Social Networking Workflow
03-22-10
In this day and time I am sure this will be out dated before I have a chance to hit publish so take it as a moment in time and one of many possible methods to solve the issue of social media workflows. After reading Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk I decided to add a few new items to the social networking tool bag. Now that there is just a complex interconnection I decided to take a moment and see if I could simplify the workflow for optimal movement of data and hopefully eliminate duplication of data and effort.
Let me start with the tools and sites that I am using.
- UberTwitter
- TweetDeck
- DanLacher.COM
- Ping.fm
- Tumblr
- twitterfeed
- Seesmic
- WordPress 2 Ping.fm
So with that many sites and tools someone, like myself, might just get a little confused. It could be super simple to come up with a post/tweet/idea and drop it in all the social networking outlets independently but that seems like extra work and thus why others have written tools to help us all out.
So where I was before I read Crush It and added in a couple of new tools? I was simply using UberTwitter and Tweetdeck to update my Twitter status and DanLacher.COM for full blog entries. Then using the Twitter -> Facebook connect application to update my status from Twitter to Facebook. For full blog entires I would post the link on Twitter and simply mention the entry. After adding Twitterfeed into the picture then I could have that tool monitor the RSS feed on DanLacher.COM and simply post new entries directly from there to Twitter. So that is really where I was before I decided to complicate my life and the process by adding in Ping.fm and Tumblr.
So enter the new players into the mix and let’s see if we can make the workflow simple and without duplication of data because I tell you, if you just turn them all on and don’t watch for routing issues there are double posts all over the place. The new routing that I believe I have figure out, for now, is to update via Seesmic or direct to Ping.fm where then Ping.fm will post it to Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. That takes care up the status updates now to take care of the blog entires on DanLacher.COM. Step in a new plug-in for WordPress, WordPress 2 Ping.fm. Since we have the Ping.fm issues worked out we all ready have the workflow solved. I can’t say that I am fond of switching from Tweetdeck to Seesmic but until there is a Ping.fm integration with Ubertwitter and Tweetdeck I will have to go this route, I have become very fond of Tweetdeck and Ubertwitter.
The major issues that came into play before getting all of the routing worked out was the fact that each tool/site thinks they can solve a portion of this workflow and if you turn on and allow them access to the various sites paths cross and data is duplicated. This might not bother some people but I find it slightly annoying to see multiple updates on a twitter feed and Facebook page for the same status update. The final, for now, solution needed to be that one has to pick one “master” point and let all the data flow from there.
I hope this helps someone else out and that I don’t have to change up the workflow before this post makes it out through the pipeline.
This weekend was a faboululs weekend that started in the planning several weeks back. My beautiful wife celebrated a birthday. We took the weekend to relax and have awesome family time. On Saturday we chilled at home, slept in and then headed out to