Eleven ways to get started with Social Networking
by Joe Dager, President of Business901
I was recently flipping through the pages of the January 9, 2009 issue of The Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce Emphasis insert in The Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly and what did I find? An article by Joe with whom I'd had lunch at the Fort Wayne Sumit Club to talk about Social Networking. Here is Joe's article:
1) Read 10 blogs - sign-up on Google Reader account and search for and subscribe to 10 blogs about social networking - you can return daily to your page to find and read all the new content on your 10. Of course you can add blogs about your industry and interests here too.
2) Comment on 10 blogs - posting relevant comments to blogs you read is a very simple form of social networking. It's also a good way to get some extra visitors to your site or blog.
3) Join Facebook - Join and create a profile. Find and friend some of your existing contacts using tools on Facebook. You'll be surprised how many people you already know have Facebook accounts. Facebook has some real value for you because of the rich set of tools and large amount of active users. This is a great place to experiment with how people interact in social networks. Once you get your feet wet you may also find that Facebook is a great way to connect with business contacts you may never bump into otherwise.
4) Create a mySpace page - this service is really embraced primarily by musicians and the younger set. It also happens to have a large underbelly contingent so be warned, but it is a great tool for learning how to build a presence outside of your web site.
5) Join LinkedIn - this is a service that's been called Facebook for professionals. It is really about meeting and connecting with like-minded business folks. It is a great service for people looking for a job or to make connections with people who may be out of reach without an introduction.
6) Visit Ning - this is the largest custom social networking service that allows you to create your own community using a variety of tools that can be branded to match your current site. Several local sites worth reviewing are Smaller Indiana and RainFortWayne.
7) Create a Workbench profile - This one's a little self-serving as this is the Duct Tape Marketing social business networking site but it's a good example of the personalized business community that's the next wave for small business.
8) Create a Twitter account - this tool is pretty silly on the surface, it allows you to type in 140 characters or less what you are doing right now. It feels like a giant waste of time but a very large and active community has grown around this kind of micro-blogging and you should understand how people are using it.
9) Create a StumbleUpon profile - This is a social network built around discovering and recommending sites that you like. Active stumblers can send a lot of traffic your way.
10) Create a Digg account - this site allows you to keep up to the minute with what's happening in the world of business. Users submit and vote on what is believed to be the most important content.
11) Create a FriendFeed account - this site automatically imports shared stuff from sites across the web, so if your friend favorites a video on YouTube, you get a link and a thumbnail of the video in your feed. You can also view your FriendFeed in your iGoogle homepage or read it in a feed reader. If you make your FriendFeed publicly visible (kind of like a blog that writes itself), you can embed your feed in your home page or blog.
You might also consider Mixx, Squidoo, Slideshare, Delicious, and Flickr as places to find and develop niche related communities when you're ready to really get out there. Think of mySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook as your labs - get in there and experiment for the future. Social Media can be very productive but it is like any networking venue. It takes time and learning the nuances of the structure. Now, you can start blogging!
Joe Dager is President of Business901, a company providing direction in areas such as social media, target marketing and organized referral marketing. A certified coach of the Duct Tape Marketing Consulting organization, they specialize in small and medium sized businesses. Parts of this article copyrighted Duct Tape Marketing, used with permission.
Business901 installs marketing systems!
1 comment:
Solid advice
Thanx
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