Perhaps the most immediately obvious channel that WordPress can include is Twitter – not only by encouraging us to “tweet this” but also showing us a feed of tweets (hopefully relevant!), encouraging visitors to “follow me”, and more.  And now with Facebook joining in, we can show that we “like” a blog post to all of our friends and connections – sharing our information with those that are happy keeping their social media within the one place.

And then there are our favourite online networks, forums and the link – YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn, 4Networking, Ecademy – there are many to suit our myriad profiles.

The leap from LinkedIn to Facebook is not going to suit everyone, so by including both on your blog – using your blog as the central hub – you appeal to your wider audience. Give your readers what they want – some like Facebook, others like LinkedIn, some will only see your YouTube video if you include it elsewhere, and  Twitter – which some of us love and others cannot see the point.

Use your WordPress blog as the hub and that way:

• you can be sure of owning the content
• bring together comments,
• update each of the online platforms you use
• benefit from the activity for your website (rather than someone else’s!)

The thing to do is indeed make use of the forums and platforms, but bring it “home” so that your blog and website gets the benefit too.

Hope that’s helpful – if you’re not sure, let us know and we’ll knit more…

Babs

Related posts:

1. Wow, what a night (a late one from the blogmistress)
2. Review: The Third Tribe

TweetMeme Button
Used here on blogmistress.com – the retweet button up in the right hand corner of posts! It’s really simple to use and let’s anyone retweet your post. So if you’re reading this – click it to try it out

TweetMeme Twitter Follow Button
Places a follow me button on your site. Nice and simple – install this plugin, go to widgets and place in your sidebar then add your twitter username.

WP to Twitter
We mentioned this in a previous post – What, Why, How – WordPress Plugins and having had a look at the settings and trying it out it’s very handy for automatically tweeting your published posts.

This plugin can send a default message when new and edited posts/pages are published but also you have the option of writing a custom tweet for a post.

It’s all pretty simple to setup, there are advanced options but to test this out I was happy with the default settings and just popped in my twitter account username and password.

And if you want to show your Twitter stream in your sidebar, there are a number of plugins available, but we like the look of Twitter Widget Pro – partly because it has been tested on the latest version of WordPress (at time of writing – some weeks into the latest release) and because it handles twitter feeds well, including the @username, #hashtag, and link parsing, amongst other things.

Of course, as with all plugins, the thing to do is search for your ideal plugin yourself, taking into account when it was last updated, how many people have downloaded it, and even popping to the WordPress.org site to view comments, etc.

Have fun!

No related posts.

I promised the twitter names of all who attended that I had… so go follow and send them a tweet to say hi

• Chris Lodge – @caraccidentaid
• Barry Nuttley @greenenergychap
• Adam Cowper Smith @adamcowpersmith
• Luke English @EnglishMedia
• Helen Vining @thecocktailclub
• Mark Jenner @markdjenner
• Sue Robinson – DTF
• Janet McKenner @delicakesME19
• Rodney – DTF
• Ian Smith – DTF
• Alastair Wood @Alastairwood
• Brian Tidey @briantidey
• Anthony Draper – DTF
• Stephen from Kaslers – Dtf
• Peter Eves – DTF
• Michael Breeze @michaeldbreeze
• James Primarolo
• Justin Somerville-Cotton @dunbarconsult
• Mark Loughlin @talladviser
• John Botting @johnbotting @4networkingkent
• Julie Blunt – DTF
• Mark Hickman @lovetoddydotcom
• Robert Killington @vatark @4ncrawley
• Kevin Arrow @Freight_rescue
• Marc Lemezma @lemezma @4nMaidstone
• Mike Gilbert – DTF
• Dermot Sheehan – DTF
• Babs Saul – @babssaul @blogmistress
• Sarah Arrow – @Essex_courier

DTF – Details to follow

I will be contacting everyone via email with a download of the Blogmistress’s guide filled with tips and useful info.

Lovely to meet you and put a face to the twitter name

Sarah

PS: If we missed you and you were there, please add your twitter name below – thank you (Babs)

Related posts:

1. Can WordPress bring your Social Media together?

First, the components (or ingredients) of social media -

• Blogs
• Video
• Forums
• Instant Messengers

are just a few of them, they are the CONTENT, think of them as the TV programs, they are independent of the Television itself, and you need a TV or appropriate NETWORK to read/watch them.

Social Networks, places like Facebook, BT Tradespace, LinkedIN, Smarta would be the TV sets in this analogy. The sets are made up differently from the programs it shows.

If you have a blog, you can use a social NETWORK to distribute your social MEDIA…. get it? Please say yes…

You film a video, upload it on Youtube, you distribute the video via Twitter, Facebook, your blog, social media and social networks working hand in hand, the social part is the sharing, the talking and the discussing – the action.

A social network is not social media, it can be a platform for social media as in it contains blogs and videos, but it’s not the media itself, it’s the aggregation of that media. That’s a big word for me.

Social networks are focused communities and social media is the chosen communication method.

Ok, one big word and lots of small ones. I think I have explained it – correct me where I am wrong please and add your opinions on the subject.

Sarah

No related posts.

So why would someone who barely has heard of these legendary peeps go and join something that they are advocating?

Well most importantly, I am a joiner and a person who joins in -  you can see how I enthusiastically joined in here blogging with Babs and Joe

Secondly because I needed to move beyond my comfort zone and move away from my small circle and become involved with new people, so that I can then share my thoughts and ideas with people who didn’t know me and humour me. I also get to share my small circle with them

Since October 2009 I have started to take my blogging a bit more seriously, about the same time the frivolous blogging became serious, the blogs that promoted our businesses effectively were not as effective. As you can tell, I am not a writer. A writer thinks in paragraphs and illustrations, I think in blocks of text and images, jpegs or png images to be precise. Something needed to be done.

I brought the Problogger paperback book, I can’t recall the name but I do recall a lot of my stuff wasn’t wide of the mark, I was doing a lot of the right stuff already, well I was according to this bloke.  I looked and commented on his blog a few times, but to be honest it seemed more about lots of people selling blogging and social media to other bloggers who sold information products… I started to see people who I had been on their email lists for years being mentioned, and they were big hypers but I subscribed to the newsletter. It seemed familiar.

The reason I am telling you all of this is because it will be easier to understand why I jumped in feet first…

The email newsletter I mentioned above invited me to join the newly launched Third Tribe and I did. Without hesitation. Why? Because of the first page, go and have a look and see what it says.

I joined and I joined in, and in a week or so I am going to the second London meetup. I have learned a lot, I am not an active member I am on the fringe. I have yet to listen or download any of the content, worksheets or seminars. I have yet to listen in on a Q &A that other community members rave about (because I don’t know what time 10am Central Time is). But I will do.

In joining the Third Tribe I have focused more on what I should be doing to make my content stronger (writers call it content too ). Some of it is in practice, for example my affiliate link at the top of this post and the fact that I am telling you about it, and if you join from it I could make money and if enough people sign up through it it will pay for my membership. Why? because I don’t normally do that sort of thing, it goes against my inner British core. Not the not declaring it bit, I declare everything (including my genius ) but the fact that I added it in the first place, that’s just not the thing I do when I blog.

Some of you may recall I added an affiliate link somewhere once and was terribly thrilled when I earned £20. I put the cheque in a safe place and never saw it again… It’s just not me.

The fact that I can be in the forum and have a good understanding of what is being said there is thanks to my small circle of friends who have educated me over the years. Is my writing better? Possibly after reading through Sonia Simone’s Remarkable Communications blog and signing up for some emails which arrive at a sensible time of day and I actually read them. No affiliate links there, you’re safe this time and you don’t have to join to improve, go and sign up for the emails…

Am I earning from my blogging?  I was earning already. I sell ebooks, write articles and dabble with breaking wordpress blogs and have a flavour of Adsense running through my blogs. What I am is more motivated to continue – I have a niche, I have traffic, I even have regular readers and a following on twitter mostly related to my niche.

I strongly believe in community, and community is there and it is here too. I am more confident to interact in the community which I wasn’t before, which is possibly weird behaviour from someone who joins in… I no longer care there maybe others that do what I do (there isn’t, I checked, but I am no longer bothered). It has a feeling of belonging for me which I should investigate but won’t.

What else?

I can’t think of anything else other than to say if you don’t feel happy with the hype that is often involved in internet marketing and you want to be part of a proactive community this is for you. If you are put off by the price or by the big names, I don’t know what to say…  I had no idea who these people were/are.

I spend less on Pepsi Max, and if my investment pays off (remember investments can go down as well as up…) then I can will be drinking twice as much Pepsi Max . Should I really be thinking of the Third Tribe as a source of Pepsi Max? I bet I am the only one who has…

Sarah

Non Affiliate link for Third Tribe

Related posts:

1. Book Review: Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
2. Book Review: Conversation Marketing
3. Review: Chris Garrett’s “Guest Posting” ebook