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Facebook, Twitter, your website, forums, newsletters, and so on: How do these pieces fit together?  Here are three easy ways to connect your community and improve your online strategy.

• Cross-post on a regular basis. Your outposts are one big media organism that wants to be fed. Is there a great discussion on your Facebook page? Link to it from Twitter. Is there a thought-provoking article in your last e-newsletter? Post it with a discussion question on your favorite forum. The trick is to have a 360-degree view of all of your content. For every piece of content you release, ask yourself, how can this be repurposed, and where? Before you know it, your community will start buzzing, and your number of engaged members will increase.

• Designate a staff member. The core of the disjointed social media problem is usually behind the scenes; no one knows what's happening. You don't need to hire a whole new position or create a staffing bottleneck through your webmaster, simply appoint someone in your marketing or communications department who is responsible for monitoring your social media outposts. Over time, this person will gain the ability to see the big picture of what is happening on all platforms and keep the rest of the staff informed accordingly. He or she does not need to be responsible for content generation or even be the sole poster to the outposts, but you need someone around to say, "Maybe we shouldn't post four times to Facebook today; our market is saturated," or "Someone asked a question about this great topic over on LinkedIn; we should send them over to the discussion happening on Facebook."

• Simplify your presence.  The natural social media tendency is to fill up as much space on as many platforms as possible. While you may increase your association's footprint, this tactic is usually counterproductive. Instead of having a separate Facebook page for every special interest group or an official page on each obscure networking site, manage a few outposts really well. When associations develop too many outposts, connecting them together becomes an unnecessary burden. Identify where you members are most likely to engage with you, and invest your resources there.

Sara L. Wood is manager of digital communications at the National Court Reporters Association in Vienna, Virginia. She is a member of ASAE's Leadership Academy Class of 2012 and her Twitter handle is @SaraLWood.