Advanced
Social Media
You've taken the beginning steps with social media to creating an online social presence. You've started "tweeting"
a bit on Twitter, you have a page set up on Facebook and your business profile is on LinkedIn. You've even added
your colleagues and friends to some of these sites as contacts.
But there is new information and Web 2.0 applications for online networking daily, it seems, and you don't know if
you should spend the time learning all the social media options. You also don't know if you are using it like you
should. Here are some suggestions on ways to keep this process easy and enjoyable for you.
One site allows you to combine all of your activity from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and more (including
your Amazon.com wishlist!). That's FriendFeed. You may have a difficult time convincing your contacts to join yet
another network, but if you do, FriendFeed would be the one to recommend.
Ping.fm is a must for social media! This Web based app (www.ping.fm) allows you to update your status across
platforms. Log in and you can update your status on the "big three": LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, all from one
spot. It supports many other sites as well. This allows you to be active without being logged into all the sites.
Plus it is an easy and effective way to spread the word when you have a new blog post or business venture.
HootSuite and TweetDeck are two great Twitter dashboard applications that will help you manage your activity on
that site. HootSuite is Web-based and TweetDeck is a download, but both have similar features. Both of these sites
allow you to manage multiple profiles if you have them for different business purposes. You can also watch your
feeds and in TweetDeck you can create groups to watch more closely if you are following a lot of people.
Sometimes finding appropriate people to follow seems confusing. To save time, check out WeFollow.com. It is a
directory where you, and others, list yourselves under three keywords like "author", "speaker", "Republican (or
whatever)". You can do a search and find members by these keywords allowing you access to musicians, writers or
whomever you are interested in. Twitter also has a search feature on the main interface. Type in a topic
(environment) and you can bring up conversations taking place that include that word. Using a hash mark
(#environment) helps it be more precise.
There are several things you can do to support and interact with your fellow Twitter members. You can engage them
in conversation either publicly by replying with @ and their ID (i.e. @stevenschlagel) or you can DM them (send
them a private "direct message"). One of the best ways to build rapport is to "retweet" or share someone else's
update with new people. You start this thread off with RT @stevenschlagel and whatever you read. HootSuite and
TweetDeck have tools to enable this.
You can build relationships on LinkedIn by using a couple of features. The first is "Answers" at the top of the
page. Drop this down and you will see you can either post a question or answer one, all of which is divided by
topic. Answering questions let's you designate yourself as an expert in certain topic. LinkedIn also has a groups
section so prepare to join several of these based on your career or interests. Each group has a discussion section
that you can get involved in and you can also invite these members to join your network.
Connecting with people and helping them succeed is the goal of online social media. It is not much different than
live networking, but we've offered these suggestions to help you facilitate the process of meeting and engaging
with new people online. When you are eager to help, you will find that others want to help you in
return.
by Steven Schlagel - July 20, 2009
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