Do you subscribe to your own RSS feeds? You should. It may sound like a strange form of vanity but it's not. It's a defense mechanism. If you don't subscribe, how do you know what your readers are getting? I subscribe to my personal site and social media feeds, as well as those of sites I work on. Several times I've caught and fixed problems with feeds before clients or readers have noticed anything.

This week I caught a problem on my own LinkedIn account. I'm not sure why, but LinkedIn suddenly started aggregating my Twitter account. This is not something that I'm interested in. I caught it after only a few tweets because it showed up in my LinkedIn feed. If I didn't subscribe it could have been months before I noticed.

What should you subscribe to?

• Your company site
• Your blog
• Your social media sites
• Hashtags and news searches for you, your company, or your industry

Any subscription you'd add?

I use Google Reader which I sync to several computers and other devices, but there are a number of good feed readers available.

BlogDesk is a fairly nice desktop blogging client. In simpler terms it's a piece of software that lets you post to your blog from your desktop without using the web browser. This allows for some added features over a lot of blogging platforms. It supports a wide range of blog platforms including WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, and Serendipity.

My thoughts of BlogDesk:

• Easy to install
• Easy to setup with your blog
• Supports WordPress custom fields, but doesn't support custom fields in other blog platforms.
• Reasonable formatting and control of text
• No trouble handling images
• Had not trouble pulling in my categories
• Allows editign of older posts, even those written before I installed it.
• You can schedule posts for later
• Spellcheck as you would expect from something like this
• Auto tag generation is a nice touch

Overall I was impressed. A nice piece of software. My only dissapointment was that it did not support custom fields for anything other than WordPress. I develop with Drupal an I use custom fields extensively.  The lack of support for custom field rules out my use of this product and means I will not be suggesting it for most of my clients. For anyone who wants to post to a blog or site without custom fields, I would reccomend it.

Is your social media strategy backwards? Are you tweeting about what you've posted on Facebook? Posting on Facebook about what you're doing on Twitter or your Wordpress.com blog? Social media tools like this are beautiful tools, but they are just tools. Don't let them be the focus. They are to direct traffic, not to be the target of your traffic. Post your content on your own site, and use your social media tools to bring the people to you.

If you're directing traffic to your social media tools, your pushing people the wrong way.

I've been doing some experimentation with integrating RSS feeds from my accounts at Twitter and Delicious. Drupal has a whole range of options for importing content or aggregating content from RSS. You can see the results of my most resent experiments on social media aggregation. Delicious.com can be very picky about what sites it lets pull in its RSS feeds. Sites hosted at Bluehost for instance, seem to be banned. How did I get around this? Feedburner. I used feedburner to pull the feed, then aggregated the new feedburner RSS from my Drupal site. Feedburner has a new feed, delicious.com has a reliable source pulling content, and I have my aggregated content. Everyone's happy.

You may notice this page coming and going as I change the setup (currently gone). I'm experimenting with various modules and configurations.

Good social media tools let you get your message to everyone who has internet access, but do you need to reach the whole world? Twitter has millions of users around the World. Do you sell your service around the World?

If you provide a local service, you might need a more local audience.  Maybe you should consider a blog, rather than a micro-blogging service like Twitter. You could still use twitter to advertise the blog, but focus the blog on a more local audience. You might also consider local forums or a more regional social media outlet. There isn't a local social media outlet? Make one! There are a lot of social media tools that available. Need a blog? Self-hosted Wordpress is a good choice. Need forums? Drupal can easily give you forums, blogs and much more. Do you really think Twitter is the best option? Have you considered Status.Net? Status.Net is a micro-blogging platform like Twitter, that you control.

Social media tools can be wonderful things. If you use the right tools, you can make sure they work for you, and not the other way around. Maybe the right choice for you is to stick with the social media giants, but be aware that there are choices. Should your social media strategy target a world wide audience? Maybe. Should you target a local audience? Definitely. Maybe the right choice is all of the above.

What do you think about regional social media? Leave me a comment, and let me know.

An interesting tweet came across my desk today. Made me think about why I like some Twitter marketing campaigns, and dislike others.

"Look at a company, then strip Twitter away. What’s left? That’s when you see who is social and who just jumped on a trend. via @mediaphyter" - @baekdal

The difference between the marketing campaigns I like, and those I dislike is what happens when you strip away Twitter. Twitter shouldn't be the product, but a tool that directs people to the product. Use Twitter just to be social, or use it to highlight content that you have elsewhere. Use it for both.  Do not use Twitter as the sole repository of your priceless content. It's a poor choice for that. It's not very search friendly, and it's time sensitive. What you tweet today will be seen today, and maybe tomorrow. It probably will never be seen after next week. So if social media and micro-blogging interests you, by all means give Twitter a chance. Just remember, Twitter can be interesting, and it can be fun. It can be a wonderful tool to drive traffic, but it's a poor choice for publishing content.

Sounds like I'm misquoting Robert De Niro. Are you following me? Are you subscribing to this site? You should be. Subscribing to sites that interest you can save you a lot of time. They let you know when there's new content, so that you can read on your own schedule.  You can also follow me on one of my two Twitter accounts, or see what I've bookmarked on Delicious.com. If you like anything you see here, let me know by writing a comment. Yo can also use the Share button at the bottom of each post to let others know what you think.

• Tschet of Twitter
• RivenDesign on Twitter
• Tschet at Delicious.com

This is the reason you should be using social media tools within your organization. Not because it's popular, but because it will improve your organization. Want to know how? Go watch the video.

Over the past few years a wide array of "Web 2.0" technologies and communities have appeared on the Internet; these include Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, and del.icio.us. Organizations are in the early stages of incorporating these tools into their work, a phenomenon I call "Enterprise 2.0." - Andrew McAfee on Enterprise 2.0

Writing Project: 25 Words of Social Media Wisdom - Liz Strauss

Accessible Social Media can give everyone an equal voice. It can enhance people's ability to communicate at their own time, and on their own terms.

h/t Glenda Watson Hyatt