A quick how-to using Typepad – although others would work.
I was listening to the latest TWIT Podcast (which is just really great btw) – and one of the things they were discussing was a growing fear that putting all our content onto services like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and others was actually becoming pretty disconcerting. The future of these services is never sure – and certainly Twitter has not shown itself to be business "reliable". Especially in light of another friend of mine who has been having trouble with Twitter actually wiping out his entire account. This has been documented before.
I have to admit that I was concerned about it myself. I'm no Scobelizer, I Tweet about 10-13 times a day, but another thought was that all that content would be pretty good Google food as well. And, maybe most importantly (and this is what ultimately motivated me to do this) was I sometimes use my Twitter feed as a way to remember links or ideas that I've had. I often refer back to links I've tweeted for conference talks I'm putting together or articles I'm writing.
Anyway, it struck me that all this content that I'm taking the time to post should somehow be safeguarded and posted to my Blog and be archived there as a permalink – regardless of what happens to Twitter, or Friendfeed.
So, what follows is a quick "how-to" on setting up your own permanent "micro-blog". Now, the ingredients I used to cook this up are:
My Microblogging Platforms
My Centralized Posting Places
My Regular Blogging Platform
So, before I get into this, I'm absolutely positive that the way I did it is not the most technically elegant. But it was relatively easy – and I'm pretty darn happy with the results two days in.
So… I hope this is helpful for you…..
1. Create Your Permanent Micro-Blog Platform
Typepad has a pretty elegant way of doing this – even if the design choices are limited at this point. Basically, you select a one column format for your Microblog – and their "canned" design eliminates some of the other extraneous things – and puts your navigation all the way at the top and bottom – so that it more resembles what we've become used to from the Twitter and Friendfeed design. But truth be told, any of the designs worked fine – it's more of the back-end magic of tying in your accounts. For Typepad here is an instructional video on creating your micro-blog.
If you haven't already mapped a domain to your main blog, I would recommend doing it. But beyond that, if you have, it now makes sense to map a subdomain (e.g. microblog.YOURDOMAIN.com) so that you'll get the SEO benefit from all this great new content that you're going to be generating – and so that it's tied into your main blog. Or, if you're just interested in keeping the archive – don't worry about that. You don't even need to make this blog public. It can just serve as a private archive of your status changing ways.
Anway, mapping a subdomain in TypePad is really easy – you just do it from your Accounts section – and then through your domain registrar.
2. Tie In your Feeds
Typepad has integrations into a number of the social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In etc… You can set up your "Sharing" so that your services will be updated as your Micro-Blog is updated. This gives you a central way to update all your services if you want.
And of course the reverse is true as well. But to accomplish that, you do it through another service… so….
3. Centralize (if you want)
So, like alot of micro-bloggers, I do most of my microblogging from one platform. The key for me is an integration with Ping.Fm. This was the easiest way I saw to update Twitter, all the other services I update AND my new Micro-blog at the same time. Again, I'm sure there may be a more elegant way to do it – but this was easy and it works for me. So, for my centralized platform, I like Hootsuite, but it would seem that Twhirl, Seesmic and other platforms have this integration with Ping.FM.
Tying that into the TypePad blog was simple and easy – and Ping.FM just makes really simple.
Now, make sure to be careful how you share through a service like Ping.FM. You can get caught in a loop where you have more than one service updating another – and you can get double and triple postings on some of your feeds. This happened to me the first time I set it up. I had Ping.FM updating everything AND I had Friendfeed updating services – so Ping.FM would update FriendFeed, and then Twitter would be updated, which would also Update Friendfeed. So, take the time to figure out the stream of information and how it will work for you.
And voila… that's pretty much it….
So, now – as I Tweet from Hootsuite, Twitter is automatically updated, my Friendfeed is automatically updated and (most importantly to this exercise) my permanent MicroBlog is automatically updated – all through Ping.FM. I actually turned off Facebook and Linked-In updates just because I thought that was a bit much for my network – but I could have easily added those too if I wanted. Now if I get the dreaded FailWhale and need that link I Tweeted about yesterday I can point myself or any of my users to my Permanent Microblog… My personal microblog is also now searchable… So I can just search my stream.
And of course, I can do the reverse… If I micro-blog from my TypePad MicroBlog then all my services will be updated as well…. And that has the blogging via email which I like as well.
But, all my services are also separate.. So, if I go in and just update my Twitter status, or my Facebook or linked-in status directly from those services – it won't appear on my Micro-blog… This is nice because typically when I'm in those applications directly I'm just ReTweeting, or Replying to messages – which can be noisy on the micro-blog…
I hope this is helpful. Like I said – I'm sure there are a number of other technical ways to accomplish this. This process took me two evenings to completely sort out. But I feel alot better about my content being archived – and it's kind of cool too. I'll report back on any SEO benefits that I see.
And please if you hear of other ways or know of other ways to accomplish this – please share. I'd love to hear about them.
