By Alaina Sheer,

Thinking outside the box is as easy as changing the way you see the box.

As marketers we tend to view each medium as an isolated channel serving to only communicate with potential consumers within that channel. We talk often of “breaking through the clutter” because consumers are “tuning out” all of our messages and then some of us throw our hands in the air, understandably so, and say, “where do we start?” 

The first place is to start is in your own mind. 

Instead of visualizing Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube as separate entities think of them as one. All are  intrinsically tied together and becoming more so every day as the users are demanding ways to integrate their content.

If I haven’t lost you… I really hope I haven’t - here’s an example. 

I first learned of Twitter at SXSW Interactive in 2008 when the crowd literally controlled the speaker’s questions by using Twitter to collectively change the dialogue during an interview with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook.

I immediately discounted the silly name and realized that Twitter was definitely something I should join. But I still hesitated.

As much as I wanted to try Twitter, I couldn’t rationalize or justify taking time away from my blog’s active comment section and post writing. I needed to be sold on Twitter.

And then, while surfing other blogs, I saw my first Twitter widget.

They look like this, as seen on Twitip.com, an excellent blog on Twitter by ProBlogger or @problogger if you’re on Twitter.

or can be custom designed to look like this. 

See the little Tweet there? This musician has it feeding into the top of his page. He’s using that prime piece of real estate to update his fans. 

Twitter widgets automatically update just seconds after you update your Twitter account.

Suddenly I saw Twitter in a new light - I could use Twitter to update my web site’s visitors instantly. 

My readers are very engaged in my life and this would be the perfect way to keep them coming back to my site for updates without having to write an entire post. For a brand or a corporation Twitter should be viewed, not only as a social marketing tool, but as a simple way to instantly update your web site’s content. 

Creating a community online and building a personal brand is all about keeping your visitors engaged in your story, whatever the story may be. 

For the first few months I used Twitter only to update my blog readers through my Twitter widget feeding right onto my home page.  As a result, each Tweet I posted had relevence to my story, to my blog and to my brand message. Soon I noticed my follower count climbing.

Turns out I was killing two birds with one stone. 

Today I have over 2,400 followers on Twitter and Twitter now accounts for over 17% of my blog’s traffic. And when you’re talking about over 20,000 unique visitors a month that’s a hefty chunk of traffic. My overall site traffic is also up because Twitter is improving my reader experience and my site analytics also tell me the number one outbound link clicked is directly to my Twitter page. 

It didn’t take me long to integrate all of my content as much as possible. For example, when I upload a picture to Flickr my Facebook fan page is updated along with the Flickr widget on my blog. The options for integrating content are constantly evolving as more and more blogging and social media geeks like myself invent ways to merge the mediums. 

Oh and did I mention I can update my Flickr and my Twitter from my iPhone? Yeah. There’s that too. We’ll only see more multi-platform integration in the future. Choosing one or the other is now history, brands should and can be everywhere. 

The lesson

Don’t let all of the social media options scare you. Instead start looking at all of it as one platform. Focus your energy on your message, your products and your story - like you always have. 

Sharing it is the easy part. 

It’s all connected. Are you? 

If you are, please follow Fahlgren on Twitter - @Fahlgren.