It’s amazing how quickly technology changes — especially social networking. I mean, who knew when Facebook was switching from “friending” to “liking” and what the change meant?
Anyway, I was reading the most recent issue of my trusted Internet and Marketing Report yesterday and came across a few key pieces of information having to do with social networking that I think will be helpful to authors.
Facebook
Did you create a personal profile page and then wish you’d created a fan page instead? Good news. Facebook has created a new tool that allows you to migrate your personal page to a business page. The upside is that it brings all your “friends” over as “fans” (which saves you the trouble of asking everyone to “like” your new profile). The downside is that all of your wall posts and photos will be deleted (they apparently don’t migrate). But this new tool is something to keep in mind if you’ve been meaning to make the switch.
Twitter
I bet you never thought about keywords when you were tweeting. Well, it’s time to start keyword-loading your tweets. Twitter’s updated search platform actually searches the body of your tweets instead of just your name. So, if someone is searching for “Romance Author,” the results be made up of the twitter users who most frequently use the term “Romance Author” in their tweets. So pick a few keywords and try to use them in your tweets as much as possible.
Google
You never thought of Google as a social networking tool before. But they’re getting into the business now. They’ve created a new “+1” button, which will rival Facebook’s “Like” button. Even search results will include the total number of people who have “+1″ed the site. This tool isn’t widespread yet, but it will be soon. So keep your eyes open for it.
Postling
This new tool is a great asset for authors who are having trouble keeping up with all the social networking sites out there. Go to Postlng.com and you can manage your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Flickr accounts in one place. All your comments will be there, and you can even opt to post something on more than one social networking site at a time. Talk about a time-saver!