Between "Using Facebook For Your Small Business" and "Twitter for the Absolute Beginner" we've been talking a lot about the big players in the social media world lately, but there are a whole lot of other newcomers trying to break through with their own set of cool features that are attracting attentive eyeballs. You may be struggling to keep active on Facebook and Twitter as it is, so what benefit would you get from exploring other social networks? More importantly, is there an easy way to manage all of these services at the same time? Of course there is! Let's get into it.
Low-Hanging Fruit
It's very easy to become a small fish in the huge oceans known as Facebook and Twitter, especially considering each service has hundreds of millions of registered users. "Great," you say, "that means I have the opportunity to reach a larger number of people!" That's true, but so do all of your competitors, and sometimes your message will get lost in the crosswind. There are many other social networking services like Google Buzz, FriendFeed and Tumblr that have a devoted set of active users but are frequently overlooked as inbound marketing avenues. By dipping your toes into these different pools you're casting your content with a wider net, which in turn increases the chances you'll receive link-backs and click-throughs to your website or blog. The only problem is that reposting links and status updates to all of these different services can be a huge timesink. If only there was a tool that made this all easier! Enter Ping.fm.
Broadcast to Multiple Accounts With Ping.fm
Ping.fm is a free service that will re-broadcast a single status update to a slew of social networking and blogging services instantly and automatically. The list of services you can choose from is vast to say the least, and there's no maximum number of linked accounts. The hardest part about using Ping.fm is visiting each service's website and creating an account to get started, but once every account is created and linked to Ping.fm you're good to go. Also many of these sites support Facebook Connect or Twitter Sign-In so you can login with accounts you already have. Once you've registered for all of your new social media accounts head back to Ping.fm to link them all together. Now, when you share a status or link on Ping.fm all of your linked accounts will be updated simultaneously.
One thing to keep in mind is that although Ping.fm will automatically shorten links, it won't post links with preview thumbnail pictures to Facebook - instead your link will be straight text. For that reason it may be beneficial to continue updating Facebook independently if you're posting a link. Still, sending out two updates at a time is a heck of a lot more efficient than sending out 20! Are you already using Ping.fm or a similar service? Let us know in the comments below!
