A little bit of branding

I’ve been busy trying to make all of my various social media channels work together. Basically, I have been throwing my signature and portrait all over everything with a profile page. I’m already sick of looking at this picture of myself. It’s all for a good reason though. I want every social media page I have to look like it belongs to this blog, and I want each one to serve a specific purpose. Often times I see bloggers begging their readers to “Follow Me!” with those little social media icons in the sidebar. What I don’t often see is a good reason for it. Usually you will find the same exact content from the blog, or links back to the blog that you just came from, or sometimes nothing at all.

Giving it all a purpose

I have a plan to make sure that each of my social media links has a reason to exist. Here is how I intend to use each profile:

Facebook
The Facebook wall does a really nice job of sharing links. When you put a link on your wall, you get a thumbnail image and a short description, both of which are pulled directly from the linked page. You also get to add your two cents with a comment, and other people can comment as well. My Facebook page will act as a sort of shared RSS feed, with the potential for a social dialogue.

Twitter
Twitter is all about what’s happening right now. I will use my feed to share anything that’s newsworthy and current. I’d like to start sharing more smartphone photos on Twitter, since I’m all about getting multimedia into social media. One thing I don’t want to do is tweet for no reason. I’m not going to post “good morning” as soon as I wake up every day. If you see a tweet from me, it’s because I really wanted to share some kind of news that I think is worthwhile.

YouTube
The biggest video sharing site is sort of a dumping ground, but with some really nice features. One thing I like is that my Android phone and You Tube are best buds. I can take videos clips from my phone, and upload them to the site instantly. Then I can edit them together using You Tube’s online video editor. It’s an incredibly fast  and mobile way to get videos out to the masses. My You Tube channel will be for sharing quickly made videos where quality isn’t as important as mobility and speed.

Vimeo
Vimeo focuses more on quality than quantity. This will be my outlet for video work that I care a bit more about.

Flickr, Picasa, or Facebook?
The last piece of the puzzle is a place to share photography. The only problem is that I’m not thrilled with any of my options. Flickr is kind of clumsy. Picasa feels under developed. The nicest option might actually be Facebook. The galleries are pretty easy to navigate, and it is very social. Since I’m already utilizing Facebook, it probably wouldn’t hurt to start sharing photos and even videos there as well.