Are you using Amplify yet? If not, I suggest you take a closer look at this site and what it can do for your business. Click here to check out Amplify. This awesome resource was shared by my good friend Jamie Pelaez.

Amplify is a great resource and tool for anyone looking to harness the power of #socialmedia. The functionality of it is one of the best I've seen. You see, #Amplify, like #Ping.fm, allows you to integrate a number of your #socialnetworks in one place so you can broadcast out a message or helpful information to your #followers or #connections all at once.

This is especially helpful when you have multiple social accounts open because it's a pain to individually post to each one. Ping.fm offers a similar service, with the ability to select whether your post will just update your statuses, a micro blog, or full blown blog post.

So why choose @AmplifyTheWeb over @pingfm? I'm glad you asked :-) . I say don't choose. Use both! Here's how I am doing it and why:

First set up a ping.fm account. Set up all your social networks and link them there, minus twitter and facebook for sure, possibly a few others depending on how you want to funnel your followers. Now set up your Amplify account. Now here's the really neat part: amplify allows you to integrate ping.fm as one of your social services.

This is great because currently Amplify doesn't offer to link to as many different #socialplatforms as ping.fm does. So you can benefit from both services, allowing you to post once and have your thought heard across a large number of networks. Maybe in the future Amplify will offer all of the same networks as ping.fm, eliminating the need to have both, but for now they have a great working relationship; where one lacks the other makes up for it.

Speaking of, you may be wondering still why not just go with ping.fm since it has the potential to post to a larger range of networks? Well Amplify has a couple of very neat advantages that ping doesn't.

For starters remember I told you to leave your #twitter and #facebook off of ping.fm? You'll want to set these up directly with Amplify. One of the reasons for this is because Amplify is in and of itself, another social platform. So this is yet another opportunity for you to funnel your followers into networking with you on another platform while simultaneously broadcasting to all your networks. When you update, your friends will see "posted via Amplify.com" and may choose to click on that and join you there too. If you post to twitter and facebook just using ping, it will show as "posted via ping.fm" but people cannot connect with you on ping.

Yes, Amplify allows you to connect with other users, comment and recommend posts you like, and even totally customize your own Amplify page. And so far from my experiences, Amplify users LOVE using the service and are a unique breed of users. The Amplify community is made up of a wide variety of users who all enjoy getting social....and actually have information-rich content to add. I think this tends to be the case more so here versus sites like Twitter because users are not limited to the number of characters they can use when broadcasting a message.

For the simple fact that Amplify not only is a #socialplatform in itself, allows the integration of a ping.fm account for maximum visibility across all your networks, AND your posts are not limited in length, this is why I've chosen this to be my central hub for all of my social activity.

Touching back on why having the ability to make longer posts is important, this goes back to the second reason why I chose to leave twitter out of my ping.fm account. By the way, Amplify does allow you to link up multiple twitter accounts. Amplify allows you to post your blurb to twitter....and if it is longer than 140 characters (the maximum character count for any twitter post), it automatically appends your post at say, 120 characters, and inserts this at the end:
(Cont) your bit.ly link here......
See here for an example- www.twitter.com/katievega .

Your followers can just click to read the rest of your full blown thought instead of trying to get creative with your abbreviations to make it fit or tweeting 3 times to fit it all in. Again, now your followers have the opportunity to get social with you on yet another platform. In my opinion, twitter is good for reaching a wider audience of people but Amplify has a special ambience that may be more conducive to building long term business relationships/friendships without all the noise.

In case I forgot to mention it, did I mention that Amplify allows you to integrate your bit.ly account? This is so great because you no longer have to manually shorten those links before posting, it's all done for you!

One more cool thing is that you can get your own Amplify email address, and email your posts to that address. This is really convenient for getting around any technical issues the site may be having and still post your update, and also to post from your mobile device. Even if you don't have a data plan or there is no signal where you are at, you are able to save your thoughts as drafts in your email account and send when you are able to pick up signal. And how cool is this- when you email your Amplify address with a picture attached you just took with your phone, it will post with your update!

The only thing that could be cooler than this would be if Amplify would allow you to confirm your mobile device attached to your account, and have the ability to text your updates!

If you are on more than 2 social networks I highly recommend you get set up on Amplify and ping.fm to help you manage your updates. I think we have only seen the beginning of it's abilities and I think there will be many updates and new features in the future.

Now if only I could hook up my Amplify account to SocialOomph? Maybe that's too much to ask. Or maybe not? What do you think @dgrossman & @egoldstein ?
;-)

Happy Social Networking!

Katie Vega