Social Media: What I’ve Done, and What I’ve Learned

Welcome back!

I’ve been bouncing around all over the social sphere these last few months.  It’s been an interesting and enjoyable pursuit to learn what social outlet provides what type of visitor, link/buzz or referral to my site.  I’ve seen and read dozens of posts recently about this same thing in regards to just twitter or another social site.  I’m going to attempt to share my experience with 4 major outlets, those being:  Facebook, LinkedIn, Plurk and Twitter .

Facebook

Let me just say, I love Facebook!  Used correctly, it can lead to great relationships with colleagues within your industry and even old friends (Timpanogos ‘99 FTW!).  I first registered with Facebook a few years back just to make sure no one took my name (don’t know why they’d want to).  I built up friendships, mostly with people at work and some close friends.  I lost touch with Facebook for a while and didn’t do anything with it for several months.

My interest was re-ignited initially when I introduced my wife to Facebook and within 2 months, had double the amount of friends that I had.  “This can’t be”, I said!  “I’m an industry expert…I should have tons more than her!”  I then began connecting with as many people within the SEO industry as I could, and within about a month, I had a commanding lead over her number of friends (take that, babe!).

Now that it was over, I looked back and realized I hadn’t made much of a “connection” with these new friends beyond the “add friend” link.  I made a strong effort to get to know many of my new friends, what they did, where they were from and all that.  Facebook hasn’t been a hidden gem of traffic to my site, but I have made several, personal connections with people I can literally call “friends” and have even done business with a few of them.  I’ve also acquired a new client, who is an old acquaintance and I’ll be doing his SEO to build his new, local business here in Utah.

Great Reads:

• The Facebook Marketing Toolbox – InsideCRM (over 100 resources listed!)

Prognosis:  Spend time getting to know these people.  Most likely, they are more exposed on Facebook; they post pictures and statuses that may not be on other social platforms.  Make comments on those photos, statuses or strike up a conversation with them on Facebook chat…I use it rarely, but only with people I have already had some kind of conversation with before.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has been, how can I say this…kind of a waste of time for me.  I wish that wasn’t the case…I wish I had something cool to say and tell you that if you make connections and recommend others’ services, you’ll get a plethora of contacts and know everyone and everything.  But, alas…that wasn’t the case.

I made a decent effort to make strong contacts with LinkedIn.  I added people that I knew and sent messages to them and even recommended some peoples’ services.  Despite my credentials and outreaches, I didn’t seem to get anything in my inbox besides the occasional “Connect with So-And-So”.  The efforts that I did make seemed to go nowhere.  Whenever I tried to connect with an industry expert through one of my connections, I usually got an answer along the lines of “I don’t know them personally, they’re just one of my connections.”  Wonderful!  So far, I’ve yet to gain anything from LinkedIn except a slot on the SERPs for my name.  If someone has seen something different, I’d love to hear from you…post a comment!

Great Reads:

• The Missing Link – CNN
• Effective Marketing on LinkedIn – NonLinear

Prognosis:  Creat a completed profile and make an effort to only connect with those you truly know or plan to get to know.  My next goal is to make a personal friendship with each of my connections and let them know I am available for questions or help.

Plurk

Oh, Plurk…you are a needy bitch (great read, but the verbage is NSFW)!  Plurk was fun while it lasted.  I’m proud to say that I joined in its infancy and had a great time talking with people from all walks of life.  Unlike the regular micro-blogging platform, Plurk was more of a micro-forum platform.  I was instantly turned on by the drop-down threading system and the lateral timeline…it was so unique.  I plurked, I mlurked (mobile plurked) and wasted many hours with mindless babble on that website!

One interesting thing about Plurk is the Karma system, and although it became more forgiving over the months, I believe it was one of its major downfalls.  Nobody wanted to be forced to Plurk…yet if you didn’t, your karma would go down.  And with all the extra emoticons and settings my high karma allowed me, I lost interest.  It faded slowly, but then stopped all at once.

I can’t say Plurk was a complete failure.  I have a few people within my industry that am close with due to the conversations we had on Plurk.  Plurk was more of a casual place for me…I think one of the longest of my threads had to do with a half-naked lady at my gym.  However, when attempting to get more exposure on some of my social media campaigns, my “Hey, friends, please help this viral article” threads seem to fall on deaf ears (or, is it blind eyes?).  Plurk, you were fun for a while, but not even reaching “Nirvana” was enough to get me to stay.

Great Reads:

• Plurk:  The Power of Wasting Time – Huomah

Prognosis:  If you enjoy conversation and mingling, have fun.  It’s a great, interactive site.  Be careful, because it can be addicting and may suck you in.  You can do what some do and use sites like Ping.fm to make your Plurk submissions also be your Twitter submissions, but you may miss out on the micro-forum spirit that is Plurk.

Twitter

This is the section I’d like to spend the least amount of time on.  My reasoning behind that?  One word:  Twitip.  For me, Twitter has become, by far, one of the best ways to get to meet people and keep up on news and all that.  I have gained several relationships that have become very valuable on Twitter and have done business with many of them as well.  I think we’re definitely in the day and age where people in the internet marketing sphere must have a Twitter account.

Great Reads:

• 5 Ways I Benefit From Twitter – Twitip
• The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook – Techipedia
• The Top 10 List of People to Unfollow on Twitter (very funny) – VoiceofTech
• 3 Types of Twitter Marketing Campaigns – MarketNet

Prognosis:  Use it as your news source, your way to get your name out or a place to share your gross stories; post often, and make friends.