Leveraging Social Media

Welcome! You are a basic user of social networking, having set up your profile on Twitter and LinkedIn and developed a Facebook page. You’ve even sent out some “tweets” and status updates as well as connecting with friends and colleagues. Every day you read about a new application for one of these sites and you aren’t sure whether they will actually help you and if they are worth the time to down load and learn. This article will point out some tested applications and methods that are useful in keeping your social media time useful and brief.

FriendFeed is a social networking site that consolidates all of your other sites into one. This includes MySpace (if you have it), Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and more so you can see your contacts’ activity across multiple sites (IF they have taken the time to join Friend Feed). Many people want to limit their online activity to one or two sites so it may be difficult to encourage them to join yet another.

A tool everyone engaging in social network should be using is Ping.fm (www.ping.fm). This web-based application allows you to update your status on a variety of networks. You can let people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more know what your activities are, or that you have posted something new to your blog, from this one site.

TweetDeck and HootSuite are similar except TweetDeck is a downloaded desktop application that allows you to manage Twitter more effectively, while HootSuite is a Web based app. Both have great user interfaces and allow you to have a more in-depth visual experience, viewing your direct messages and @replies while watching live feeds. In TweetDeck you can set up groups. If you are following a large number of people, you can separate the ones you really want to watch by theme. Both applications allow you to manage multiple “personalities” which is helpful if you have more than one business for which you are using Twitter.

If you are struggling with how to find appropriate and interesting people to follow on Twitter, you can use WeFollow.com. WeFollow is a directory where members can list themselves under three keywords. For instance, if you are an entrepreneur, you would likely use “entrepreneur”, “small business”, “marketing” or something similar. Thus you can do a search for members by keyword. Additionally, if you do a search on the main Twitter dashboard (using a hash mark helps: #smallbusiness), you can find discussions on a topic and find individuals to follow who have the same interests as you.

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.

On LinkedIn, you have the option of joining and participating in themed groups. Do a search in the Groups section for subjects or professions you are interested in and join. There are groups for attorneys, accountants, consultants, HR professionals…and many more. Once you have joined, start connecting with other members through group discussions and inviting them to join your network. Also check out the Answers tab at the top of the main screen. People post questions that they seek either opinions on or answers to. Answering questions can define you as an expert.

Social networking is very similar to live networking. We’ve offered these advanced user tips to make your online experience more rich, but always remember the goal is to connect with and contribute to the success of other people. Once you do that, you will see that others are eager to do the same for you!