Use Ping.fm to send your message across all your networks at once.
Ping.fm calls itself “a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.” It’s currently in beta mode, which means it ‘s free to sign up, and try it out.
Post a message to the Ping.fm service, and Ping then takes that message and distributes it out to all your social networking sites for you… so you only have to send it once.
You tell Ping.fm which social-networks you belong to (they support probably every one you already use), add them all to your list within Ping, and then when you use Ping.fm to send a message, you just let Ping take care of the rest. Type it once, and Ping can get sent out as your latest Twitter post, Facebook Status, Facebook Note, Facebook Photo upload, Linkedin Status, Myspace Status, Myspace Bulletin, etc. Check out their mainpage for all the networks they support… a list of over thirty different ones. It’s got built in support for URL-shortening too, and tells you how many characters your message will be, so it can stay Twitter-friendly.
You can send your messages to Ping.fm from many ways too… via SMS, instant messages, email, 3rd party apps, and more. They make this very easy for you.
Signing up for a ping.fm account is about as basic as it can get… email address, user name, password, you’re done. Then, when you’ve logged in, you can start adding all your networks, which does require you logging in to your various profile pages through their site (and presumably giving them your passwords… tin-foil hat-wearers need not apply I guess, but anyone trying to create a business like this, if they’re going to be successful at all, the privacy of this info has got to be fully respected… they wouldn’t dare compromise that.)
I only wish you could use it to send messages out to members of a Facebook Group, a list of email addresses, or more info beyond a “status update” but the reality is this service is still in beta and I’m sure they’re working on this.
For musicians, this is great simply because when you want to send a quick promotional news item or reminder out to your fanbase, if you’ve been active online you probably have many different places where you connect with fans, which makes updating each one of them separately a very tedious process. So to only have to type your message once, and have it sent out across all your networks just makes things so much more efficient and easy, which, I hope, will make you communicate more often, thus strengthening the bonds you have with your fans, and keep you top of their minds.
