Social Media Messaging Synchronization

Ack, this is way too difficult for as simple a task as it is. Here is how we currently have things all SEO-ified in the social media messaging frontier, as of today, anyway:

Background and Criteria

SEO Chiangmai has quite a few clients and internal projects. It is just not practicable to log a browser in and out of a lot of accounts all the time, we need tools which will allow us to communicate to several accounts through one tab in a browser or at least one tab per client/site in a given browser.

Twitter and Identica, the Microblogging

Twitter is a big pain and Identica is only slightly less of a pain. This evens out because there are lots of tools (most inadequate or barely so) that can be used to help out manage the Twitter. Not so with Identica.

Some will say to use a service like Ping.FM or HelloTXT. Been there and done that. Both are regularly non-functional or have limitations which make management with them ridiculous.

Issue 1 - Posting Messages

The criteria is to post a message without logging in (or logging in more than one time to cache a password or grant OAUTH access). We do this now with Laconica Tools, a precursor to (and simply better implementation than, due to simplicity) the Twitter Tools and other plugins or libraries.

(Of course we commented out the URL shortening feature--what is the point when PageRank and Link-juice are actually primary criteria?)

Note: Twitter is handled directly through Identica's echo service to Twitter, configured from within the Connect button inside of Identica. Keeps things tidy.

Issue 2 - Responding to or Retweeting Messages

TwitIQ is still the best of the bunch, though limited significantly in terms of blocking users, modifying Twitter account settings, and having access to the original Twitter tweet permalinks, not to mention not supporting Identica. Still, the drop-down change-of-account is killer, as well as some nice search features.

Facebook Pages, Managable and Multi-user

This is one tool that has it together regarding multi-user, administration delegation, etc. Sure there are lots of broken bits but multiple users can have administrative access and pages are managed as resources rather than a logged-in account. Win.

To import the blog feed or any RSS feed there is the excellent RSS Grafitti. Win and double win as we can manage this in one place and not have to bounce around inside of individual page settings to configure them. Great stats for a triple double, no doubt.

Flickr, the Image Uploading

jUploadr is the great multi-account uploading tool. Unfortunately it won't allow for editing or deleting. However, uploading (with tags and titles) is half the battle.

YouTube, still Tears

Ah, sigh. Ye Olde YouTube, Excellent Social Media Video sharing with great SEO secrets. Well, we do have TubeMogul to make a single account post to multiple video sites, but not a single account to manage multiple accounts on one or more video sites. Nothing for the consultant, the marketing agency, the social media manager. Sigh and double sigh.

Final Piece Missing

The final piece that is missing is being able to handle short messages from the blog but without them showing up in the blog, or to syndicate messages not as a Title and URL but as a message content itself (aka a Tweet). These still need some work to get working, but it is no longer such a pain with a hacked version of Laconica Tools to the rescue.

What do we get with all this configuring? A system and a process that allows us to use WordPress installations as the primary messaging tool, to syndicate to Identica, Twitter and Facebook, as well as bare RSS feeds and email subscriptions to those feeds (via Feedburner). Whew.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Tips - Managing Facebook Pages
2. Social Media Tips - Twitter.com Web Client Enhancements with Greasemonkey Scripts
3. 3 Stages of Social Media Messaging