One of the last things noted on a websitegrader.com report is initializing automated social media marketing. Specifically, the report will say, “Not Found : It doesn’t look like you are currently using any tools to automate your marketing efforts.”
One way to do this is to use the NetworkedBlogs widget within Facebook. Once you add this app, you’ll need to make your own custom widget within your blog with the provided code. Within WordPress, choose a Text widget and simply paste the NetworkedBlog code provided by the app, give it a title, and the app will appear instantly within your blog. The app allows your visitors to Follow your blog directly from their Facebook page. Of course most blogs can be quickly followed via RSS, but as Facebook becomes more and more a single portal for millions, this provides yet one more way to centralize your reading.
There are two things I immediately don’t like about NB. One is having to give permission to the app to do a myriad of things, including emailing me whenever it wants to and being able to snoop through any and all of my profiles. Another thing I don’t like is not being able to control which Facebook account the application “syndicates” to; you can only add the app to your primary Facebook account. If you have other pages, such as a business page, you can syndicate to it, but you can’t prevent the app from syndicating to your main Facebook account. If you attempt to delete any post fed to your main Facebook wall, the app will need to be re-approved in order to use it.
NetworkedBlogs is by no means your only choice. Many more can be found in the article How to Automate Your Social Media Marketing Efforts.
One such app, and a much more efficient app in my opinion, is ping.fm. There is a quick sign up process (email, password, submit) and a slew of dozens of possible app networks to add to the management queue, my favorite being distinguishing between Facebook and Facebook pages. You’ll also find Twitter, MySpace, Flikr, Photobucket, Blogger, LinkedIn, and many more. You’ll even find an app that can be customized to any URL, which is a great way to add your own hosted blog to the social media management queue. Once you add networks to your dashboard, or control panel, you can manage which ones will syndicate your messages. All are selected by default when they are added.
After posting a quick message (pingin on ping.fm. Is it as cool as it seems?) in the easy to find dashboard messaging text field, my message displayed nearly instantly in my twitter feed. I’m still waiting to see the post appear on my Facebook page and in this blog (setup as a “Custom URL”). This blog post itself took about 12 hours to post on Bowser Multimedia Productions’ Facebook page. This probably occurred during Facebook’s once a day scrub.
I’ll continue updating this post as I put the app through more usage patterns.
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