The 10-Minute Daily Guide to Building Your Social Media Profile
No amount of effort with social media sites and tools like digg, StumbleUpon, MyBlogLog, Propeller, etc. can make up for a bad blog. A lack of focus, poor writing, over-advertising and a lousy design will sink your blog each and every time, regardless of how much effort you put into social networking and social media promotion.
The flip side is also true, in that you could have a focused niche, write well, limited advertising and a beautiful design, but still find it hard to build an audience. So you shouldn’t be ignoring the opportunities that social networking and social media provide.
In a recent post I wrote about linkbaiting and guest writing on other blogs, James Chartrand left a comment that got me thinking:
What about when you don’t have the time to surf all the social networking sites? It seems ridiculous. Just after I tell someone we have a LinkedIn page, they ask me if the business has a MySpace page. Then a Yahoo page. Then a Facebook page, a Digg page, and so on.
Not only am I expected to have a page on every social networking or media site or blog possible, I’m expected to surf and browse all these sites, comment, keep in touch and be active.
It goes on. I still have to visit relevant blogs to my subject area and target audience, reading, commenting, etc. Plus there is my own blog, of course, and I do have to work for a living as well…
Stop the madness is a phrase that comes to mind. What’s your solutions to this “be active everywhere at once” problem?
This is an extremely common problem. And it’s getting worse. James didn’t mention Twitter or any of the people search engines like Xing and Spock that have emerged recently.
Can You Keep Up With All the Options?
Honestly, you can’t. Not in a way that allows you to focus effectively on each site and service, assess the value you’re getting and maximize that value.
Two quick suggestions:
- Be a late adopter. It’s OK if you don’t jump on the bandwagon of every new social media and social networking site. Give it some time, read some intelligent reviews from people you trust (who are early adopters) and then make your move. Being a late adopter allows you gather more information on the value of joining the “latest greatest” service out there.
A good example is BlogRush. I haven’t added it to my sidebar. For starters, I was skeptical, but even if I was gung-ho I’d probably wait awhile to see how well it’s working for others.
- Focus, focus, focus. Once you realize you can’t be everywhere all the time, try focusing on a few social networks and social media sites at a time. Build up a reputation in those (which can take considerable time and energy) and then move on from there.
The alternative is to be everywhere at once but only dip your toe into each place. That’s not a terrible strategy but it can be distracting. If you have taken this approach, you can still decide to focus by putting more energy into just a few of the social networking and media sites, building up your profile in those, and then moving onward.
Even coming in late, after assessing the results others have experienced, and trying to focus, you’re bound to be overwhelmed with options.
The challenge at that point becomes managing and growing your profile and reputation in each social media and social networking site as easily as possible.
The 10-Minute Daily Guide to Building Your Social Media Profile
- Twitter: Check Twitter once or twice daily. You’ll miss some stuff, but that’s the nature of Twitter anyway. Scanning tweets is easy, so go through them quickly, and respond to anything appropriate. Robert Scoble does a great job of listing the 10 rules of Twitter. Of course, he breaks them all, but the guidelines are helpful. And Chris Brogan has some ideas on becoming a valued Twitter user that are helpful.
- MyBlogLog: Check your community page once daily. Visit each new community member’s profile page and leave them a thank you message. If your community is growing slowly, you might decide to do this weekly. Each thank you should be as personalized as possible, but you don’t have to go crazy.
The beauty of MyBlogLog is seeing who continues to visit your site. If you see people in the widget that are there regularly, visit their profiles, consider adding them as contacts and leave thank you messages.
- RSS Reader / Blogs: I try and scan my RSS Reader no more than 3 or 4 times a day. It will depend on how many feeds you’re watching, and how you’ve got them categorized. But you should be able to get a clear picture of what’s important to you very quickly.
Lately, I haven’t commented as much as I’d like. Commenting on blogs is definitely worthwhile, the challenge is leaving meaningful comments and not spending hours a day doing it.
Keep cognizant of those blogs that you really enjoy where you haven’t commented in awhile. Take an extra few minutes and re-connect with those blogs via comments. Even if it’s a “great post!” type comment it will help re-establish the relationship with the blog author.
Bonus Tip: Avoid a growing reading list that becomes unmanageable. If you see something interesting in your RSS Reader, check it out as quickly as possible (even if you’re scanning it) and comment if appropriate. But once you start saving a ton of bookmarks to be read at a later date it’s unlikely you’ll ever find the time.
- Technorati & Linkbacks: Once a day, check Technorati (and other means) for tracking links back to your blog. Visit each of the sites that link to you. If they’re running MyBlogLog, they’ll see that you took the time, and that builds goodwill. A simple “thank you” comment is OK too.
- StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon is by far and away the best social media site out there. For this reason I’ve separated it out from the group below. Staying active on StumbleUpon is as easy as voting on stories you like. But in order to really build out your profile you need to spend more time. Lots of people have written about how to get the most out of StumbleUpon.
But the 10-minute daily approach is even simpler. Track who stumbles stories on your blog, befriend them, and then send them a message through StumbleUpon. The last step, sending a message, is one that I’ve just started, in the hopes that I can make a more personal connection with stumblers interested in my subject matter.
- Social Media & Bookmarking Sites: I have to lump the group of them together, because there are too many to list. These include: digg, Sphinn, Shoutwire, Propeller, reddit and many, many others. Personally, I don’t think it’s possible to focus on more than 2 or 3 at any given time. The 10-minute daily guide to building your profiles on these sites is simple:
- Vote daily on a handful of posts.
- Submit weekly; at least 1 post, or preferably 5-10.
You might want to start with less-trafficked, niche sites to start. Sphinn is a great example.
Note: I didn’t include Facebook in the list because it’s impossible to do anything on Facebook in less than 10 minutes. It’s one of the ultimate time-sucks. Having said that, there’s a lot of value in Facebook, which I’ll probably discuss in the future.
The key to succeeding with this 10-minute guide is organization. You need to be organized, practical and focused on moving efficiently. Schedule the times you use the social media, network and bookmarking sites just like you should schedule when you check your email.
The Goals of Building Your Social Media Profile
The goals are simple:
- Develop meaningful relationships
- Build targeted traffic
If you choose to spend more time building your social media profile, you’ll likely get better results. But that doesn’t mean you need to or should spend hours per day. And always keep top-of-mind what you’re trying to accomplish, because it’s easy to get carried away and build up your profile for the sake of doing so.
What tips do you have for maintaining and raising your social media profile as efficiently and effectively as possible?
Submitting stories that the social site audience likes, not what you like. This way you not only build your reputation/friends faster, but find thet site you want to stay on.
P.S. I love Stumblee, too.
[…] The 10-Minute Daily Guide to Building Your Social Media Profile […]
PS - And it all takes time to do. You have to be consistent and patient.
Sometimes instead of leaving a comment, think about leaving a review on stumbleupon. It can even take less time because you can just highlight an excerpt, but it is probably appreciated by the blog author more than something like “Great post” which I generally delete and spam.
I have found Blogrush to be about as targeted currently as The Good Blogs, and it is extremely good for discovery of new blogs and content, and those are the people who will appreciate it most.
I would like to think I have a 50% or higher new subscriber rate for every new blog I first Stumble.
Great post!
A correction, Xing is a networking site just like LinkedIn and not a people search engine. Personally I spend more time on Xing than on LInkedIn.
I just go to my friends’ sites and networks and steal their friends.
Jim Turner is a thief! Actually, wait, I have done that too.
This is really helpful!
I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed by the number of places I don’t have time to post.
Great timesaving tips.
Hi Ben - This post was shared with me by Ann Handley of Marketing Profs in response to my Facebook question “Tell me how you are leveraging Facebook for your business? or is this all just for fun?”
Great thoughts on organizing the social media blitz–will definitely share with my team–and I look forward to your thoughts on the value of Facebook.
Reading other blogs and commenting on them is certainly helpful - the hard thing I find is how to keep on top of all the blogs. My newsreader (NewsFire), lets me break my blogs into groups that I can check when I want - some are daily views, others are read weekly (or when I am procrastinating) etc.
If I read a blog post I want to comment on, but don’t have time, I flag it within NewsFire for when I do have time.
@Susan: Well that was nice of Ann. *smile*
Glad you enjoyed the post. I do want to talk more about Facebook and how to extract value out of social networks in general.
@WTL: I agree that tracking a lot of blogs is difficult. I’ve suggested in the past that every so often you wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. I’ve also suggested in the past that unless you’re actively participating on a blog or getting regular value, you unsubscribe, even if that means you’ll miss something. Generally I’ve found even if I don’t read every blog out there in my field of interest, the important news bubbles to the top.
My tricks:
Having a single start page:
http://internetducttape.com/2007/09/25/blog-maintenance-tip-netvibes-start-page/
Posting to delicious and stumbleupon at the same time:
http://internetducttape.com/2007/09/14/delicious-stumbles-stumbleupon-crosspost-same-time/
Doing weekly round ups from my saved delicious links (saves a day of writing)
Commenting is essential to building relationships to other bloggers though.
“Track who stumbles stories on your blog, befriend them”. I doubt that it’s the best way to deal with SU. Track them but don’t befriend them all as SU does not count friends votes as much as those of strangers it seems.
Tad - First, I wouldn’t necessarily befriend everyone. Befriend those that have similar tastes. Of course, since they stumbled your story, there’s a good chance they have similar tastes.
As for the value of votes from friends or not - I can’t say. I’m sure others have evaluated this in depth. What I would say is that there’s other value in having SU friends beyond just their specific vote value. For example - you can share stories with them to encourage them to vote, you can communicate more easily via SU’s in-house messaging tool to share tips, etc.
As well, I would look at the network effect of having more friends. If I have more friends, and by extension, more people stumble my content regularly, it’s also reaching out to their friends and beyond, who watch those stumbles…
I think you have to value friends more than just the value of their voting power.
Great post! I’m trying to figure out this social media thing and see where you could drown in all the sites that are out there. I keep hearing that social networks are great time-savers, but so far I’m spending time, not saving it.
You forgot to mention outsourcing your social media profile building activities
No really, for me the key (as you mentioned) is focus. I constantly find myself wandering around aimlessly when I go to say, respond to a comment on MyBlogLog. The next thing I know, I am off on some tangent that has totally sidetracked my original task of simply answering a comment. You have some good advice here. I’m definitely going to give your 10 minute guide a shot (might give me some extra time to actually put a blog post together)!
@Mike: Social media sites as time savers? Who said that?!?! *chuckle*
That’s definitely not the case. They take an investment to get a reward out of them (like pretty much anything.) And it’s a slippery slope into spending TOO much time on them with minimal return. I think that’s the biggest issue - people don’t quite know what to get out of them, or how, short of “lots of friends” so they spend hours and hours accumulating useless friends. How you use your friends (which I know sounds bad, but makes sense) is key…
@Chris: Outsourcing your social media profile…hhhmmm…
Recently I saw a TV program about companies in Eastern Europe and Asia that will play your characters on video games for you (like Heroes) to power level them up, so you don’t have to invest the time. Totally genius…not sure it applies to social media profiles though! *laugh*
Hi Ben - Been following the comments. You outed the elephant on the facebook / linkedin network, how should one use their friends? Any best practices, etiquette or details your readers should be aware of? Tips and for creating quality friends?
Good questions, Susan. Not questions that can be answered in a simple Comment Box. I want to present some ideas on why to use social networks in the first place, benefits, their value, etc. and then maybe delve deeper into issues of etiquette, etc.
So stay tuned!
[…] The 10-Minute Daily Guide to Building Your Social Media Profile : Instigator Blog “Once you realize you can’t be everywhere all the time, try focusing on a few social networks and social media sites at a time.” (tags: socialnetworking socialmedia social community internet web web2.0 networking lifehacks) […]
Great Post man i really liked it a lot it was very informative. And the points that you mentioned in it were also very good i liked it.
Why just 10 minutes? All these activities sound like leisure. So take your time. Blogging, commenting, RSS feeds, Digg & co, voting on posts, collecting friends in the diverse networks… That is all non-productive work. Bottom line: How much turnover does all of that produce? Would not all that time be better spent seeking paying customers and getting a contract or job, nstead of doing all that “social media” stuff and starve?
[…] all of the vast social media landscape? Never fear. Ben over at the Instigator has posted a great 10-Minute Daily Guide To Building Your Social Media Presence. And I know you’ve got 10 minutes a […]
@Eddie: Actually, I don’t consider any of what I’ve described to be non-productive work. It’s almost completely strategic.
Who said “all that social media stuff” doesn’t bring in paying customers? In fact, I view it specifically FOR that purpose.
Ben,
Thanks for link to my post. I appreciate it.
~Anuj
The whole time I was reading this, I thought “don’t forget to bookmark this !” and “gotta show this to my husband!” “Stop the madness indeed!” I shouted a little too loud (scared the dog). Slowly I found that simply organizing my time with an excel file (google docs) that it helps me track everything. Thank you for the post. Reminds us all that we are on the right track.
Hi Sia - thanks for stopping by and commenting. Hopefully you’ll subscribe to Instigator Blog permanently and keep letting me know if I’m hitting the mark (or not!)
[…] Blog - The 10-Minute Daily Guide To Building Your Social Media Profile The flip side is also true, in that you could have a focused niche, write well, limited advertising […]
Thank you for the great resources and information. Do you have any suggestions for those who are not as technically inclined as others?
Fred - Using social networks and social media is easy from a technical standpoint, but it does take some time to get used to. My suggestions would be to try one or two out, do some research (use Google or Google Blogsearch to search for best practices), and see what happens.
More specific advice would be dependent on your niche, goals, etc. I hope that helps!
I am starting a blog soon, and I thought just writing it would be a lot of work! There really is a lot more to it as I have been learning. Thanks for making what looked like a chore much easier. And, you gave a couple of links that will be very helpful for me.
[…] to reading the 10-minute daily guide to building your social media profile (written just for me!) by Ben Yoskovitz over at Instigator Blog, I joined StumbledUpon. It was the […]
[…] of this takes a ton of time. It might only take 10 minutes a day. When you first get rolling in social media, it’ll likely take a lot longer than that, but […]
@Kalidasa: There’s no shortage of advice out there for bloggers getting started. Read what you can, put together a plan for yourself, and you should do just fine.
[…] The 10-Minute Daily Guide to Building to Building Your Social Media Profile from Instigator Blog. […]
The 10-Minutes a Day for Social Media Profile…
Ben over at instigator blog has a lot of high quality content which I will be following much more closely from now on. Some quick actions to take to build up your social media profile.
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[…] do are leveraging some good use out of microblogging. The likes of Chris Garrett, Darren Rowse, and Ben Yoskovitz are all using services such as Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce to generate traffic and […]
[…] be more focused on what you are doing. There is a good post on the Instigator Blog about how to build your social media profile in 10 minutes. I aim for 30 […]
The whole social media movement has made me slip a bit. For some reason I really cant get into the whole thing. However the article has cleared up a couple of things for me. Still have a ways to go before I get it.
[…] be more focused on what you are doing. There is a good post on the Instigator Blog about how to build your social media profile in 10 minutes. I aim for 30 […]
Great post! I’ve been looking for someone to break down the whole social media thing to me, so that I can better understand many of the rules (unwritten or not) and which social media sites are the most beneficial. I will likely return to this page to read more from some of the others who you’ve linked to. Thanks!
@RJacobsen: Come back as often as you like! And make sure you jump off this article to all the links provided; there are tons of great resources out there.
These are great tips. I also like the “start page” idea, I was going to ask you do you keep a bookmark toolbar or what to open these tabs every day. Start page sounds like a solution.
Do you know of a way to leverage Google Reader’s social aspects? I’ve noticed that you can add friends and discover related feeds. Any tips for this?