Redefining Yourself Means That You're Growing...into what?

Linda began a new project this past week in efforts to brand herself and her career as a writer. In this article, she journals her process in developing this persona across several social media venues. Learn more about your progress in self-branding as Linda shares her problems and how she resolved them

Friendfeed

At this point in this century, there is no logical reason to not stake a claim to a Friendfeed page. Friendfeed is an Internet user's friend, as it provides a feed to just about any major social media outlet that you might use. In the process of building this feed, however, you may need a beer or a glass of wine, or at the very least, an espresso.

One way to lose friends and influence enemies is to repeat your words of wisdom more than once in a feed. It's possible to do this by interconnecting social media tools more than once. I did this last night, but caught the mistake and eliminated the problem. More about that issue below.

You can find me at Friendfeed through http://friendfeed.com/lindagoin.

Facebook

I already have a Facebook account as well as pages for my Appomattox, Virginia sites. I have learned, though, that my Facebook account – the private account – leans more toward personal relationships and friendships rather than business and I feel very reluctant to open those pages to people I have not met face-to-face or who cannot prove a connection to me through a family tree.

My Facebook Pages, however, are purely business and very focused. Whether I need to develop a Facebook Page for my writing career still remains up in the air.

StumbleUpon

I chose Stumbleupon as my social bookmarking site, because I like their old and new formats. Also, I'm not very happy that Yahoo! has claimed Delicious, as they've altered the brand and I cannot log in without using my Yahoo! account. My Yahoo! account is not geared toward my writing career, so I may abandon Delicious (and, possibly, Yahoo!) altogether. You can learn about my Stumbleupon choices through my Friendfeed account above, as my Stumbles feed into my Friendfeed account.

Pulling it All Together

I plan to share more branding efforts over the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, I want to share some overall strategy that I used for linking my social media sites together. This part of the task, perhaps, was the most trying on my nerves, just as incompatible browsers make me want to tear my hair out in Web design processes.

The image below is from Friendfeed, and it shows all the social media tools that you can tie into your feed at Friendfeed:

At right in the above image, you can see the tools that I've tied into my Friendfeed account thus far. I did have Stumbleupon linked to this site, until I realized that I needed to create a hypothetical situation to illustrate how feed linking can blow your mind.

Say, for instance, that I do not need to add Stumbleupon to Friendfeed, because I have Stumbles linked to Twitter and Twitter linked to Friendfeed. I must divorce Stumbleupon from Friendfeed. Otherwise, I end up posting the same information twice.

That said, I come across another issue: If a person prefers to follow me on Friendfeed rather than on Twitter, then if I use Friendfeed to feed my Stumbleupon account rather than Twitter, my Twitter followers won't see my Stumbleupon information.

I hope the illustration above clarifies this hypothetical linking situation. If, by the first example, I link Stumbleupon to the Friendfeed acount and I link Twitter to the Friendfeed account, my Stumbles will not make it to Twitter (unless I link Friendfeed back to Twitter, which would repeat my Twitter input twice into Twitter). But, if I link my Stumbles to Twitter and I link Twitter to Friendfeed, then my Stumbles are visible both on Twitter and Friendfeed.

The second solution supplies more visibility to my Stumbles than the first solution.  Since I consider Stumbles an important part of what I can share with friends and business associates, I would employ the second solution. Strategies such as this one are part of branding, and they need careful consideration.

While the above situation is hypothetical, it does occur among various social media sites. I've developed a log to remind myself about these feed links, otherwise I fear that I might become a blithering fool, both online and in my personal life.

Additionally, you may learn – as I have – that you can spread yourself far too thin by taking on too many social media venues. This effort to spread yourself over a broad area may backfire, as social media sites are not permanent entities. In fact, some printed phone books last longer than some social media sites. As social media sites are purchased by larger entities or disappear altogether, your link system may fail you. Be sure to take good notes on how you're linking these sites together so you can resolve breaks in those links down the road.