With so many social networking sites out there, it’s insanely time consuming trying to keep up with all of them. I usually only follow the main ones right now, but even that is tedious when having to log into them individually.
This is where Twitter becomes my amazing “catch all” tool. I can post to Twitter and it will update my LinkedIn status, Facebook status, WordPress sidebar, and Myspace status all at once. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, many many sites are becoming more Twitter friendly. And those that don’t (Like Vox), will likely follow the trend in the future (If they don’t, they are missing out).
It’s best to make sure you are already logged into the twitter account you intend to sync all of these up with, as it will require you to be during the process anyway.
Myspace:
Syncing up Myspace is pretty easy. Click on “Profile” in the top nav and navigate down to “My Apps” which will take you into your apps screen. Once there you’ll see a link to “Sync” which is a new beta app that Myspace is developing to sync up to other networks. Here is where you can add your twitter information, and it will automatically pull all of your tweets and incorporate them into Myspace status updates.
I haven’t tried to link anything else up to Myspace yet, but I see they have a list of other services to link -to- Myspace updates as well. Course no one uses Myspace as a main network anymore, so I can’t see this being useful to the majority of competent social networkers 😀
Facebook:
Facebook has many Twitter apps available for syncing the two together, most of which are posting from Facebook to Twitter, which I’m not interested in and I’ll explain why later.
I’ve used two separate twitter/facebook apps, and finally decided that, Selective Twitter Status was the better fit for me. This app allows me to choose which of my tweets are posted on Facebook by adding #fb in my tweet somewhere.
Simply input your twitter account and it will take you to a Twitter access page where you accept permission for the two to sync up. Now any tweet you send with #fb in it will post as a status on Facebook as well.
LinkedIn:
LinkedIn is pretty new to jumping on the “Twitter” bandwagon. I found out about it on Twitter which led me to this article on LinkedIn’s Blog.
Like Facebook’s “Selective Twitter Status” app, LinkedIn requires you input #in somewhere in your tweet for it to show. I find this handy in case I tweet something I don’t necessarily want associated with my professional profile on Linked In. Simply to go your profile and look for the new Twitter link option under Edit Profile. It will take you to Twitters page to allow access, but all in all it’s a fairly straight-forward integration.
WordPress:
For WordPress users, I use the ever popular plugin Twitter Tools which will display however many tweets I want on my sidebar, as well as make a daily or weekly post of all of my tweets for me. That way if I want to remember a link or tweet later, I can easily search my WordPress blog for it at a later time.
Syncing it all together:
Now that we have everything linked up to our Twitter account, I certainly dont’ want to have to login to Twitter every time I want to tweet, do I? Of course not.
A lot of people use an application called “TweetDeck” for their status updates. I’ve never used it, so I can’t give you any input on it what-so-ever. But I do use an application called “EchoFon“, which was formerly known as “TwitterFox”. This is an add-on installed on my Firefox Browser, since that is the main browser I use everywhere, that allows me to tweet from a small inconspicous pop-up, and also delivers pop-up notifications of my friends tweets as well. It installs a little icon at the bottom of my system bar that I click on to open up all of it’s special-ness.
What I like most about it is it doesn’t stick out on my screen, it’s easy to pop-up and hide again, and it’s convenient because I don’t have to log in to Twitter again ever. I also like that I can sync up every Twitter account I update in one location. I run about 8 different twitter accounts as is for different organizations and things, so it’s nice to be able to switch back and forth between all of them just with a dropdown. Imagine having to go to each account individually on twitter.com? Screw that. Now imagine a company wanting to update across every social networking platform available. Syncing with Twitter is definitely the way to go, and an app like Echofon is the best method of getting there.
The reason I like this app, and why I like everything to come from Twitter (remember I mentioned not wanting to post to Twitter from Facebook earlier), is because it is unobtrusive during work hours. Sometimes I’ll be sent a link from a co-worker or have an idea of something I want to remember for later, and I’ll pop open this little screen and tweet about it. I’m not logging into Facebook or Twitter at work, there’s no worry about co-workers seeing this on my screen and automatically thinking I’m neglecting my work, etc.
What’s also nice about having everything synced up to Twitter, is using your cellphone to make twitter updates, which again filters down everywhere else for you automatically. Technically that means it also saves you money because you aren’t spending money on each individual text message you send from your phone (for those without unlimited texting like me). If you set up mobile tweets by going to “Settings” and then “Mobile”, then you can tweet (and update facebook, myspace, linkedIn, twitter, and your blog) while camping like me 😉 or while at sporting events like Peter Hassett.