Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy

September 29, 2008 · Comments

tree Social networks are great places to meet new people, to build new business relationships, and to learn about information from non-traditional sources. But another great way to use social networking sites is as an outpost. What do I mean by this? It turns out that people getting to know you on social networks might also find your content for the first time, and/or something you post to those networks might bring you an opportunity that wouldn’t immediately come to you in other ways.

Building Outposts

Before we go too deep, as I’m talking about RSS and some of you might not be fully aware, here’s a great video by Common Craft about RSS in Plain English:

Here’s what I’m talking about:

  1. Find your RSS feed URL for your blog. (If you’re not 100% sure how, right click the big orange button somewhere on your site and right-click. Select “copy link location.”)
  2. Add your RSS feed to FaceBook. I also recommend Simplaris Blogcast (formerly “Flog Blog”). It’s a great app for adding blog posts into your personal news feed.
  3. Add your RSS feed to LinkedIn, but go further. There’s a “what are you doing?” line in LinkedIn. Three times, I’ve had business opportunities come from someone catching something in their LinkedIn feed. (No offense to Mario Sundar, but I didn’t realize people watched that as closely.)
  4. Post the occasional tweet about a particularly good blog post to Twitter. Do this at a rate of about 1:12, meaning one post about your stuff to any 12 tweets about other people’s stuff. This will keep people a bit more interested in your stream as something of value, versus a “mememememe” type of Twitter user.
  5. Repeat this in any “very specific to your industry” social networks that matter to you, and/or on emails to your specific potential customer base. Do this such that you entice people to read your latest article, instead of just putting something that says “subscribe to my blog.”

Technically, it’s a simple tactic used in a strategy of awareness and / or community building. And yet, it’s one that you might not be doing yet for your media.

Any other recommendations you want to add to the process? Any questions?


Photo credit, Jule Berlin

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  • Chris
    Re: Linkedin, less than 9% of registered users have their blog mentioned as part of their profile. I got a couple of comments on our blog post that said most people still think of LinkedIn as a "contact database" and a business networking site and its a non entity in terms of traffic for their site. I guess its left up to you to use it, if you do it will give you returns else not.
    Here is the post. http://news.buzzgain.com/?p=16
  • I use the Facebook option, but haven't really spent too much time with LinkedIn...maybe I'll give it another go.
  • social media is the place to be for this time, job opportunity, business affiliations, commercials and anything under the sun.
  • I'm going to chime in here @Cindy. I still think of LinkedIN as a contact database. I only use LinkedIN for people I have met while networking in Indianapolis or people I have grown close to through online networking.
  • Lisa Young
    Chris,

    From an SEO perspective, you also want to optimize those outpost links. For instance on your LinkedIn Profile, you don't have to use the default My Blog, you can select "other" and use a more meaningful link (with a keyword or two).
    Then you'll be building your backlinks while attracting new audiences. Some of your outposts may nofollow the link, but optimizing the text is still going to improve your click throughs than using a generic placeholder.
  • @Lisa Young - that's actually pretty clever. See, I'm so social media dumb. Good to know.
  • Chris,

    Good advice. I'm going to go in and add my blog RSS to LinkedIn now. You're right about doing that because a lot of my non-hard core social media peeps live there so a great place to create more awareness.

    Best,
    Aaron | @astrout
  • @Lisa Young ... very cool. thanks for the tip. i think i need to head over to my linkedIn profile now and make the adjustment.

    It pays to read the comments here too!

    --
    http://twitter.com/franswaa
  • Cindy,
    I read the post. The percentages are not the whole story. As I see it 20 million users potentially could see your blog link at some point. Only 1.9 million (9%) have their blog linked (only? Wow, that's a great number). Still, if ONLY 9% are linking their blogs, doesn't that mean that the odds are in your favor if you list yours? Still I get more (and better quality) traffic from answering a question than my profile links. Overall, I think Chris' recommendations are solid. In fact I need to implement his Facebook recommendations tomorrow. Thanks Chris.

    - Scott
  • Thanks so much for the tips Chris. I think I have my RSS feed on my Facebook (am adding that app though!), but I should add it to the Linkedin!
  • Follow up. I mentioned links, I meant feeds. Read what I mean, not what I say?
  • does facebook restrict to just one Blog/RSS feed? I have two blogs and guess I'm used to FF's infinite capacity.
  • @gsik - I'm not sure. I don't see why it would. You can add more than one RSS source. Don't forget FriendFeed if it's geeky stuff.
  • @chris - so facebook says:

    "Import Settings: You can import posts from one external blog so that they appear along with your notes. Facebook will automatically update your notes whenever you write in your blog. Imported blog posts cannot be edited."

    Either way, I got them all fired into FriendFeed.
  • Outposting is clutch. Great post Chris!
  • Chris, you are a genius. I wasn't even aware that there was a way to link my rss feed directly into my Facebook page. As it is, I've now started using Simplaris Blogcast on your recommendation in order to post the first line of my post in the sidebar and integrate updates into my newsfeed. Beforehand I was only relying on a link to the site on my facebook page... I think people might be more encouraged to click if they know there is something new to see each time they do. Thanks again. FYI: it pays to follow Chris on Twitter, it seems ;)
  • nice post, chris. i particularly like your tip - tweet out other people's posts. we get so caught up in our day-to-day lives that we often times forget how important it is to really provide value, outside of ourselves, to our twitter followers.
  • @gsik - ah yes. Now I see.
  • Thanks again, Chris. OptHome.com is on target with these. And you helped... /Steve @ www.opthome.com
  • Also add the rss link to your e-mail sig block.
  • Hey Chris,

    good advice. One other service I would recommend to anyone unfamiliar, is Ping.fm. Ping.fm is a free service that allows me to get closer to my ideal of "write once, post everywhere". With Ping.fm I connect all of my 'outposts' to my Ping.fm account and then choose my method of input. Its all very simple to set up. When I have something to share I enter my message into Gtalk (my chosen method of entry), and that messages automatically goes to LinkedIN, Twitter, Plurk, Friendfeed, Facebook, Plaxo, and any Ning site I'm a member of, and any other site I've connected Twitter to. Most of the sites I don't 'live' at, but other people, who I may want to connect with do 'live' there so Ping allows me to message all them in one fell swoop.

    Joshua Kahn
  • I think using Social Networks as outposts is a great idea. Thanks for going into detail about it. I've been doing this on and off for the past couple months. I find it overwhelming to be active on all the sites available, but I think having a presence where people can find me is really useful. So I try to at least have my name, picture and blog address in as many places as possible.
  • Chris -

    Thank you for this - although some people like to toot their own horns, it is so much better coming from someone else.
    I think the feeds into Twitter are getting excessive, especially from those that only use it for that purpose.
  • That's a good idea to add your RSS feed to Facebook, a nice way to keep information updated for others to potentially see. It's a little more difficult for a company though, because you would have to establish a fan base for your company's page before the RSS would be beneficial. But over time I think it could be as effective.

    Craig
    www.budgetpulse.com
  • Two things I always advise people on with blogging and social media: provide value and engage. There are many possible specifics for accomplishing this, and your list is great for that!
  • Tami Casey
    Enjoyed the article. I also find the Answer section on LinkedIn to be extremely helpful. I try to follow the questions in my expertise area and post an answer at least once per week. It works great as an outpost and I have had new opportunities find their way to me through the site.

    Answers is also a great resource when you are researching an area or just want to learn more on a particular topic.
  • is there a way to import your feed directly into your main profile feed on facebook?
  • I have to say I did this and ended up un-doing it, but that's just me. My tweets feed directly into my updates on FB, so friends were constantly asking "What are you talking about?" Especially for @ messages. It also is a mess to try to remove the Twitter feed from FB--I think there is some glitch with the Twitter app because it seemed like a lot of people were unable to remove the feed. Now I have to remember to go change my FB status every time I do an @ message or tweet about anything too technical.

    I also had my blogs feeding into the notes section on FB--I forget how you do it but you can set it up through notes. I ALSO had my posts feeding into FriendFeed, then had the FriendFeed app on FB so my posts were showing up twice. At least for me, as more and more random people from one stage or another of my life started friending me, I found myself feeling I had to think twice about anything I blogged or tweeted about.

    In the end, I removed all my blog feeds from FB, and am still trying to remove the twitter feed from my updates. While I do agree that it, theoreticaly
  • I'm not seeing how to add my RSS to LinkedIn. Can anyone tell me how?
  • For freelancers & small business, is it better to pull your blog RSS feed into your personal Facebook profile, or to create a Facebook Page and put it there?
  • Kevin,

    Why not do both?

    I have both my blogs with Flog Blog on my profile and via FriendFeed.
    Marc Pitman Profile.

    I also have pages (I didn't find groups helpful) for my biz and my book. These pages have RSS from my biz blog and email subscription forms for people to sign up for my newsletter.
    <a href="http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Fundraisingcoachcom/10465001750?ref=ts" rel="nofollow">FundraisingCoach.com Fan Page

    Ask Without Fear! Fan Page (my book)

    Are others doing this sort of thing too?
  • re: more than one feed -- You can combine feeds easily through yahoo pipes. Use a fetch feed thingy and a sort thingy, and then output, and then run the pipe, and it show you all your feeds that you added to the fetch thingy in one consolidated feed. you can then get the rss link to that pipe and use that anywhere you want to put multiple blog feeds. You can also get it as a badge/widget, get links to add it to google or yahoo, or get html code to embed it in a site. very handy! You can see an example and create your own here: pipes.yahoo.com/grayceworks/feeds

    Thanks for the great post Chris!
  • I disagree about posting your blog's RSS to your LinkedIn profile for the primary reason that a lot of people may not know what RSS is. I recently attended a series of conferences listening to speakers talk about this and that, including RSS, and it never fails that someone asks the question at the end of the presentation, "What is RSS?"

    I suggest rather than adding "My Blog RSS" to your LinkedIn profile, create a ping.fm profile and synchronize your LinkedIn and Facebook status updates to the service. So, the next time you send out a ping.fm message, it will automatically update your "what am I now doing" spot.
  • Checking out this post as referenced in http://www.chrisbrogan.com/you-cant-just-have-p... . . .

    I actually think this supports my point even more! In this post you don't suggest creating NEW content but linking back to your blog on facebook, linkedin and twitter. If that blog is bad (in either content, design or function) you have wasted your time, no amount of cross referencing will save you.
  • Does it help to add your blog roll to your blog? So other readers can see what you read?
  • This is quite impressive, I am pleased to read this post, keep posts like this coming, you totally rock!
    Cheers,
    sweethomeimprove.com
    sain-web.com
  • karkaremtg
    This is almost a year old, and i've read it before... still found it very useful when i read it today though. When you don't seem to have time to do something, if you put some 'systems' thinking to it, it kinda gets sorted out.

    Good stuff.
  • This was really useful. Thank you.
  • ashokeban
  • This is almost a year old, and i've read it before... still found it very useful when i read it today though. When you don't seem to have time to do something, if you put some 'systems' thinking to it, it kinda gets sorted out.
  • Nice post! This is very informative and seems interesting. I'll read more about this! :)
  • Keep up the good work bro.Your article is really great and I truly enjoyed reading it.Waiting for some more great articles like this from you in the coming days.
  • Thank you for the information. Very clear. But I don't want Google (or Yahoo...) to have a look on my RSS-s and to create "added value" on my private life at cross-checking my interests! RSS Readers must be inside one's PC not outside.
  • This is almost a year old, and i've read it before... still found it very useful when i read it today though. The cheapest car insurance is the way to let u compare auto insurance quotes
  • Ban.
  • mbt1451
    That’s something,That's what I was thinking.Brilliant idea.
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