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Donna Gunter

Internet Marketing Strategist & Online Business Coach
Orange, Texas

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Social Networking: 7 Steps to More Traffic by Connecting and Repurposing Your Social Marketing

Don't become frustrated with having to update your status at numerous sites and try to figure out how to introduce your blog, articles, and ezine to your social networking audience. Learn how to connect and repurpose your social marketing strategies.

Written Jan 02, 2009, read 4016 times since then.

I'm lazy by nature and like to do as little work as possible. Therefore, when I have the opportunity to automate tasks, I jump at it. As I started getting heavily involved in social networking, I quickly became frustrated with having to update my status at several sites, as well as trying to figure out how to introduce my blog, my articles, and my ezine to my social networking audiences.

After much trial and error, here's how I connect and repurpose all of my social marketing strategies:

1. Set up accounts. Make sure that you have current accounts with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, and any other social networking platforms you regularly use.

2. Open an account at Ping.fm. The Ping.fm service automatically updates your status on all of your social networking sites, 21 of them at the current count. Depending on the number of networks you use, it will take you 10-50 minutes to connect your Ping.fm account to your various social network accounts. However, once everything is set up, you simply log into your Ping account, post your status update (no more than 140 characters), and your status is automatically updated on all of your social networking profiles. Rather than posting updates directly on Twitter or Facebook or MySpace, I instead use Ping.fm as the starting place for my daily status updates.

3. Display Twitters on other accounts. If you go to your Setting tab in your Twitter account and then down to "More Info URL", you will see a link to "Add Twitter to Your Site." By clicking on this link, you'll be taken to a page where you can add your tweets in a separate box (not the Status updates area) in your MySpace and Facebook profiles, on your blogger or Typepad blogs, or get the Flash or HTML widgets to add to other sites like Squidoo lenses or to your website. Just follow the instructions connected to each application. If you use Typepad for your blog, you can also do this through the Widget gallery by finding Twitter widget in the "Publishing Tools" section.

4. Connect your blogposts to Twitter. Twitter Feed, enables you to feed your blog posts to your Twitter account. Simply create an account, go to "Create New Twitter Feed", and enter the RSS feed of your blog. You can control the frequency with which Twitter displays your blog post, as well as the text used to preface your blog feed. I use "Blog update" to preface my posts.

5. Connect your blogposts to Facebook. I use Typepad for my blogs, so if you use a Wordpress blog, there are probably plugins that handle this, as well. When you create a new blog post, you can choose to send a link to that post into Facebook. These links will appear in your Mini-Feed on your Facebook profile, and may appear in your friends' News Feeds.

In your Typepad account, go to Weblogs > Configure > Publicity, select "Prompt me to share new posts on Facebook." When this item is selected, TypePad will automatically display a prompt from Facebook when you create and publish a new post on TypePad. The Facebook prompt will only appear if you have selected the option in your weblog's publicity settings, and only when you create and publish a new post. The prompt will not appear when you save a post as draft, when you edit a post, or when you change the status of a post from Draft to Published.

6. Update your EzineArticles.com account. Article marketing is a smart and easy way to drive traffic to your site. If you're submitting articles online to article directories, you definitely want to be using EzineArticles.com, the biggest and most popular article directory online. To connect to Twitter, click on "Profile Manager" in your account, then "Edit Author Bio" in your Author's Area. Add your Twitter account information here. Each time a new article is accepted and published at EzineArticles, a post is automatically made to your Twitter account.

7. Update your aWeber account: I use aWeber as my email marketing service. You can now send an automatic Twitter post to all your followers on Twitter with a link to the HTML version of your ezine. When you create a broadcast in aWeber, select the option to publish a broadcast via RSS feed or to an archive, and then enter your Twitter account info, When your ezine is published, all of your Twitter followers will be notified.

There are probably others ways to connect the social networks and to repurpose content on social networks, but these 7 steps are all I need at the moment. Take 30 minutes out of your day to connect and repurpose your social networking, and watch your traffic and list begin to grow!

Learn more about the author, Donna Gunter.

Posted by Joe Ambrose, St. Charles, Illinois | Jan 06, 2009

Very helpful and informative. Thanks for your insight.
Posted by Gretchen Krampf , Eastsound, Washington | Jan 06, 2009

Donna, Lots of useful information here. Thanks for helping reduce some of the social networking "static". I, like many others, can reach moments of overwhelm.
Posted by Kate Phillips, Seattle, Washington | Jan 06, 2009

(weird, I thought I was the first to rate and leave a comment, but noooo, I musta back-clicked or something.)

Donna,

Just wanted to say I'm loving my ping.fm that I set up after I read this! I update my Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Linked in Status in 10 seconds now a couple times a day. I had heard of ping, but you broke it down and walked me through it.

Some of the other stuff still sounds a little intimidating, but I'll re-read this and put something else to use.

BTW, I don't think the Wordpress application for Facebook is working properly right now, but if someone knows differently, please let me know!
Posted by Donna Gunter, Orange, Texas | Jan 06, 2009

Hi Kate--

I don't actually use WP. I prefer Typepad instead, so I'm not really up-to-date about what's working and not in the WP sphere..:)

Glad Ping.fm is helping you. I'm happy that it's still offered free of charge! <g>
Posted by Kevin McLallen, Covington, Washington | Jan 06, 2009

Donna, It can be challenging to keep everything updated and I like some of your ideas and suggestions. I have used ping.fm and it works great. Another suggestion I have regarding social marketing for twitter is called tweetdeck. Thank you for sharing!

Kevin
Posted by Teresa Schmidt, Bellingham, Washington | Jan 08, 2009

Donna, I am excited to try these suggestions. You're right--it can all be overwhelming, but leave it to the developers to create solutions we can use to stay plugged in! Thanks so much for this clear, informative and useful article!
Posted by Larisa Troche, San Francisco, California | Jan 08, 2009

Hi Donna - As a time-pressed multipreneur I am always looking for specific and concise info to keep me moving forward and growing my businesses. Momentarily swimming upstream tyring to manage all my online personas but these tips will surely help. Thanks so much!
Posted by Patricia Klingler, Bellevue, Washington | Jan 09, 2009

Donna,

Your article has me one step closer to signing on to Twitter, which I have delayed participating in for several reasons. Any and all suggestions and pieces of advice are reassuring. Thanks for a clearly-written article. I just signed up for your ezine.

~ Patricia
Posted by Donna Gunter, Orange, Texas | Jan 09, 2009

Larisa, you're right -- it (social networking) does feel like swimming upstream at times & can be overwhelming, but the payoff is there if you're patient..;->

Thanks, Patricia! I look forward to having you as a subscriber!

Donna

Get better results with your Internet marketing by grabbing a copy of my free ebook, Turbocharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit
Posted by Judy Dunn, Seattle, Washington | Jan 09, 2009

Hi Donna,

I love it when I pick up something new! I'm playing with more and more social media and your advice is timely.

Next on my list: Ping.fm. Sound like a tiny radio station. Bad pun.

Thanks for the tips.
Posted by Chrystal Bougon, San Jose, California | Jan 12, 2009

Love Ping.fm though I seem to not have it ping-ing Twitter. Works great for my other apps, though. Thanks Donna. I just downloaded your free eBook.

I also have several eBooks in me. Which programs do you recommend? My eboooks would be related to better sex. :)

Thanks, Chrystal
Posted by David Kalstrom, Maricopa, Arizona | Jan 12, 2009

Donna,

I have a webcasting channel that reaches about 20,000 viewers. I believe your article would stimulate a great deal of interest. If you would like, you could run a webcast on the channel at no charge to you. It would be advertised nationwide by BrightTALK and you can also host it right on your site. You'd probably draw 100 viewers between the live and archived version. Had a fellow BizNik run a webcast last Friday on Social Networking, he can't wait to run the next one.

If you're interested, let me know. David Kalstrom 602-770-0012 www.outboundexcellence.com
Posted by Sandy Jones-Kaminski, San Francisco, California | Oct 10, 2010

Excellent post Donna! I thought I knew most of this, but was thrilled to get a few new ideas to streamline some of my online activities - thank you!