Brian D. Shelton

Linking Social Media Profiles - Good or Bad?

I noticed a growing trend in my feeds today - a lot of chatter about linking social profiles and a general loathing of the practice.

Scott Stratten (@unmarketing on Twitter) used a bit of humor to illustrate his disdain. No surprise there; Scott is the king of tongue-in-cheek humor. But, he’s also a pretty smart guy. I recommend following him if you don’t already.

For those new to the game, linking your social profiles refers to the process of essentially syndicating your posts from one network to another network. For example, if you link Facebook and Twitter, your Facebook status updates will be posted as tweets to your Twitter account. Conversely, if you send a Twitter update, that content will be posted to your Facebook profile. You can do the same with Twitter and LinkedIn. You get the idea.

While there are certainly times where is makes sense to post content to multiple social networks, it is important to understand that each network has a unique audience and purpose. Therefore, a “one-size-fits-all” approach to content doesn’t make sense.

Think about it: chances are, your professional connections (LinkedIn) aren’t going to see much value in your tweet that states, “Grabbing a burger for lunch.” Similarly, your Facebook friends probably aren’t going to care about the link you shared to a comprehensive white paper illustrating the growing trend of Six Sigma certifications in companies with fewer than 150 employees (I made that up, by the way).

Different networks. Different people. Different relationships. Different expectations.

Besides, with tools like HootSuite (aff.), TweetDeck, Seesmic and others that allow you to post to one or more social profiles from a single interface, there isn’t a need to use “traditional profile linking.” These tools allow you to control what content gets distributed to which social profile(s). Filtering your posts shows the people who care enough to connect with you that you care enough about them to not just spew things into their stream “because you can.”

What do you think? Is linking social profiles a good idea? Bad idea? Do you do it? Why or why not? What tips do you have?

Make A Dream Come True - Tanner’s Story

I don’t remember all the details of how it happened. To be honest, it doesn’t matter because what I do know is this:

You do not have to know someone personally to care about them.

Tanner About a month or so ago, through a stream of tweets and blog posts surrounding the Evo Conference, I came across Catherine Connor’s blog, Her Bad Mother. While I was reading a post, I decided to click around. I clicked on a post called “Clockwatching Redux.”

What I read was an incredible story about a young boy (Catherine’s nephew) who was dying of Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy. What a cool kid. What a sad story.

As part of her post, Catherine shares Tanner’s “life list,” a list of goals he wants to achieve.

Life List For Tanner:

Help Tanner make his dreams come true before he dies. Like this one: take his cousins to Disney

And this one: meet an astronaut

And this one: be a cowboy for a day

And this one: visit Sesame Street

And this one: see a dinosaur

And this one: have a train holiday

And this one: be a pirate

And this one: be on television

And this one: have a real birthday party with lots of friends

And this one: meet a Disney Imagineer

And this one: make a dream come true for another boy with DMD

Find some way, any way, to make sure that he can die at home.

When he passes (*deep breath*) throw a big party with sparklers and cake and fireworks that celebrates how happy his life was, and how rich he made our lives, and pledge to always to do this, to celebrate him, by living our own lives as fully as we can.

One of them called to me - #2. I grew up with a love of space and was fortunate to live just a few miles from NASA in Florida as a kid. So, I got to see the museum, eat astronaut food, watch a live shuttle launch. But, this really jumped out at me because as a student at Indiana University, I was taking an elective course in kinesiology (I was a journalism major) in which one of the lectures was about the effects of space on the human body.

As fate would have it, the instructor’s brother was an active NASA astronaut who had just returned from a shuttle mission (and space walk!). He surprised us by having his brother give a guest lecture.

The brothers are great people and I have kept in touch (albeit not as well as I should have) over the years. Perhaps, for just this moment.

As soon as I read Tanner’s list, I opened my contacts, plucked out the name and sent an email. Within a few hours, I had a reply with an intent to help make Tanner’s dream (#2) come true.

I reached out to Catherine, and told her about this potentially happening. She was ecstatic. We are still working out details, but I cannot wait to see this happen.

However, this post is about what is happening right now. Scott Stratten, of “Un-marketing” fame, is hosting a Tweetathon for Tanner. The goal: raise $15K in 24-hours in an attempt to keep Tanner at home, essentially granting “wish” number twelve.

It is a sobering thought, but I know that we can make it happen.

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