The huge advances of social media sites show a transformation from media monologues to dialogues which will define human communication of the early 21st century. An overwhelming majority of marketers say they are now using some form of social media to market their business. Social media is an almost “must-have” for any small business because it is cheap and effective.
The site that seems to embody this transformation – at the moment! – is Twitter. Although Twitter’s growth seems to have leveled off in 2009 after recording a massive 752% growth in 2008, there no signs of it’s influence waning as this century nears its troublesome teenage years. Savvy businesses see money in Twitter: I recently tweeted that I’d had a bad experience with BT and, within a few hours, I got a tweet from them asking me what the problem was.
So if we have to engage with this social media how do we do it productively and without turning into some sort of anti-social geekia dullard? Here are a few pointers on how to organize your web-life amongst the blogs, wikis and social sites, create a consistent online image and sync up all the various parts of your online world.
Create your Avatar
And, no, I don’t mean head over to Pandora and consort with the Na’vi, I mean use a consistent image when you comment on blogs or on your profile page of various other sites. Head over to Gravatar (created by those awfully nice Automattic people that gave us WordPress) and upload a square (150 by 150 pixels should do it) image which will appear by your name when you comment on a blog. Keep this square JPG, GIF or PNG handy on your hard drive and use it every time you register for a forum or social networking or bookmarking site. That way you have a consistent visual sign that people will come to recognize and trust!
Connect your social bookmarking sites to tweet your faves
If you don’t use social bookmarking sites then you should. Sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, etc., are excellent ways of rank and store useful articles and to promote yourself. As with your tweets, don’t use these services to shamelessly promote only your blog posts. Use them to store articles that you find interesting and then you will earn a reputation for distributing interesting material in your niche and your blog posts will benefit.
The best thing about these sites is that you can link them up to your Twitter ID and therefore promote your post on both the social bookmarking site and Twitter at the same time. Digg and Delicious are especially good for this.
Tweet your latest blog posts and blog your latest tweets
(Bit of a no-brainer, obviously) Some people claim that blogging’s light has been faded by the more advanced social tools. However, I think macro-blogging (sorry!) can only grow from the surge of interest in Twitter’s micro-blogging service. So, to automatically tweet your latest posts use WP to Twitter. And use Twitter for WordPress to display your latest tweets on your blog.
Publish videos and photos and tweet them
With their value going from zero to over a billion dollars in under 2 years, YouTube were the understated social media success story of the last decade. Together with the more stylish Vimeo and Metacafe (which is easily synced with Facebook), video sites are a great way of promoting your brand. For photos, apart from TwitPic there’s the more popular Flickr. Once you have joined these sites remember to favorite other videos, channels, photos and photostreams so that yours are more likely to get seen. Embed your logo and/or website into the videos or images. Remember to always put your website address in your profile settings of all of these sites!
Sync up your LinkedIn and Facebook status with your Twitter feed
LinkedIn users can automatically feed their Twitter status updates to their LinkedIn status updates. Use the Twitter exporter to automatically post your Facebook status updates to Twitter.
URL shorteners
The most successful URL shortener is bit.ly, followed by ow.ly, most likely because they are newer and contain fewer characters. The least retweeted URL shorteners are the older and longer Tiny URL and TwitPic. I think Bitly is great because not only does it shorten URL and posts to Twitter it also provides great stats on the links.
Conclusion
With so many social media sites out there, all wanting your info and time, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and disheartened. As a general rule of thumb, lurk on these sites to see what they’ve got on the subjects that interest you. And then, once signed up (and linked to your main website), make sure you add articles, photos and videos of genuine interest from third parties as well as your own material.
What about you? Do you have any social media top tips that you’d like to share?
Great write up man .. keep it up .. i like the style of writing 🙂
Looks like you’ve got it all covered….this is worthy of attention. 😉
I signed up and added bitly too, thanks!
This some great advice. I try and sync some of my information on some of my social sites. I see it helps get more traffic to my sites.
I think having a Gravatar goes a long way to personal branding and helps people to become familiar with ‘you’.
From personal experience, when I see that someone consistently leaves valuable comments on blogs, when I’m scrolling through a blog’s comment section and see their Gravatar, I end up stopping to see what they have to say.
Syncing your social media accounts is a great way to ‘share’ your message across multiple sites all from one convenient place.
Thanks for sharing,
Karl
@Jaspal Great, I’m glad you like!
@Kissie I hope you find bit.ly useful when you post a link through bit.ly to Twitter you will find you get a little extra direct traffic from email clients, etc., as you will see from their stats.
@element321 Thank you. Every little bit helps. But if you’re going to get a little bit from Twitter. YOu may as well get a little bit from Twitter and Delicious (for example).
@Karl Yes, I think Gravatars are great. I don’t have them displayed in my comments section as most of my commenters don’t have them. But I might have to put them in soon. They make the comments more visually appealing as well! Thank you.
great writing and the next thing should be how to analyse the traction you receive from these sites?
I really do need to start syncing my status updates. I think I show special attention to my Facebook fans but my loyal twitter followers and Linkedin connections get no love. I think syncing will rectify that problem.
Thanks for the tips
Hi Rob!
Well said. Creating a Avatar is important as it puts a face behind the writing. When I first started I had no idea what an Avatar was and someone pointed it out to me that I should do it. It is definately recommended.
I do tweet my posts and I have just started using DIGG. Maybe I am in the dark I didn’t know you could tweet and digg at the same time. Thats cool! I have to check into that.
Thanks
Jim
Nice article, some good tips :]
However su.pr is my favourite url shortener, just because it lets you get some exposure on top of keeping stats.
@Greg you’ve got a good point there. Getting traffic is one thing. Getting it to stick around and sign up (or whatever you want it to do) is quite another. Interestingly, according to my analytics, LinkedIn groups and StumbleUpons tend to deliver traffic that sticks the most! But that’s just for me.
@Ralph Syncing up your LinkedIn and Facebook status to you Twitter feed (or however which way you want to do it) does at least mean that all three change often.
@Jim Once you’ve Dugg something and you are at the Digg site you should see tiny Twitter, Facebook and email icons. I usually click on the Twitter one and tweet it straightaway!
@Johnny You get a bit of exposure with Bitly too. It would be interesting to know which gave the most!
Thank you, everyone, for your comments.
Very solid post.
I think with so many social networks and media sites coming out, it seems really overwhelming.
I think people will start to abandon some of the smaller networks to work harder on their profiles on FB, Twitter, Digg, etc. No more submitting to 200+ bookmarking sites, instead working harder within the existing ones.
It’s great to see a post like this to help you realize to condense and how to be more efficient at it 🙂
As I have a new blog and still learning about using social media to promote my blog, your article really give me more spirit to use the social media.
This day I travel here and there on the net looking for about social media article. Glad I’m a member of worthy of attention, a Google Group.
Thanks,
Latief
@Murlu I think you’re making a good point that, after the dust settles, a few social sites will start to dominate certain areas and others will fall away.
@Latief Although I’ve been blogging for a while I’m still learning about blogging, websites and social media.The more you work and learn to more successful you’ll be.
This is a perfect list of tips to share with someone getting started with social media, especially bloggers. There is also a service called ping.fm that is getting a lot of attention lately that allows you to post to multiple social sites at once.
Thanks for the post.
@Ileane
@Ileane yes, this was mainly aimed at those new-ish to social media. I’ve heard about ping.fm from “Crush It” a book by Gary Vaynerchuk – it allows you to post to Twitter and FriendFeed (and others) simultaneously. I must check it out. Thank you. 🙂
I just came across your blog and wanted to drop you a note telling you how impressed I was with the information you have posted here.
Keep up the great work, you are providing a great resource on the Internet here!
anyone have a good fit for linking twitter to facebook (not vice versa). the twitter app on facebook doesn’t work. i should add i’m talking about a fan page here.
@Neil Thank you, come again!
@Nate I’m not too hot on Facebook. Maybe someone else has a good idea. There must be a Facebook users forum or maybe a Facebook group on LinkedIn.
Nice article and the amount of explanation you have put into it is just amazing.
I have been having trouble building momentum on social media sites. any tips for getting more comments on blog posts?
Hi Joel, “momentum” is a good word here. You just have to keep on doing what you’re doing and sooner or later you’ll reach a “tipping point” after which comments, traffic and interest will start flowing your way. It isn’t easy and takes a little time and effort. You could try posting your articles to relevant forums, Google groups, Linkedin groups, social bookmarking sites …
A lot of virtual assistants have gotten their inspiration from these books as well. Let’s not forget that they are entrepreneurs too.
Absolutely, JayG
Amazing man!
keep it up bro!
Fantastic article. I will be sure to share this with my Social Media Network.
– MattAtSMF
Thank you, Matt.