Connecting your social media content

Having decided to have a crack at the Twitter thing, I have run into the problem that my day can now be chewed up managing content online.

My main poetic activities now seem to be writing quick posts on what I am up to in LinkedIn, then Facebook, then Twitter, or writing in depth articles for Digital Bottom Line, which I store with other stuff at a WordPress blog called One Sock.

Since (according to my father-in-law) I am a lazy swine, I decided to streamline things a little and thought I’d share the results.  The following solution allows me to enter content just once and then have the other systems pick it up and publish it.

iPhone to Twitter

Since I am out and about a lot, I need to send Tweets from my iPhone. 

I checked around to see what others were using and noticed that Tweetie seemed to get a run from the people I thought were early adopters of technology. 

So I downloaded Tweetie from the Apple AppStore (note the hyperlink here is to the App Store) which is a free piece of software.  Now I’m not locked to a computer when Twittering, which is important, as mostly interesting stuff happens when I am outside the office.

Twitter to Facebook

Facebook has an application that will automatically suck your Twitter updates into Facebook. It’s at https://apps.facebook.com/twitter/ and seems to happen almost instantaneously.  If you click the application button in the bottom left hand corner you can add it that way.  So each Twitter is automatically recreated in your Facebook profile.

Twitter to WordPress blog

WordPress has quite a number of Twitter widget’s available.  I chose Twitter for WordPress as I wanted the Twitter feed to be placed in my sidebar, not as a blog posting. 

This is because I wanted Twitter to pick up my blog posts, and I didn’t want to create a circle of new tweets being picked up as Twitters (could be fun though to watch a loop sending Twitter, Facebook and WordPress mad).

Blog to Twitter

I came across a website called Twitterfeed, which is a free service that picks up blogs (or any RSS feed) and posts them to Twitter.  It’s pretty cool as it automatically creates an entry with title, opening words and a tiny URL version of the web address.  The only challenge with it is that you need an OpenID to log into Twitterfeed with.  This is free but potentially a bit confusing to setup.

Blog to Facebook

My blog posts don’t go directly to Facebook.  They do however get picked up by Twitter (see above) then Facebook picks up the Twitter notification – that is, because of my previous actions, my blog gets automatically posted to Facebook (via Twitter).

Blog to LinkedIn

LinkedIn now has a whole group of applications that you can plug into your profile.  Among the “connect your blog” applications is My Blog at WordPress.com, which you simply turn on, then enter the address of your blog.

Twitter to LinkedIn

Because my status updates in Twitter and Facebook are normally of a much more personal nature (for example, yesterday evening I mentioned I cooked up kangaroo with a macadamia nut salad), I haven’t attempted to connect Twitter to LinkedIn.  

At this stage it’s easiest if I keep LinkedIn as a business only tool.  However there does seem to be plenty of solutions for this as well.

My way is not the only way.  There are clearly heaps of ways of making this connectivity happen, with lots of gadgets that will do the same thing in slightly different ways. 

The above pieces are just the first ones I tried that I could get to work.  Because I am lazy it’s unlikely that I will come up with a better solution, since these ones seems to work fine.

(Message for the father-in-law: I reckon I’m good/clever lazy not bad/stupid lazy.)