There are so many social networking websites on the Internet today including forums, blogs, and social bookmarking networks. Also many websites that would not typically provide a community are adding them because of the added benefits they bring. Through these different websites you can easily network with other Internet users withs similar Interests. The biggest problem is that there are millions of us! In order to get recognized and remembered, you need to stand out from the crowd. With these simple tips, you will be able to create a unique presence at these networks and get recognized throughout them all.
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Sign-up. After awhile, you may notice a few websites that keep crossing your path. Since they are typically free, sign-up with them and create a profile. You don’t necessarily have to participate, but establishing a profile will keep your options open and if you do later decide to participate you will have an older start date, which helps with creditability.
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Username. Choose a unique username that will most likely not be used anywhere else. This can be really tough but if you pick something so common than you won’t be able to preserve the same username on every website, which is very important when trying to brand who you are online. Keep it simple, unique, and memorable.
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Profile. You must fill out your profile, do this first right after you sign-up. Fill out your profile with the same information across all the social networks. What I do is go to one that I’ve already filled out and copy what is in one profile into my new one. This way I have the same information and it is consistent. Also if it is a network I don’t plan to visit that often, I will try to only include the basic information so that I won’t have to worry about it getting out dated.
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Signature. Mostly forums will allow you to have a signature, I don’t recommend using them on blogs though. Try to keep your signature the same across all social networks and make it something interesting to. If you sign just your name, try to include a tag line or something special after it to make it memorable. Don’t use a huge font size or put a lot of graphics in your signature, this will annoy readers more than anything.
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Avatar. Create one avatar to use on all social networks you participate in. Your avatar should be unique and give the visitors a quick sense of who you are. I currently use an image of myself as a gnome, which matches my username GnomeyNewt. It is playful and silly, and that is the image that I do want others to see when they see my avatar. Maybe some people think “weird”, but thats cool too!
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Participate. Once you join these networks, pick a few of them to actually participate in. You don’t have to spend all your time there but drop in and see what is going on. For forums you could easily check on the “new posts” that were started or replied to recently. For blogs, subscribe to the RSS and keep updated and try to comment regularly. As for social bookmarking websites, find one that really fits you well such at StumbleUpon and learn how to use it.
Social networking can be a great way to meet others with similar interests. You can speed up the getting to know you phase by presenting yourself the same on all networks. There are many times that I’ve seen a user at 2-3 different networks and finally contacted them or wanted to look further into what they were up to. If you keep yourself consistent throughout the networks, you can create a unique presence that will get you noticed. Is there anything special that you do to get noticed?
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I’ve nothing to hide.
Bluejar let others notice me. I get around 5-10 visitors daily!
Other than that, I try Stumbling on sites and Digging (but none suceeded yet!)
I get a few users from delicious each day so it is a great website to gain some traffic. And of course from Sarah too!
Glad you guys get some visitors your way from my blog, that is pretty cool.
As for StumbleUpon, it takes a while to meet friends and get in the grove, but you can find a few friends and get your links on their page they will start to stumble you more often. When I Stumble, I do only my friends sites!
I have only had a little bit traffic from delicious, but I think if you make promote it more we could get more hits from them.
Really nice post, Sarah. You’re such a good writer.
It’s kind of funny. I really enjoy writing but forget to socialize online. Thanks for remining me
I’m signed up with a couple of them although not the most active on it I must say, I do stumble some things every now and then though but just recently started. Did get one of my entries stumbled quite good by a couple though and that gave me like 3000 uniques during the next day but of course the downside from a service like that is that the effect is pretty short lasting.
I do get quite some extra traffic simply by people clicking on my names in comments, it accounts for about 100~200 unique visitors on a daily basis so that’s quite nice. For me that is pretty much the most stable source of incoming traffic, the rest just comes in waves every now and then.
haha the gnome isn’t weird i think it’s unique! i use stumbleupon a lot to meet other bloggers and I also use mybloglog. I haven’t had any traffic from delicious maybe a few visitors per week tops.
I agree with the branding issue. I have recently started to brand even my own name but in social networks I generally use one name only. I found this really helps to make connections and to be recognized as you mentioned Sarah.
They surely help in creating a great community of online friends and acquaintances. I can’t believe that I didn’t get into social networks any earlier than when I did.
Monika
@Ad Tracker: Thanks for the stumble and kind words. It is fun to socialize, commenting on blogs count!
@Slelvi: I would think comment name clicking would probably bring in better traffic than StumbleUpon overall. But I have found some sites in StumbleUpon since I’ve really started to use it so I find it from a users point of view helpful.
@shaun: My brother has no idea what a gnome is. So I never know what people will think about it!
@Monika: Me either, I didn’t have a clue what social networks were, as far as social bookmarking. I’m really enjoying it now!
I don’t seem to get any traffic at all from delicious but maybe it’s cos I have neglected to pay any attention to it. Most of my traffic comes from MyBlogLog, SU and the various links other great sites like this one have been so gracious to offer me. I need to spend an even larger slice of time on this!
Your last step is the hard part - not because it’s not fun, but because it takes so much time. My blog isn’t monetized - I blog for fun - so I can’t afford to spend much time in the social networks.
I generally try to keep my Avatar same through all the social networks . This way people can generally associate it with me .
In terms of usernames, I would have one point to add to that.
It would be best if you chose one that was 6 characters or more because some social networking and bookmarking sites require you to have a 5 or 6 letter minimum, thus you wouldn’t be able to keep the same username if you had your favourite username at 4 characters at one site and then not be able to use it at another site.
This happened to me and I’m considering if I should change my username at some of the sites. Luckily my community is not very developed yet.
Usernames? Too late, I already have a few different combos
As for participation, I don’t have time for all. Would you recommend a few worth the time?
@Lillie: It is very hard at times, this last week personally I haven’t done much socialization at all with my group writing project taking up most of my time. But when you get the chance to, focus on only a few of the ones you like and you can meet new bloggers and share some ideas. And if you just keep your profiles consistent people will find you!
@Jonathan: I find mostly control panels like for domains or hosting have that character restriction, but haven’t found any of the vbulletin forums or bookmarking websites to have the constriction yet. If they did, I would be complaining because I wouldn’t be able to use GnomeyNewt username and we can’t have that! :c)
@TechZilo: You can work from now on to keep a similar or the same username. Right now I’m focusing on StumbleUpon and Digg for social bookmarking and I like MyBlogLog.com and The Blog Experiment forums (probably because there are potion bottles in the logo and that is just cool).
Sarah, I have joined so many networks, I finally created a page were I list them all, and then I try to remember to add new profiles to it as I join new networks. I also try to include a link to it in each post I do about the new networks that I join.
Oh that reminds me to add a forum I joined last week.
Sorry I did not get to write a post for the Group project, but it looks like you got a tremendous amount of participation…congratulations, it looks like some awesome posts are part of it.
Thats a great idea, I might add something like that to my about page!
Yes, it is a great thing. I have had to use it many times when signing up for other networks, since many of them want to know what your other network ids are and such. Lots of times I get people going down my list of networks and signing up for numerous networks.
I find it surprising that social sites do not send me traffic (apart from SU, where I stumbled 2 of my posts when I joined it recently). Most of my traffic comes from Google searches.
BTW, somebody asked me whether it is acceptable to stumble our own posts. What do you think, Sarah?
I know a lot of bloggers that stumble and digg their own posts. There seems to be a mix in opinion though, some say its okay others say do it only on your best posts. I haven’t heard too many bloggers flat out say don’t do it. Also if you stumble your own posts — make sure to build your profile up with a lot of friends and stumble stumble stumble! Otherwise you probably won’t get that many visitors just from lack of reaching other stumblers profiles.
Personally I don’t Stumble my own posts first. I will after somebody else stumbles me, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with giving yourself extra shot at getting more visitors.
I know this is an older post but I wanted to make note of two things. First that I agree you should always try to create profiles anywhere they are free. Make sure you create a profile on the site, and a bio/signature if applicable. After that if you do nothing else, you should make an introductory post. In a community forum, or comment on a general article. The reason is simple, different social networks and communities have different setups concerning how spiders are able to crawl them. In some communities, unless you are a “friend” or have posted, your profile will be invisible. By making even tha tsingle post, all of your bio information and homepage link will be crawled.
Granted, doing so isin’t going to create a HUGE boost in your rankings or anything. But it’s really a minimal investment of time and can provide a benefit over time.
The second point I wanted to make is that, yes digging or stumbling your own post is kind of lame.
But I also give it a bump after someone else has taken the initative.
Anthony
Social Media is definately the way to go. It not only offers an opportunity to get your brand out there in front of people we join a discussion with but also provides teh addaed benefit of back-links in signatures. After about 6 months of failed link exchange approach dirrectly with websites, I started concentrating on social media. In the last 6 months I have seen a significant rise in my websites profile and I have already started to get the odd enquire purely as a resultof participation. It might seem too much to do at the start; but it most certainly adds up in the end.
Social media is becoming increasingly improtant to t he success of business. Online marketing is revolutionising the way businesses market their products and services. Today social media goes hand in hand with SEO and is an important focus of any successful marketing strategy.
Social media marketing is the future. Search engines are putting more focus on social media participation in determining the rank of a website. It needs to be combined with traditional SEO techniques on an ongoing basis.