My friend Rayna Vause and I were recently at the Moonlight & Magnolias conference in Atlanta to give a workshop on publicity and promotion in cyberspace. One of the topics we discussed was Social Media and how to use it to help build your brand online.
One of the major concerns expressed by many was the time demands of being in so many places online. It’s a truly valid concern. With so many authors still holding down jobs and/or the needs of family, spending time on the web and social media sites can be a major time suck, especially when you’re also trying to write a book.
But it is possible to use technology to alleviate some of the demands of Social Media promotion. If you’ve got a blog, Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, it’s possible to automate many of these applications so that you’re content will be available on all of them with minimal work. How do you do that?
Feed your blog to your Twitter, Facebook and/or Myspace pages:
Both Twitter and Facebook allow you to feed content automatically from your blog. In Facebook, find your NOTES section and you will see a spot where you can add your blog feed to bring it into your Facebook profile. With Twitter, you can use Twitterfeed to automatically post your blog content as a tweet.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a similar application for Myspace, but it is possible to create a widget for your blog feed that you can embed on your Myspace page or in other applications that accept Widgets. I’ve used Spring Widgets and find their RSS feed widget very handy.
Feed your Twitter, Facebook and/or Myspace to each other:
It’s possible to feed your various tweets, status changes, etc. from one Social Media site to another.
To feed your Facebook status to Twitter and vice versa, you can use this Twitter application on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=twitter&init=quick#/apps/application.php?id=2231777543&ref=search&sid=1130005412.376077238..1
To feed your Tweets to Myspace, you can try out this application:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=463617608
Keeping track of your Social Media Sites:
There are a number of applications that will allow you to view and take action on your various sites at once. Two of the more popular and useful applications are TWEETDECK and HOOTSUITE.
Tweetdeck is a desktop application that will allow you to see tweets, respond, retweet as well as view your Facebook and Myspace content. Hootsuite is a web-based application that also does much of the same, but also allows you to schedule tweets. A great ability to have if you must get information out but know in advance that you will not have access to the web.
I hope you found today’s Tuesday Tip helpful and that it will help you avoid the possible time suck of Social Media. If you have any good applications that you can recommend, please let us know by posting them to the comments section.