3 tools for sharing micro-content online

Leveraging your connections is easy—and essential

Over the last few years, the concept of micro-blogging has gone from zero to hero. Just a few years ago, the terms “micro-blogging” and “micro-content” were known only to early adopters. These days, the only thing “micro” about micro-blogging and status updates is character count. Consider a few recent statistics:

• There are nearly 40,000 Tweets a minute, according to TweeSpeed
• Last year, Tweets grew 1,400 percent, while traffic to Twitter.com grew around 1,100 percent
• More than 60 million Facebook status updates are posted every day

When it comes to micro-blogging sites, customers and prospects are either there, or those that influence them are. Micro-blogging can take on a life of its own—with users making connections, developing relationships and publishing content all from within.

Are you unsure of how to best leverage micro-blog connections and micro-content for other online marketing efforts? One answer: cross-publishing or syndicating micro-blog content to other channels.

Fortunately today there are several tools available to help you. Here are three:

Imagine being able to apply your Twitter marketing success to your Web site. Twitter is in the process of rolling out a new feature, @anywhere, that will enable users to syndicate Twitter content to virtually any online channel without sending visitors back to Twitter.com. Not only that, but the syndication process will be as simple as dropping a few lines of JavaScript.

Initial participating sites include Amazon, eBay, Digg, Yahoo, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, You Tube and several others. With @anywhere, visitors to these sites will be able to follow Twitter users, retweet content and search for new Twitter accounts—without ever having to leave the Web site.

Here’s what it could someday mean for your organization:

• Customers reading a blog post written by your CEO could follow him or her on Twitter directly from your site
• Prospects viewing a video on your Web site could retweet the content without leaving the Web page

The latest social media player to enter the game is Google. Its recently launched Google Buzz tool is built into Gmail and enables sharing of updates, photos and videos all from within the inbox. The tool connects with sites already in use, including Twitter, Picasa, Flickr and Google Reader.

Essentially the tool enables Gmail users to leverage the personal e-mail contacts already made, as well as the entire Gmail community at large, to engage in conversations and share micro-blogging content.

Google Buzz goes beyond just status updates, though. It automatically pulls images from links and enables users to respond to content without ever leaving Gmail. Whether Google Buzz attains the popularity of Facebook or Twitter remains to be seen.

With Facebook Connect, communicators can create more engaging experiences on their Web sites by allowing site visitors to bring their Facebook life with them. Facebook Connect pulls Facebook users’ profile information, photos, connections and more directly to your Web site.

Facebook Connect creates what it calls a “viral sharing loop” on your site by:

• Making it easy for site visitors to share your content with their Facebook networks
• Enabling you to show visitors what’s most popular on your site with their Facebook friends
• Allowing visitors to comment on, review and rate content on your site

Other tools that make it easy to share micro-content incude: ping.fm, HootSuite or socialoomph.com.

What tools do you use to cross-publish or syndicate your micro-blogging content to other channels?

This post originally ran on http://www.toprankblog.com.