal network of family, relatives and close friends. By connecting your Twitter announcements to Facebook, it can automatically add your twitter to your Facebook status.
5. Google Buzz is the newcomer but not many people understand it yet. To make it work, you’ll want to create your own Google Profile. You then connect your Twitter account to your Google profile and Google Buzz to broadcast your status to your Buzz connection. The Buzz network usually consists of family and friends who use Gmail as their personal email platform. One feature of Google Buzz is that it allows you to share the items from your Google Reader and Blogger account through Buzz network.
Following are the tools that you can use to make the job of untangling your social media network easier:
HootSuite is a powerful tool to manage all your social media accounts. It can post messages to multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and FourSquare accounts. It also can connect with your WordPress and RSS.
DISQUS Comments: When you install DISQUS Comments on your blog, it replaces your regular comment forms. Your visitors can then use one of the social media accounts they already have to post comments. It will authenticate their identity to ensure quality comments. It will prevent opening up the blog to spam.
WordPress to Twitter plugins: There are a number of plugins to allow you to connect and broadcast your blog to your Twitter account. Most of them will also allow you to connect to shorten URL app and properly layout your tweets.
Everyone is talking about how to leverage and harness the power of social media but it can appear quite overwhelming. By taking simple steps to ensure the proper linkage of the connections, you can do less AND reap the benefits of the social media networks. Download our whitepaper on implementing a B2B Social Media Marketing plan for your business.
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About Jim Wong
Jim is a digital veteran with over 10 years of experience driving digital strategy and leading multi-discipline teams for national & local brands in over 20 industries. His expertise is in leveraging digital marketing to market businesses smarter and better through a data focused, performance ROI driven approach.