Google+ vs Flickr vs Facebook vs 500px vs ... I've really be struggling with my online communities lately and I am wishing there was a solution.
The main problem is that the community software is being built by corporations who's goal is to make money. They're goal is to create a captive audience from which they can gather marketing data and to which they can show ads in an effort to generate revenue. I can't totally blame them, they're trying to pay the bills just like everyone else.
The problem is that I end up spreading myself around and it makes things very complicated when I want to share things with my photography friends. I find a great video to share and I have to post it on http://www.photography.ca/Forums/ for one group of friends, Flickr for another group of friends, Facebook for another group of friends, Google+ for yet more, and I have to remember to mention it at my next photography club meeting. Whew! Way too freakin' painful.
If you have a solution to this dilemma, I'm all ears. I'd really like to know how to make better use of my time. Maybe it makes sense for me to post everything here on my blog and then have automatic links sent out to all those services.... hmmm... I'm talking myself into this idea. Would it annoy my Facebook, Flickr, Google+, 500px, etc. friends to get a link to my blog every time I want to share something? Would they leave their little walled gardens to take the time to read my blog post? Maybe I'd just be wasting my time and I already waste too much jumping from site to site to post and re-post.
The perfect example of this is my recent announcement of the combined Flickr Halifax and Google+ anniversary photo walk that I'm hosting on June 30th. I created a Facebook event for people to rally around but I have Flickr friends and Google+ friends who refuse to sign into Facebook. I posted it on Flickr too but my Google+ friends won't see it so I had to post it there as well. And I know I've missed people. Arrgggghhhh! It just makes me so sad when I realize one of my friends has missed out on something just because I forgot to post to one of my communities. :(
3 comments:
I'm right there with ya mate, you forgot Twitter too and add to that having the blog and all that entails as well.
It's an issue that there is no easy solution. Every one of these social network providers wants a piece of our collective money.
What you could do is make a decision. Hold a separate event for each of these social networks and see which one returns the most response. Then, perhaps, just focus on that one social network.
If they are really your 'friends', they will join you wherever you may be.
:P
I know that Wordpress blogs can integrate auto tweet/FB/G+ for your blog posts. So if you post it to your blog it gets posted on all your social media or at least the ones you can find plugins. Hope this helps.
Thanks, Riley.... that's an interesting suggestion to be considered.
Thanks, Anonymous. I ranted then went looking... I'm trying out ifttt.com to solve this problem. Fingers crossed. :)
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