Article in Social Media

In an earlier article, I talked about how important community participation is for building up your social media profile (URL needed). That's not the only thing that you need, though. There are ways to engage in the community that help and hurt your chances for building an account that shines. There are also other strategies that you need to incorporate into your social media account building method to succeed. This article discusses some of these aspects and gives you ideas of how to build your credibility.

There's not only one social network. One of the important things is to focus on your brand and make it prevalent throughout social networks. If you're a big user of Digg, don't just stay within the Digg community. Use the same username and avatar in Mixx, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Sphinn, Pownce, Propeller, and any other social news or bookmarking site that allows you to brand yourself. If you have a website or blog, give people the links to your profiles and invite them to befriend you on social networks. Don't just stay fixed in one place; build your persona everywhere else.

The stories you submit matter. If you are overly self-promotional and only focus on your own content and blogs, you're not going to make friends quickly. You need to actually look beyond your own walls and submit content that is interesting to other users. I think among my hundreds of submissions to social news sites, I've submitted less than 5% of my own content, and I certainly don't promote my content all the time. To others, it says that I want to focus on quality content, and not everything I write is always social newsworthy. It takes a lot of guts to say that not everything you write is Diggworthy, but until you understand the community, you'll never succeed at submitting content that works for them. Instead, look at what does well and focus on submitting similar items. Better yet, be the first to submit a popular blog that does well on such sites. If your story becomes popular, you'll build up a lot of fans in no time.

Another issue is using insider networks to promote your content. For example, Digg has shouts. Don't abuse these features. If you shout, do so sparingly. Share a story and choose the recipients of the shouts carefully. You aren't going to make a lot of friends if you're adding friends en masse and shouting at them. In fact, I know many people who disabled shouts because they were abused in such a way.

Social networks are inherently social, and as such, it's better to give than to receive. If you're voting on stories and commenting, you're already putting yourself out there. Once you do get out there, you'll be noticed enough to gain friends quickly. It's definitely a time commitment (at first, but it will lessen when you get into the groove). You'll still need to keep at it so that you aren't forgotten, but your involvement needs to be heavy at first and then you don't have to do much besides check your social sites once or twice a day. Think about it this way: schooling for a particular study will take a chunk of time, but once you've "graduated," you're applying the skills every so often and probably not much more than that.

The last bit of advice I have to offer is to understand every single social media site's rules. Don't deviate because once you're established, there's an element of trust involved. If you're submitting a story that blatantly goes against their terms of service and people vote upon it, you'll lose that credibility fast. If it's not obvious at this point, it takes time to build up your powerful persona. It can topple down in a matter of minutes. Be careful. If in doubt, don't submit something that might get you in trouble.

Social media takes time, commitment, and community, but in the end, your power account will be established and you'll be regarded as a contributor whose submissions are not to be missed.

by tamar