Syndication, 5 Tools to Automate Your Efforts and Keep ‘Followers’ Updated

Writers and publishers have always understood the power of syndication. However, for some reason as the Web made this principle simpler content producers ignored the opportunity. Social marketing and networking success require well-executed social syndication.

The good news is that increasingly great tools emerge, which effective automate the power of social syndication. Some favorites include FriendFeed, Ping.fm, Stumbleupon, TubeMogul, and a myriad of plug-ins for blogs and social networks.

FriendFeed
If you are looking to aggregate and syndicate your digital content life–FriendFeed is your answer. Friendfeed is an elegant way to link together all of your social media sites and activities. Each time you publish to any of the hundreds of social sites that you belong to that content is immediately fed to your entire current and prospective network.This broad syndication also facilitates discussions and potential re-syndication of your content. Friends and followers in your network can comment and rebroadcast your content in their network–a virtual referral. These priceless referrals will continually grow your audience and potential.

Ping.fm
By now everyone has heard of Twitter, but what about jaiku, pownce, brightkite, or identi.ca. Social messaging is exploding and you want to touch as many people as possible. This is where a service like Ping.fm automates your syndication. Tapping into current and emerging social messaging Ping.fm allows you to broadcast from AIM to Twitter with a single message post.

Building and keeping active in each of the communities, you foster for your social marketing is critical to speedy success. Ping.fm will put your conversation everywhere people might be listening. They recently opened up their beta program to everyone, so if you are not setup already head over there and sign up.

Stumbleupon
Ever accidentally stumbled on a good thing. Stumbleupon helps over 6 million people do this daily. Built on the principle of social proof, Stumbleupon allows you to syndicate content into a network of self-targeted communities. These communities, through social connections, interest profiles, and active rating of content segment themselves into very specific categories.

The obvious opportunity is the ability to immediately target, on an opt-in basis, consumers that want to stumble through your content. The incredibly powerful feature of this social syndication tool is the ranking system. By virtue of this ranking system, your content will become increasingly targeted and referred to like interested users–virtually pinpointing your ideal customer.

TubeMogul
Are you a budding filmmaker, comedian, or just have the latest miracle self-help technique? TubeMogul is a must use video syndication tool. The race for the top video aggregation site is tight and volatile. This means your video needs to be everywhere and anywhere to leverage the raging popularity of video consumption.

TubeMogul makes hosting and syndicating large videos a snap. One upload allows your video to be seen from YouTube to Yahoo! and the growing list of video aggregators in between.

Hundreds of Others
Social syndication of content on huge networks is powerful, but don’t underestimate the value of re-syndicating content back on your own Web properties. Blog plug-ins as well as Facebook and MySpace applications makes it easy to aggregate and even segments your content to add value and save you time.

Design Syndication for Success
The social syndication tools are plentiful. Each has its own opportunity and effectiveness. Challenge yourself to find the right blend for maximum exposure and pinpoint your social objective: personal branding, product/service promotion, traffic, or link building.