The great promise of the Web, which was finally fulfilled by the pervasive existence of blogs, was that everyone would be a publisher. With cheap, easy tools, anyone can publish work that is immediately accessible across the globe.There is literally no fundamental barrier to the creation and distribution of your work.

There is a new epochal shift whose effects are only now beginning to be felt. While everyone can be a publisher — more people are also programmers.

I don’t mean people who write computer code — which a lot of people can do — but I mean programmer in the sense of a TV or radio programmer.

What’s driving this is the pervasiveness of the Stream. More and more people interact using status updates and other ephemeral, time-limited messages: Twitter updates, Facebook status updates, TXT messages, Media posting on YouTube, Vimeo, Posterous, and similar sites.  All of these add up to a Stream of output.

What differentiates the Stream from my blog posts or from email messages is that, at any given time, some people will see parts of this Stream and others will miss it.

And those who miss it won’t come back to it unless they are highly motivated. There is an inherent time component that I have to take into account.

In other words, as a person who creates content, I’ve got to think like a programmer, keeping in mind not only what content I am creating, but also when I push it out, how I push it out, and how often I do that.

Here are five tips to thinking like a TV programmer when it comes to linking your blog with social media:

Tip #1: Schedule reruns.

Ever watch C-SPAN? Have you ever noticed that they will rerun certain shows? That’s not just to fill time. It’s to give more people a chance to see the show. Use this idea by repeating yourself if you have something important to let people know about. There is no perfect time to add your link into the stream. There are a number of good times. Add a link to your new blog post on Twitter right when you’ve posted it. Then come back around in 4-6 hours and repeat the update. The maybe once or twice more, with sufficient time in between that you can be sure you’re catching different people. Do NOT go overboard with this because people will just tune you out and it’s rude. But a bit of “twepeating” is useful.

Watch your own behavior and experiment with different times. You’ll find a good mix. For me, I’ve found that some of my friends are reading in the early morning (eastern), but there’s another big block that is reading in the late afternoon (eastern). And, while Sunday afternoon is death for news, it’s great for social media interactions!

Tip #2: Tease different.

Lots of people, when they complete a blog post, will paste the title into their Twitter client, add a link, and just go with that. If you’ve written a decent title that should work OK. But you might also want to think about varying your language, even highlighting different things. For instance, if there’s a key question or insight in your blog post, try repeating that question along with the link.

The same goes for sharing the link in Facebook, too. As you repeat, try different teases, calling out different aspects of your post.

Tip #3: Interact with commenters.

The vast majority of blog posts garner few to no comments. If you are lucky enough to generate comment activity, mention that in social media streams! “Great conversation in the comments at this post about widgets. http://xx.xx/xxxx.” People like to go see what other people are talking about.

If you don’t have a plug-in on your blog that lets people follow the comments on a particular post, get one. Then make sure you respond to people when they comment on your blog. They will feel a greater connection and will start to come back more and more.  If you “know” them on Twitter, consider sending them an “@” message after you comment, with a shortened link to your blog post. “@blahblah Great comment, thanks! I have some thoughts about that which I added in the comments. http://xx.xx/xxxx”. This may intrigue others to take a peek.

Tip #4:  Syndicate to Facebook.

Lots of people will read my blog at my website, but there are some eople in my audience who seem to live their entire online lives in Facebook. I’ve found that if I repost the articles on Facebook, I am likely to get comments and interactions from people who never post on my blog. (You do this by writing a “note” in Facebook — make sure you set it so “everyone” can read it unless for some reason it’s top secret.) It’s like I’m “synidcating” my show to another outlet. If I have the energy, I’ll mention comments in one sphere in the other (e.g., “great conversation going on at Facebook on this post, too. <link>”.

You can set up your Notes in Facebook to automatically import your blog, so that each time that blog is updated a Note is generated. (This typically happens within an hour or so of the original posting and sometimes it is a bit flaky but it beats doing it manually.)

Tip #5: Maintain flow and mix it up.

With a few exceptions, the stream approach is not very compatible with a “news bureau” mindset where you just broadcast your own content. For one thing, just issuing social media updates about your own content is seen as overly self-promotional. For another thing, unless you are in the breaking news business, you will have long stretches of no updates. In an environment with constantly-flowing streams of information, you want to be a presence throughout the day.

So don’t just post links to your blogs, but link to other interesting things — friends’ blogs, useful articles, good videos. Do this regularly, so there is a constant (not overbearing) flow.

Remember, with all these tips, I am not advocating spamming your Stream wantonly. You’ve got to be providing useful content. Some of your posts might be throwaways that you don’t necessarily need to go hammering on — it happens to everyone. But for the blog posts, questions, or other information that you want to get out, you need to have an approach that recognizes the time element and allows more people to see your material.

What are your tips for handling that?