In my last two blogs we looked at some of the dominant social networking sites on the web and in particular Twitter, LinkedIn and TubeMogul. Choosing which social networking sites work best for you though, is a very personal decision based your own business needs and style of working.

In this blog therefore, I want to look at how you can both optimise and maximise your web presence regardless of which social media sites you prefer to use.

For those of you who need to have, or would like to have, a 24/7 presence on the web but don’t always have the time to manage the logistics Ping.fm might be just what you are looking for.  Ping.fm is a site that enables you to connect to a large number of social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and LinkedIn (as well as 38 other popular sites!)  You can view the major networks they are connected to here. Also, if you haven’t already set up some of these networks you can do so through Ping directly.  The reason that Ping is such a useful tool is that by connecting all your networks from one place you only need to create one post on Ping which will then connect to all your other networking sites. This not only means a lot of saved time, but it also enables you to distribute your postings to a very wide audience should you wish to do so.  In Ping’s own words “Ping.fm was created for the sole purpose of making it as easy as possible to share your posts with the world. Now you don’t have to fumble around the web in order to post anymore, you can just post once from wherever you want, and be done with it.”

Ping.fm has recently been acquired by Seesmic! which is very good news for all users. Seesmic! has the size and capability to not only improve Ping’s core services but also the technical capabilities to add new exciting features.  If you haven’t already checked out Ping.fm then maybe you should! It’s free to sign up and easy to navigate.

Once you have successfully linked up all your social media sites you will then want to distribute a number of key messages regarding your business.  A site called Postlater.com allows you to do just this by using a powerful scheduling engine. To quote: “It’s my centralized post scheduling cockpit, for services that natively support future-dating and those that don’t”.  Postlater is not a free application but the cost far outweighs the time it saves you in the long term and, in my opinion, it’s well worth looking into.

My next blog will be covering the issues concerning ‘scheduled notifications’ and take note that I haven’t said ‘automated Tweets!’  (Twitter is just one very useful social media application remember, and there are thousands more out there)  I am preparing myself for a barrage of comments as I know there are a lot of people who don’t agree with scheduling programmes, but equally there are many people who do need to have a presence and are strapped for time. This service is for you and I look forward to sharing my ideas soon.

Don’t forget that if you want any further information on any of the above topics then please do get in touch. On The Go is already helping successful businesses implement their social networking strategies from helping them set up a consistent company profile through to scheduling their media messages giving them a 24/7 web presence.