It Would Be Great If Ning|Glam Allowed Members To Connect Their Social Media Accounts

[Vincent Wright]

I just visited a site which has a page which states: "Connect Your Social Media Accounts"

They are still a FREE site, yet, they have a great page and a very nice email marketing campaign encouraging all their members to connect all their social media sites.  

Those of us who're paying fees to keep our communities here on Ning HAVE GREAT communities but, wouldn't it be GREATER STILL if we had such a feature on all our Ning|Glam sites?

+Vincent Wright

Brandergy.com

[Eric Suesz]

Hey, Vincent. Can you elaborate a bit on this or provide the example? Some services are very interested in growing their reach across platforms for their own web service, so I can see the benefit for services like this. I guess one way to approach this would be to focus instead on the benefits for members of Ning Networks.

I am also curious what you mean by "connect" sites to Ning. Connect all of your accounts sign-in purposes? For sharing across platforms? Want to know more about how you want to see things connected and what a member would see as a benefit by connecting accounts.

I know you are big (to put it mildly) on pure networking, so are you saying you want to see ways to auto-post throughout all of your social networking accounts so that one message cascades everywhere? What do you mean by connecting social media accounts, and how would people use that on, say, a social networking site for knitters? Or sailboat enthusiasts. Or city-specific networks. Or whatever. 

Thanks!

[Vincent Wright]

Hi, Eric,

Thanks kindly for your quick reply, for sharing DukeCityFix, and, too, for featuring this discussion.

I should also thank you for making me smile with this: "I know you are big (to put it mildly) on pure networking," lol

To go directly to the heart of your question, earlier this week, a Twitter friend shared a post from Mashable Social Media entitled "The Pros and Cons of 4 Personal Branding Sites"  (via @mashsocialmedia) The shortened link to that post is http://bit.ly/L2kFPv 

On that particular post, Mashable Social Media discusses the following 4 Personal Branding Sites:

1. About.Me

2. Flavors.Me

3. Zerply.com and

4. BrandYourself.com

 Each of the 4 personal branding sites permits its members to link to their Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc. profiles.

On member profiles on Brandergy.com, I allow members to add links to the above social media platforms + 2 others but, IMAGINE if ALL Ning|Glam sites provided functionality similar to the above 4 personal branding sites?!?! (Pardon the exclamation points but, personally, it excites the heck out of me as to what this *could* mean in terms of adding more energy to Ning|Glam-based sites like Brandergy.com

Off to enjoy a bit of Father's Day - and wish ALL fathers a great day today - and BEYOND!

Keep STRONG, Eric!

+Vincent Wright

[SweetPotato]

You could add these as non-essential profile questions, eg Facebook page, twitter page etc, and then write some jquery to insert icons next to each answer. In fact now I say that I might turn my attention to doing just that over the next few days.

[HELP SEEKER]

interesting and simple solution, sure some networks will benefit from it

[Vincent Wright]

SweetPotato,

As mentioned above, I've already allocated places for the top five social media sites (+ 2 other sites) 

But, I have to tell you that I like your idea a lot.  

But more important still:  I LOVE THE LOOK of http://www.deferolaw.com/!

Clean, well-conceived, well-orginized, and, well, just as sweet looking as my favorite sweet potato pie! 

In other words: Cool site... lol

[SweetPotato]

Ha ha, thanks. Sometimes I think it's too black and depressing but then I look at it quite a bit :-)
So do you already ask profile questions to capture other social site urls of your members?
SP

[Vincent Wright]

That's the trouble with good designers, SweetPotato! lol They don't appreciate their own work! (Just like I KNOW I appreciate the work of chefs more than they do! lol (Which is the mentality which caused me to become a recruiter all those long, long years ago.))

On the profile questions: Yes, for a couple of years, I've captured social urls for Brandergy members.  Here's how those questions look:

Website (MARKET your primary site)

http://www.Brandergy.com

2nd Website (If you wish, MARKET your secondary site)

http://VincentWright.com

Facebook (Optional but, recommended)

http://www.facebook.com/vincent.wright

Linkedin (Optional but, recommended)

http://Linkedin.com/in/VincentWright

Twitter (Optional but, recommended)

http://twitter.com/VincentWright

Google+ (Optional but, recommended)

http://bit.ly/VincentWright

What's your Pinterest? (Optional but, recommended)

http://pinterest.com/wrighthandman/

[SweetPotato]

Ha ha, nice analogy....I'll take that.
So, to the profile questions/social site capture, I'm not sure what your network is missing. Is it simply the presentation you're not keen on?

[Vincent Wright]

2 final things before the NBA Finals, SweetPotato:

1.) I wish that the presentation on my site could be better.  However,

2.) My BIG WISH is beyond just my own site.  Rather, it's for ALL Ning|Glam sites. (

While it may not seem like a big thing, as Ning|Glam Owners, we need everything we can get which could help us help our members engage more robustly with Ning|Glam sites across the boards (no pun intended.))

[HELP SEEKER]

this has been done already , here http://developer.ning.com/ningapps/directory/about?appUrl=http%3A%2...

[Vincent Wright]

AH! BIG TIME THANKS, HELP SEEKER! ( I do remember seeing this back in 2011 but, I thought there was a problem with it but, I'll try it again...and, again, THANKS!)

[Vincent Wright]

HMMMM....

On second thought, HELP SEEKER, Like2Link does not provide the functionality I had in mind.  

Like2Link offers only the following:

 
MySpace
Twitter
del.icio.us
Facebook
StumbleUpon
Digg

Like2Link does not give members a chance to share LINKS TO their social media profiles on Brandergy.com and other Ning/Glam sites...

It only gives members the opportunity to "Share This Page"...

LIKE2LINK SETTINGS are also fairly limited in functionality:

Allow Like2Link to: