With all of the social media tools that you'll use as a marketer - you're going to be producing ALOT of content that isn't going to reside on your Web site. Instead, it's going to reside on sites like Twitter, or Facebook, or LinkedIn.
There are two things you lose of course when you generate content that doesn't live on your Web site. The first is the SEO juice (as minimal as it may be) by having more content on your Web site. The second, and perhaps much more important, is a running archive that YOU control.
A few months ago I was listening to the a TWIT Podcast (which is just really great btw) - and one of the things they were discussing was a growing fear that putting all our content onto services like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and others was actually becoming pretty disconcerting. The future of these services is never sure - and certainly Twitter has not shown itself to be business "reliable". Especially in light of another friend of mine who has been having trouble with Twitter actually wiping out his entire account. This has been documented before.
I have to admit that I was concerned about it myself. I'm no Scobelizer, I Tweet about 10-13 times a day, but another thought was that all that content would be pretty good Google food as well. And, maybe most importantly (and this is what ultimately motivated me to do this) was I sometimes use my Twitter feed as a way to remember links or ideas that I've had. I often refer back to links I've tweeted for conference talks I'm putting together or articles I'm writing.
Anyway, it struck me that all this content that I'm taking the time to post should somehow be safeguarded and posted to my Blog and be archived there as a permalink - regardless of what happens to Twitter, or Friendfeed.
So, what follows is a quick "how-to" on setting up your own permanent "micro-blog". Now, the ingredients I used to cook this up are:
My Microblogging Platforms
My Centralized Posting Applications
My Micro Blogging Platform
So, before I get into this, I'm absolutely positive that what I present here is not the most technically elegant. I also know that you can do this with Wordpress, or innumerable other solutions. But doing this through Typepad was relatively easy - it requires NO coding and I'm pretty darn happy with the results. The general concept should be the same no matter what platform you use.
So... I hope this is helpful for you.....
1. Create Your Permanent Micro-Blog Platform
This will be ultimately where your "archive" will live. Typepad has a pretty elegant way of doing this - even if the design choices are limited at this point. If you're a Typepad member you can just select one of the microblogging platforms - and there are wizards which will guide you to integrate all your other accounts. Basically, you select a one column format for your Microblog - and their "canned" design eliminates some of the other extraneous things - and puts your navigation all the way at the top and bottom - so that it more resembles what we've become used to from the Twitter types of design. But truth be told, any of the designs worked fine. Just make sure that whether you're using Typepad or another platform, that you've got the ability to plug in Feeds automatically as posts from other services. Integration with Ping.Fm is especially handy (as you'll see in a moment). For Typepad here is an instructional video on creating your micro-blog.
1a. Create Your Micro-Blog
Then, If you haven't already mapped a domain to your main blog, I would recommend doing it.
But beyond your top level domain, if you have, it now makes sense to map a sub-domain (e.g. microblog.YOURDOMAIN.com) so that you'll get the SEO benefit from all this great new content that you're going to be generating - and so that it's tied into your main blog or Web site.
But, if you're just interested in keeping this content as archival content you don't worry about that. In fact, you don't even need to make this blog public. It can just serve as a private archive of your status changing ways.
Anway, mapping a subdomain in TypePad is really easy - you just do it from your Accounts section (see above) - and then of course map it to the TypePad service through your domain registrar.
2. Tie In your Feeds
Typepad has integrations into a number of the social networks, including Twitter, Facebook (both profiles and pages) Linked-In etc... You can set up your "Sharing" so that these services will be updated as your Micro-Blog is updated. So, if you were going to use your Micro-Blog as your Hub of content management, this gives you a central way to update all your services from one place if you want.
But of course the reverse is true as well. And that's what we're really here for. We want our MicroBlog to collect all our various Status Updates. But to accomplish that, you of course need to tie your Micro-Blog through that service... so....
3. Here's Where You Centralize (if you want)
So, like alot of people, I do most of my microblogging from a couple of platforms. I use Seesmic and Hootsuite. I use the Seesmic as my mobile (e.g. Blackberry) platform and Hootsuite is my Desktop Web based platform. The key with both is that they have integration with Ping.FM and that's your key to updating your microblog (more on that in a minute).
This was the easiest way I saw to update Twitter, plus all the other services I update AND my new Micro-blog at the same time. Again, there may be a more elegant way to do it - but this was easy and it continues to work for me.
Basically, you just go to Ping.FM - and create an account for yourself. It's really simple - and it's there that you'll tie in one or more of your other services. For our purposes here - I only need to tie in my Micro-Blog.
Why only the MicroBlog... Because I use Seesmic and Hootsuite for updating other services like My Facebook Page and Linked-IN. And you need to be careful how you share through a service like Ping.FM. You can get caught in a loop where you have more than one service updating another - and you can get double and triple postings on some of your feeds. This happened to me the first time I set it up. I had Ping.FM updating everything AND I had Friendfeed updating services - so I would update through Ping.FM - and it would update FriendFeed, and then Twitter would be updated, which would also Update Friendfeed. So, take the time to figure out the stream of information and how it will work for you.
Once you set up Ping.FM and tie it into your Micro-Blog - Voila... that's pretty much it....
Then, you just need to tie in Ping.FM from Seesmic and Hootsuite. So, I just added my new Ping.FM account to these services. So, now - as I update from Hootsuite from my desktop, or Seesmic from my Blackberry, all of my services can be updated as I need. Twitter is automatically updated, my Facebook Page is automatically updated (if I select it) Friendfeed is automatically updated and (most importantly to this exercise) my permanent MicroBlog is automatically updated - all through Ping.FM.
Now, one of the keys of course is that I'm not forced to update the Microblog - this is great if I'm just replying to a personal message or actually Tweeting what sandwich I'm eating. If I don't "select" Ping.FM from my Tweet in Seesmic or Hootsuite, my MicroBlog doesn't get updated.
So, now, if I get the dreaded FailWhale and really want to visit that link I Tweeted about yesterday I can point myself or any of my users to my Permanent Microblog... My personal microblog is also now searchable... So I can just search my stream.
And of course, I can do the reverse... If I micro-blog from my TypePad MicroBlog then all my services will be updated as well.... And that has the blogging via email which I like as well.
But, all my services are also separate.. So, if I go in and just update my Twitter status, or my Facebook or linked-in status directly from those services - it won't appear on my Micro-blog... This is nice because typically when I'm in those applications directly I'm just ReTweeting, or Replying to messages - which can be noisy on the micro-blog...
I hope this is helpful. Like I said - I'm sure there are a number of other technical ways to accomplish this. This process took me two evenings to completely sort out. But I feel alot better about my content being archived - and it's kind of cool too. I'll report back on any SEO benefits that I see.
And please if you hear of other ways or know of other ways to accomplish this - please share. I'd love to hear about them.