Planning Your Social Networking Strategy

All social networks are slightly essentially different [well, let me tell you some commonplace truth, you know] - a newb will first try to apply the same “proven” strategy once he joins a new community, while an experienced marketer will explore the differences first and will try to tweak a new social media marketing strategy. * The widely used social technique to attract attention to yourself is to send an invitation to befriend. While it can still work with some networks, that shouldn’t be your primary strategy now as [1] many networks do not send this invitation, so the members you “follow” may be absolutely clueless about your efforts (see StumbleUpon and Sphinn), [2] some sites have the limit of mutual friends (e.g. StumbleUpon), and [3] with some networks (*) people might be reluctant to add you to friends as this usually means they will be following each and every of your updates (see StumbleUpon and Twitter);
* Link sharing is a great way to generate votes and remind your friends of yourself. Again with Mixx it’s quite easy as the system allows you to share your link with all your friends at a time.
* Email notifications of new comments ensure your friends’ participation in the discussion. With Mixx you are updated of new comments in case you have posted a comment of your own. So this might be a good idea to sometimes comment your own submissions to keep track of the discussion.
* By following your friends’ submissions you will be updated on most recent and interesting news. With Twitter and TwitterFox this seems real fun to do. On the other hand, Twitter and StumbleUpon keep your friends constantly in touch with you, so keep up your great work there!

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