Switching Channels

This week, Golley Engage looks at content aggregation and syndication, and how businesses should approach different platforms in a time and cost effective manner.

According to a recent report, online spend in the UK has grown consistently throughout 2011, search budgets are up 19%, mobile activity has more than doubled year on year and social media spend is on the up. With an increasing focus on delivering results through social media activity, brands need an effective media channel strategy that delivers against their wider marketing objectives. However, for many brands, time restraints and a lack of strategic foresight is leading to content syndication through its social media platforms. This week, Golley Engage looks at content aggregation and syndication, and how businesses should approach different platforms in a time and cost effective manner.

It is not enough to simply aggregate content across various social platforms using social media aggregation or syndication tools, content needs to be tailored towards the audience, and content needs to be shared effectively and independently with fans and followers alike.

Each individual social media network has a different set of rules – with its 140 character limit Twitter lends itself to short comments, the non-invasive nature of ‘following’ means you can open conversations with influencers or customers all over the world. Facebook, by contrast, lends itself to longer messages, and is more centered on sharing content, pictures and video. The audience here is more intimate, and brands should be careful about directing sales messages through the platform. LinkedIn should be limited to offering potential employers and clients alike an online CV, and more details about your individual and your company’s collective work experience. Google+ is an SEO tool and another conversation facilitator, allowing you to share great content with a wider audience; YouTube is all about creating shareable video content and driving people to see it. Of course, this is an over simplified summary of the benefits of each of popular platforms, there are other factors that need to be considered – tone of voice, driving traffic and creating meaningful conversations.

Aggregation tools can help you manage multiple social media accounts, draw content from various news sources and syndicate content across all of your networks. True social media aggregation or syndication should be a process of consolidating inbound and outbound content into a dashboard allowing you to create efficiencies in monitoring, responding to, sharing and creating content; disseminating content through the appropriate platforms. It should be about much more than simultaneously updating your statuses.

Friendfeed, Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Social Mentions are all popular tools that offer a desktop to help you manage aggregation or syndication of your social networks. Used correctly, and with an effective channel strategy in place, it can help you deliver simple, effective online comms to customers all over the world.
Here are some of the best free services:

Tweetdeck

“TweetDeck is your personal real-time browser, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more…” if you are specifically looking for a desktop app / iPhone app for Twitter, this is one of the most effective tools on the market.

Social Mention

Social Mention is a social search tool that allows you to aggregate searches across hundreds of social networks, blogs, comments, social bookmarking services and more. The service offers email updates of the latest relevant social media results based on your own custom search phrases. Unlike the other services listed here, Social Mention focuses on search, helping you aggregate the topics, people and trends you are looking for.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite helps you manage multiple twitter accounts. You can integrate other social networks like Facebook, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn, Twitter and Foursquare as well as WordPress.com based blogs. The interface is easy to use, allowing you to view as many feeds and Twitter searches as you see fit. It was built for collaboration as well, with the ability to create teams, track analytic information and share other information for campaigns.

With social media channel management dashboards like these, efficiency of cross-channel posting is guaranteed. The hard work lies in ensuring you tailor content specifically for each channel so that you generate the optimal engagement with your brand on each.

Lindsey Reaney

Account Manager and Digital PR Consultant, Golley Engage