Soapbox Engage Blog

There are so many ways to promote your organization online today.  Indeed, you may be returning to work with a raft of 2013 resolutions to do just that.

Social communities have exploded over the past few years.  In working with our clients in the Support Department as well as promoting my own after-work projects, I know it feels like you have to be everywhere at once.  It seems that if you aren't taking advantage of every angle, then you are missing something. But just try to keep up with Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, LinkedIn, Feedburner, the new MySpace and on and on and on... not to mention your own website... it can be exhausting.

So get smart about it.

All of these services are, in effect, isolated silos.  But what many people don't realize is that these silos can usually talk to each other.  Often, a post to one can be pushed to another.

For example, Instagram can automatically push your photos to Twitter and Facebook.  Facebook can automatically push your status updates to Twitter.  Your websites RSS feed can be used to populate Twitter as well.

So what good is that?  It sounds like a mess with stuff being pushed around all over the place.  But if you plan things out a little, this can actually make your life much easier.

If you plan an information flow, then your life will be much easier.  For example, one option is to adopt an All Roads Lead Through Twitter strategy.  My blog and Instagram both push to twitter, and twitter pushes my to Facebook and Google+ pages as well as a twitter widget on my website.  So, any time I take a photo, it goes to Twitter, then in to Facebook and G+ and I didn't have to do a thing.  If I post a tweet on Twitter, it updates automatically to my Facebook and G+ status.  I only have to deal with two places - one for photos and one for text, and it hits all of my social web points.

Then of course, you can always post longer status updates to Facebook if you'd like.  But your instagrams and tweets automatically populate all of your innerwebs without a thought.

There's no doubt about it... there is a lot to keep up with these days if you want to fully socialize your organization.  But by taking some time to think about how all of the points in your social network tie together - you can save yourself a lot of effort.