Linking Multiple Social Media Profiles

An often overlooked advantage of social marketing is the ability to utilize multiple platforms as a network, allowing each to help another build a community.

The topic sounds difficult, but in practice can be very easy. It requires resources to create assets, and a time investment to maintain profiles.

Why Network Social Profiles?

Linking profiles not only allows you to funnel new users to alternative brand social profiles, but also enables a brand to send different messages on different mediums.

For example, imagine a brand that has a YouTube account that they link to from their Twitter account or statuses. The brand’s Twitter messages may be short thoughts, while their videos can be in-depth how to’s. By linking the accounts and sending users between the two, the brand is able to reinforce their message.

Not only are multiple active profiles good for message reinforcement, but they also help search engine optimization. The creation of video and image assets means a page can now better rank in Google Video Search or Google Image Search.

What Profiles To Link

Ultimately you want to link different platforms that let you push different messages. The idea isn’t to have multiple micro-blogging platforms, but to have a video outlet, podcast outlet, micro-blog, and blog.

With that in mind, a business serious about social marketing could create and link a Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube account, Yelp listing, Flickr account, and blog. (These platforms won’t work for everyone, it’s just an example. It depends on resources available and demographic to target.)

The above platforms enables a brand to host applications on the Facebook page, send short updates on Twitter, and upload videos on the YouTube account. The Yelp listing helps the business in local search, while uploading photos to the Flickr account. The blog acts as a social hub and ties all the platforms together.

Making the Profiles Successful

Because the profiles act together there needs to be both an independent and integrated strategy for each platform. What value will consumers gain from making between platforms?

One good example is SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Friday on Vimeo. They use the social media platform to host a series where they analyze the latest search engine optimization strategies.

The blog highlights the latest published video, linking the two platforms.

The reason why the series is so successful is because it offers value to consumers but does not rehash what has been said on other SEOmoz profiles.

Conclusion

Finding a way to use multiple platforms to communicate different messages with users is important. Cross-promoting the platforms and linking them can help the overall success of a social marketing strategy.