The following article was first seen on Search Marketing Standard:
Social media has brought along many amazing innovations – and Ping.fm is one of the best kept secrets among social media marketers to make their job a lot easier. If being able to conveniently get an update out to all your social networks, no matter where you are (café, bookstore, conference, etc), in a matter of seconds, sounds appealing … then read on to learn more about Ping.fm.

What Can Ping.fm Do?

Ping.fm allows you to post to your social networks at any time, from anywhere in the world. You could make a Facebook post or a tweet from your cellphone, from instant message, from an iPhone, from a computer, really from just about any electronic medium.

Ping.fm gives you a single access point to all your social networking sites. Instead of needing to log in to each site separately to do an update, just do it once and ping.fm will cross post your update for you. The technology is easy to use yet incredibly powerful.

What Sites Can Ping.fm Post To?

Ping can post to almost all the well-known social media sites, as well as many of the lesser known ones. Supported sites include: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Shout’Em, MySpace, Hi5, Blogger, WordPress, Xanga and many more.

Why Use Ping?

There are two main reasons to use ping:

First, it saves you a lot of time. Each social network requires you to go to their website and log in before you can post your update. Let’s say each one takes 2 minutes. If you’re updating 3 sites, that’s 6 minutes.

The difference between a quick update on your phone and a 6 minute interruption in your work flow is vast. It’s just far more convenient to do it all at once – And it doesn’t even cost you anything.

Another reason to use ping is that you can update on the fly. Something funny or relevant happen during your life? Send ping a text right away. You don’t need to wait until you’re in front of your computer.

If a significant event happens, you may not want to wait until you’re in front of the computer to post. If a massive event happens that’s relevant to your industry happens unexpectedly, (oil spill, death of someone important,) you want to be able to post about it – immediately.

Ping for Mass Social Media

If you’re just getting into social media, if you’re not using many services or not updating often, then Ping.fm might not be for you.

On the other hand, if you’re taking full advantage of the social media sphere, if you’re on multiple services and you’re updating often, if you’re doing social media on a mass scale, then Ping.fm could be a lifesaver.

The interface is easy to use and the service is completely free. If you think Ping sounds like something that could help you and your social media, why not give it a shot and see if you like it? I love it!

Peter Marino is the Senior Partner and CMO of reelWebDesign.com a search marketing firm in NYC. If you’d like Peter to write for your marketing blog contact him at peter@reelwebdesign.com