Social Media - Integrating the Tools

As a business you probably want to spread your marketing messages far and wide, using whatever tools that are available. Letting one social media tool feed another potentially makes this more efficient. For example:

• Twitter tweets can automatically appear on your company website, such as to be part of the News section
• Using RSS feeds to drive content into other services
• Photos and videos added to Flickr for your followers there can be added automatically to Twitter and/or your Facebook account
• For professionals, Twitter tweets can feed into LinkedIn, so they appear in the “Network Activity”  seen by people who are connected to you
• YouTube likes and comments can automatically become Twitter tweets
• FourSquare check-ins can be fed into Twitter

Generally these links are permanent, until you sever the link. But some, such as FourSquare to Twitter, you confirm during each check-in.

Whilst these links can be very useful, you also have to be mindful whether they are appropriate. On feeding Twitter into LinkedIn, is the frequency and topics on which you tweet appropriate to your LinkedIn profile? Is the use of hashtags on Twitter appropriate for LinkedIn?

You may find that it is worth having two or more Twitter accounts. There could be a “business” one that feeds the website and/or LinkedIn, plus another for tweets that are more personal and you wouldn’t want to appear in such places.

With a bit of careful thought, these interfaces can be leveraged to your advantage.
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