I illustrated what a hub-focused approach might look like in Part 1 and gave an example of a tool that supports that philosophy, Posterous. This is what it might look like if you were using tools that didn’t provide a way to focus attention to your hub.

In this diagram, content created by the user is sent out to Twitter and Facebook, but the viewer is lead away from the user’s main web presence. The tools are usually set in the context of a service or another small or niche social media site, like TokBox, or Qik. Neither TokBox nor Qik provide a way to use their tools in a way that easily points the user back to their main web presence. Often, this is a necessary. The tools that are provided are so unique that they can’t be replicated using a more hub-focused approach.

However, some “services” that lead the viewer away from the content creator’s main web presence and have minimal benefit, in my opinion. I believe a site like TweetLister falls into this category. In this case, the user actually recreates content they have already created somewhere else, a listing for a house, and then sets up the service to send messages out to their Twitter audience leading them back to TweetLister. Proponents argue that their is some SEO benefit from taking this approach, but at what cost?

Choosing the right tools.

The same result – leading people to your listings via Twitter – could easily be achieved using a tweet scheduling service (like Twuffer, Tweetlater or FutureTweets) and directing people back to the listing page on your site, where they can then see more of your content, search, etc.

So, in evaluating potential tools, unless the tool provides an extremely unique benefit, I’m going to lean toward the tool that keeps the focus on my main hub or hubs.

(This post is part of a presentation experiment at HAR Digital Media Spring Training for rookies.)

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