Image credit – understanding tjsize
This is a guest post by one of our Social Media Ninja winners
Social media is getting too popular – more and more effort is needed to get noticed there and make friends and fans. Beside being loyal, consistent, truthful, etc, etc, there is one proven technique to gain power within social media and your targeted community – that is “be everywhere at the same time.”
Yep, sounds impossible to do, but still can be achieved if you know some tricks. These very tricks are described below (when I was starting, I used them unintentionally without much thinking; so this is a reverse experience – I first did it and then saw that it worked):
1) Start at one network and then gradually spread your efforts to several more.
Most power social networkers tend to actively ‘socialize’ at several communities – so go ahead, find them there and befriend. They see you once, they see you twice – they know you already!
To find them:
– check their profiles (people usually link to their other profiles across social media):
– search Google for their names and profile names;
– visit their sites and find what other SM profiles they are linking to.
2) Brand your name and profile image – use one and the same name and avatar for each and every social network you join. Besides, use the same image
for guest posts and blog catalogues/directories. Images are highly associative and easy to remember – being consistent with your choice, you will soon see more and more people recognize you by it.
3) Promote blogs/threads where you actively participate: sphinn/digg/stumble your guest posts or articles where you comment. Thus people will first see your comment, then your (SU) review (or vice versa) – that’s it, they now remember you. When I started participating in SEOMoz community, I occasionally stumbled posts from there – and I was amazed how many people at SU added me to friends and messaged me asking about my SEOMoz activity.
4) Interlink your multiple profiles across social media. Once people get to know you at one network, they are most likely (if you do your homework well) to befriend you across all your common SNs (see #1). Thus you are simultaneously growing your power across several networks.
5) Always comment at posts/discussions where your name/website was mentioned. To do that you will need to subscribe to Google alerts for [your name], [your domain name] and [yourdomainname] to get updated each time you are talked about in the blogosphere. Also if you want to be the first to react to your name mentions, set alerts to update you “as-it-happens”.
All in all, these are 5 basic techniques that will quickly and effectively get people to remember you. With that and by consistently adding quality to the community you will soon see your social media power growing fast and your brand establishing and getting popular.
Ann Smarty is an SEO consultant blogging at SEO Smarty and Search Engine Journal.
Good, solid tips. I know for a long time I was trying to stay incognito on many social sites and blogs. Big mistake.
You forgot to mention: Be a female and look good, otherwise wear a huge sombrero.
Great post, concise and powerful. I just posted about #2 earlier today: http://musicin2d.com/?p=13
Take care,
Clif
Excellent Tip, have just signed up for a whole bunch of sites, and was curious as to the best way forward.
Nice tips! I was actually planning on changing my avatar/profile pic across my social media networks and my first thought was “No one will recognize me!” Oh well, it needs to be done. C’est la vie.
Curious use of nofollows…
Nofollows have many uses, from not wishing to be associated with certain domains in the eyes of search engines to sculpting pages for maximum effect for the non no followed links.
Ultimately here at Collective Thoughts its down to the individual author or in this case editor (me) to determine which links should or should not be nofollowed, given the post was from Ann the priority is not seomoz or SEJ both of which have enough inbound links.
Thank you all for the comments.
@Tad – lol… that was one tactic I meant to keep secret 😉
I agree with everything you say. But what you should ever keep in mind is that you should only participate in as many networks as you can spare time for. It is better to be really active in 5 networks then being half inactive in 10.
Great post there!This is worth a big thumbs up!
Well, what Malte says it right!I have felt this problem very often!Joining too many communities isn’t the wise thing to do if you really wanna socialise and bring traffic.
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I agree with what you have said. I have one question. Besides being an attractive female (which I’m not… most of the time 😉 ) or wearing a big sombrero (which I have and could wear) is there any advice on creating an effective/memorable avatar?
My take… ones that portay personality and variety are going to be easier to recognize (i.e. sombrero or feathered pimp hat) and quicker to identify. But should one be cautious that it distracts from the message he/she is trying to share?