This Top 10 Social Networking Things to Do blog post is an update of an older post from 2009. It contains some refinements in an approach that's worked very well for this blogger.
My friends come to me for advice in this area all the time, so I created this "Top 10" list of actions to take in using social networks to get yourself noticed online. (I'm going to add to this later, with more detail but watch the video for more background.)
The objective here is not just to get yourself noticed, but to also protect your identity. By being everywhere, and with the same name and photo, you create your "look" such that it's harder for anyone else to not only pretend to be you, but to alter your online persona. In other words, by having your name already online, it guards against and overwhelms any other view of you that's posted online. To do this, you have to be on as many platforms as possible.
Top 10 Social Networking Things to Do
1.Figure out your name. (I’m Zennie Abraham, Zenophon Abraham and Zennie62)
2.What do you want to get out of this? (Business? pleasure? Information? If you’re in the business of pleasure that’s another story.)
3.Figure out your title: CEO? Producer? Party Animal?
4.Develop an email list. Remember, email is still a form of social networking.
5.Find a photo you’re proud of and nothing with you wearing a gorilla suit. (It does work for some but I don’t recommend it.)
6.Business?
a.Join Linkedin
b.Join Ryze (Great small business membership base in the Bay Area.)
c.Join Plaxo
d.Join Facebook and turn off the relationship notifications. (We don't need
know that you're dating Sven Nordgarden.
e. Join H5
f. Join Foursquare.com
g. Join YouTube.com
7.Pleasure?
a.Join MySpace
b.Join Facebook
c.Join FriendFeed
d. Join Brightkite.com
e. Join Foursquare.com
f. Join YouTube.com
8.Information?
a.Join FriendFeed
b.Join Facebook
c.Join Technorati (I recommend creating a blog and then posting it as your website of choice in their system.)
d. If sports-related, join MakeitPro.com
e. Join Brightkite.com
f. Join Foursquare.com
g. Join YouTube.com
Now some of you may find the inclusion of YouTube confusing, but it's a social network, not just a video distribution site. Moreover, it's a powerful identify-protection tool for this purpose, so long as you use your name and don't call yourself "Ardvark".
9.Set up a blog – put your resume in it without your phone number. That’s your free website. I prefer Blogger.com. It’s free. Make the blog title your name. Why? To mark your place with your name on cyberspace. Link to it from your social network profile. The point is to begin to protect your name and identity by having something out there you made about you, not someone else.
10.Use your email signature as the place for your links to your Linkedin Page and Blog page. (Now you have two places pointing at your blog page, which helps with SEO and to have others see your resume.)
A word on Twitter.
Twitter is not a social network, it's a communications system and you need to have something to say to use it. It's volume-based; the more you post the more valued your account because people will follow you looking for interesting posts, or what are called "tweets". I think of Twitter as an accessory to a social network not a replacement for one.
Twitter is very misunderstood by people in business. To continue my current favorite organization to pick on, just because it needs to improve, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) does not have a Twitter account. How could a Twitter account - and a blog - benefit AMPAS? I'll demonstrated via this scenario:
The Academy makes a mistake and leaves out Farrah Fawcett from its Memorial Tribute portion of the 2010 Oscars. To deal with the negative press it does the following:
1) Issues an apology on the AMPAS blog, which because it's connected to the AMPAS Twitter account, also goes out to AMPAS Twitter followers, and because the AMPAS Twitter account is connected to AMPAS on Facebook, it's posted to Facebook too.
2) AMPAS issues a press release based on the blog contents.
3) AMPAS asks its Twitter followers (hopefully over 1 million) to retweet the initial message.
4) AMPAS then makes a video-embeded blog post that's a "Tribute to Farrah Fawcett" and then does one blog post for each of the other actors that were missing. That too goes out via Twitter, one for each performer, and it goes to Facebook.
What will happen is each AMPAS blog post link is heightened by the click rates that will happen from being part of a tweet. That will raise the blog post pages in a search for "Farrah Fawcett and Academy" and thus more people will see the AMPAS apology and the online tribute.
End result: message is efficiently sent and the online tracks are seeded with tributes so that as the issue dies down, a track record that the Academy did something is in place.
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