Never Fear 140 Characters Again! 3 Tools for Microblogging

Just like newspaper headlines and email subjects, microblogging is short, sweet and to the point. This movement often means having to fit “what’s on our mind?” in just 140 characters.

Since microblogging has become an increasingly prevalent way for both publications and clients to share information, I'd like to share this article with three new ways to get information out more efficiently and easily.

3 Tools to Help You Share Microcontent Online

Leveraging your connections is easy—and essential
By Michelle Bowles

Over the last few years, the concept of microblogging has gone from zero to hero. Just a few short years ago, the terms “microblogging” and “microcontent” were known only to early adopters. These days, the only thing “micro” about microblogging 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%, while traffic to Twitter.com grew around 1,100%
• More than 60 million Facebook status updates are posted every day

When it comes to microblogging sites, customers and prospects are either there, or those that influence them are. Microblogging 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 microblog connections and microcontent for other online marketing efforts? One answer: cross-publishing or syndicating microblog content to other channels.

Fortunately today there are several tools available to help you and here, are three:

1. @anywhere

Imagine being able to apply your Twitter marketing success to your website. Twitter is in the process of rolling out a new feature, @anywhere, that will allow 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 website.

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 website could retweet the content without leaving the webpage

2. Google Buzz

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 email contacts already made, as well as the entire Gmail community at large, to engage in conversations and share microblogging 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.

3. Facebook Connect

With Facebook Connect, marketers can create more engaging experiences on their websites 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 website.

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 microcontent incude: ping.fm, HootSuite or socialoomph.com.

Post originally appeared in TopRank Online Marketing Blog.

Posted by: Rachael Fisher

Tags: Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter, Microblogging, New Media