Are You Hyper-syndicating Your Content?

On Friday, I had the honor of serving on a WordCampNola Social Media panel with Tiffany Starnes, Damien Lamanna, Robbie Vitrano and moderator Chris Schultz. After the panel, I received a tweet from Peter Rad asking,

to @tommartin #wordcampnola Why do you want your tweets to go to every social site? Why repeat that over and over?

Peter had misunderstood a comment I made during the panel. The panel was talking about how to grow your tribe and expand your online footprint using social media. Rather than try to explain it in 140 character bursts typed on my iPhone, Peter and I agreed a blog post would be easier -- so here is that post.

The point I was making involved hyper-syndication. There are literally hundreds of social media platforms with most folks maintaining 2.3 profiles (according to recent research). Some folks favor Facebook, others MySpace and then you have your power LinkedIn users along with those that have a LinkedIn profiles but just don't go there all that much. Toss in Twitter and content social networks like YouTube, Vimeo, Slideshare, etc., and you end up with a gumbo of social sites.

What I have found is that it is far more successful to take your content to an audience rather than expect them to come to your blog to get that contact. Thus, interlinking your various profiles. Here is how I do it, but I'm sure there are lots of other examples of folks doing it even better than me.

First you have to have a home base. For me that is my blog. Every social profile I have points back to this blog and if a social media site profile will allow me to cross post my blog to the profile, I do that. Thus, when I publish this post in a few minutes, it will automatically cross-post at Facebook and Twitter. Further, my LinkedIn profile has a widget that sucks in my blog posts, so anyone that views my profile today should also be able to find and read this post without leaving LinkedIn.

If I upload a video to my YouTube account, Facebook will pull it into my news feed and I'll likely cross post it to my vimeo account as well. Slideshare decks get pulled into my Facebook speaker fan page as well as my LinkedIn account and I manually link to them from my blog.

Second, if I am doing anything really interesting or important, like delivering a keynote or working on a work project that will support my online brand persona, I will update my status on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter with that same information. Which is what I think Peter thought I was saying during the panel. Except he thought I was talking specifically about posting ALL my udpates across ALL my platforms. Peter -- if i'm still not understanding your question, let me know via Twitter and comments so I can further update this post to answer accurately.

And Peter I kind of agree with where I think you were going. For instance, Twitter gives you the ability to post all of your Tweets as FB status updates. It does this automatically for you by cross posting. I'm NOT a fan of this feature. While I like the ability to selectively do this (thanks Tweetdeck) I hate when I open up my Facebook profile and see my news stream cluttered with Tweets from a friend. That is why I am on Twitter -- and if you're my friend on FB, chances are I'm following you on Twitter so why would I want to see the same info twice?

But I do think there is a good reason to cross post SOME tweets/status updates.

1. I have followers/friends/connections at various outposts on the Internet. Some of those folks cross over and follow/converse with me on more than one platform but the vast majority do not. Thus, by cross promoting the same important information, I ensure everyone hears about it.
2. Repetition can be your friend. I don't check my LinkedIn profile as often as I should, just like lots of folks I know, so I sometimes miss important and timely updates from friends. Also, my friends might miss my tweet but see my FB status update, etc., etc.

Overall, the point I was making and it was echoed by the other panelists in different forms -- You can't expect to create brilliant content and have folks just find it. You have to invest in marketing your content by Tweeting about it, posting it to your Facebook profile, etc. You have to make it really, really easy for prospectives fans to find it.

Peter, @me today and let me know if this makes better sense and/or leave a comment. Everyone else, thoughts? Agree? Disagree? Anyone have other examples or suggestions for hyper-syndicating your content/brand on the Internet?

Photo thanks to WordCampNola