Using a tool like Ping.fm, you can integrate your blog, your Twitter account, and your Facebook account. We’re talking about dynamically combining content from multiple sources into content for a third or more web page. Twitter becomes the source of half of the content, and your blog the other half.
Let’s say, for example, that I am a service provider of some type in Cleveland, and I update my company’s blog twice per week. I also update our Twitter account about twice per day, mostly with links to content that I think would be of interest to my audience. Assuming it takes me one hour per blog post and five minutes per tweet, that is about three hours of total time.
At the moment, I am only updating my blog and my Twitter account for those three hours. But I can also maintain an account with a major social networking site such as Facebook for no additional time.
With an application like Ping.fm, I can have my Facebook status updated every time I post a new tweet. Taking it a step further, I can use the Facebook Notes application to update my Facebook account every time I update my blog. So now, for those same three hours, I am not only updating my blog and Twitter, I am also updating my Facebook page.
I may need some additional time to periodically log into Facebook and search for new friends. Having a Facebook account with no friends doesn’t really accomplish much. I could even automate that part using a tool like Facebook Blaster. But I would still want to periodically log into my Facebook account to check things out. You never really want to automate something and then just forget about it.
Since I’m using Ping.fm, I could also choose to set up some more social media pages and have them update every time I update my blog. In this case, it will be important to separate blogs from update sites using groups. Otherwise, I will end up with a bunch of extremely short blog posts with no titles.