Image by luc legay via Flickr

1 : the act or process or an instance of integrating: as a : incorporation as equals into society or an organization of individuals of different groups (as races) b : coordination of mental processes into a normal effective personality or with the individual’s environment
2 a : the operation of finding a function whose differential is known b : the operation of solving a differential equation

source

This is the content collection end of a social networking and social media strategy. After creating content for various social media platforms, we can integrate the content into our websites, pulling in more SEO (Search Engine Optimization) power, as well as keeping fresh content appearing on the site.

Whether the medium is videos (via YouTube, WellcomeMat or other video sites), photos (via Flickr, PhotoBucket or other photo sharing sites), microblogs (such as Twitter) or other content (FaceBook, FaceBook Fan Pages, RSS feeds and a million others) the goal is to bring together in one place a myriad of content types into one place… aggregation…  The difference is that instead of bringing together the content created by others, for you to keep up with; it is bringing together your own created content in a neat package for others to consume.

There are many different types of integration tools.  Every network has several third party tools that can use API calls (basically, automated scanning) to collect the content you put there and bring it to the collection site.

Through the use of integration tools, I have YouTube videos, Delicious bookmarks, Tweets, FaceBook Fan Page wall posts and even blogsites being promoted on my various websites.  Much of this content is built automatically.  Other content requires me to filter it manually…  A great example, just to the right of this post is the blog widget.  It is promoting the posts I have on one of my WordPress blogs.

So… after spending all of the time building these great social networks using social media platforms, use the content to build a community through integration into your primary websites/blogs.

from Lane’s Active Rain blog