Multiple online personality disorder

Damn, what the heck do you do when you're on Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook and write a blog and post YouTube videos and more and want people to know about all of your online personalities?

I am frequently asked about how to consolidate online initiatives (all your social media feeds for example) into a neat package that makes it easy for buyers and other stakeholders to find everything.

The most important thing is to have a "home base" where you can point people to everything you’re doing. I recommend several approaches to do this, but seems that the best solution is determined by how large your organization is.

For individuals

Your home base would be your site or blog. Many bloggers use icons linking to each social networking service you’re on such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

If you don't have a blog or site

I suggest setting up a Google Profile as your home base. That way people can link to all your profiles from one place.

For organizations

An online media room is a great place to point people. The Cisco Newsroom is a good example of a place that consolidates a bunch of information about an entire company, nonprofit, school, or government agency.

But what if you need to point people to just part of your organization?

What if you want to create links for just one division, or a particular country you do business in, or a specific buyer persona? You can’t really use a media room which is usually company-wide.

Microsoft Bright Side of Government digital dashboard

Microsoft has a neat solution called the Microsoft Bright Side of Government digital dashboard, a place where Microsoft Public Sector communicators deliver a consolidated set of information (blog posts, YouTube videos, Twitter, case studies and so on) to people who work in government agencies.

With the dashboard, salespeople send just one URL. But buyers can still dive deeper into the content on each of those platforms (say YouTube).

With each of these approaches, you'll want to include the link to your choice of home base in all your communications. Use the URL in your email signature, on your business cards, and in your printed material. Of course have links back from each profile to the home base so people can see what else you are up to.

Image credit: higyou \ Shutterstock

Disclosure: I recently ran a seminar for a group of communicators at Microsoft.

Comments

[Ron Miller]

There is also FriendFeed, which provides a nice place to consolidate all of your online activity in one place. You could point people there too.

[David Meerman Scott]

You're right Ron! Many people use FriendFeed for this purpose. Thanks!

[Jeremy Fischer]

David,

Love the advice. It might even be the kind of thing that needs to go into advice for newcomers to social media.

Social media can be fun...and addictive. Before you know it, you've got a ton of accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Lala, Digg, etc.) and no way to manage them. I speak from experience.

When that happens, people usually just give up (or go crazy). If they have this advice up front, they could start organizing from the start, which would lead to a lot less frustration.

[twitter.com/cecilia_kremer]

A home base is definitely necessary. It would also be interesting to discuss how different channels target different audiences. I am Brazilian and live in the US, so the tendency is: if I am targeting my American or international friends, I post to twitter and Facebook. If I am targeting my Brazilian friends, I post in Portuguese, at Orkut. Also, given my audience, my tweets tend to be more professional whereas Facebook posts more informal. Now this is what I call multiple online personality disorder :-). I know it sounds high maintenance, but it really is not.
Good topic!

[David Meerman Scott]

Thanks Jeremy!

Cecilia - In my travels around the world, I run across many people like you so this is a common problem. My wife for example lives here in Boston but she is Japanese and does business in the Japanese market.

David

[twitter.com/cristalmarie]

Always useful! Thank you for this post! I immediately went about spiffing up my google profile. I did a quick search and saw just how fast the profile appears both on google.com and the facebook.com and youtube.com search.

I'm now going to link to the google profile from cristalmarie.com For people who want a quick profile and not the whole LONG Bio.

More artists should use this! It's like an elevator pitch!

[Marc Hausman]

Hey David,

I work for the PR/social media consultancy that has helped Microsoft on the Bright Side of Government program. Thanks for the write up in your post.

I wrote about this topic in a recent blog post, citing our work for Microsoft, as well as similar campaigns for British Telecom (BT) and Monster. Here's a link:

3 Social Media Portals Revealed

http://bit.ly/4rxZ0r

[twitter.com/concarjess3]

Great post @dmscott! I've told you before that I've been trying to set my blog up & I want it done the RIGHT WAY! I can't tell you how many times I've asked people how to link it all together so that it will flow. Here's some of the responses I get when I ask people this question. I dunno, ask somebody else, or they send me an affiliate link that will cost me just to get the GODMAN answer! And over half of them could give to shits abt answering the question. This frustrates me to no extent because I've told you before that I came from the medical field & this is so new to me! Please note that some of these responses came from top bloggers. I will tell you this, The help that I did get from a select few will be remembered & the others can PISS OFF! Again, thank you for all of your help especially since you have an extremely busy schedule!

[David Meerman Scott]

Marc - Excellent work.

Toni - My pleasure. Glad to help.

[twitter.com/Microsoft_Gov]

Thanks for highlighting our Bright Side of Government Online! I think for organizations it helps to manage your own "online portal" so you can add other resources that might not fit in Friendfeed or one of the other apps. We can also update on our own and build out as needed but we are lucky to have an entire web team devoted to this! Thanks again David!

[Vlad Heger]

I face this eternal struggle no matter what I do online......

Having said that I try not to let all sides of me meet anywhere.

My clients that I send to my linked in page don't need to know all of my personal interests and such..

There should be some separation.

[Arturo Preciado]

Great to know this, thanks David. I actually need to get myself organized since I do websites some for business and paying the rent and some others for fundraising for artistic projects. Essentially all of the sites have the same philosophy but the buyer personas for each are very different and I guess I want them to see different parts of me.

[twitter.com/jaipuria]

Check out GIZAPAGE.com - its a social media engagement platform and identity hub - allows you to put all your profiles in one webpage and engage across them.

[Phil Dunn]

Excellent - thanks for the insights. I recently wrote a post on a similar topic: How to Simplify your Social Media Life: The Pros and Cons of Posterous, Soup.io, ShareIn and FriendFeed http://bit.ly/VIjkA

[Phil Dunn]

Another thing I'd recommend for those who do a lot of image and photo management for their blogs is to use Eye-Fi. This is the memory card for digital cameras that connects to your local network and uploads photos to your computer and to sites like Flickr, Facebook, blogs, wherever.

[Chris Horner]

Another good place I've found is www.unhub.com. It's a nice place to consolidate most blogs and social media.
www.unhub.com/chrishorner