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As a very active social media user, some would probably say power user already, I notice the same mistakes over and over made by new users on social media sites.
On the other hand it’s very easy to boost your social media credibility with very simple measures. So I collected the 10 simplest ways to boost your social media credibility from the start and with little effort:
- Use a unique name or nick name which is truly a name! Do not use keywords as your name. Hello Realestate California, how are you? If you are not in it for the quick Google traffic but for long term reputation building change your name in order not to appear to be a spammer.
- Use an avatar! On most social sites if you do not use one you will get ignored altogether. On StumbleUpon your stumbles won’t even be displayed without an avatar.
- Submit your favorite sites and blog posts! Do not submit your own postings! Especially if you are new to a community do NOT submit your own website or postings as your first action. You’re dead on arrival this way.
- Introduce yourself. Say something about yourself on your profile. Do not just start out of nowhere. Let people relate.
- Do not vote for everything, vote for the good stuff. Nobody will respect you on social media if you just vote for anything, even crap just to become a power user. Quality beats quantity.
- Add other community users with similar interests as your friends. Do not add only top users or dozens users at once.
- Socialize across different social media sites. Add your existing Facebook or Twitter friends at the new network you enter. Do not overdo (see #6!)
- Add your submissions in the morning or during daytime but not at night. International social news sites like Digg have largely US traffic so if you are in Asia or Europe do not submit at night where nobody reads it.
- Submit real life or stories that matter for the broad public not just “blogging, SEO or make money online” only.
- Be yourself. Behave like a human being not like a bot or salesperson. Do not sell people anything, give them something for free.
Once you master these ways and it works for a while, you can start thinking about personal gain.
I do not advocate self-exploitation on social media sites. I’m all about give and take but without giving first you can’t take on social media, unless you are not in it for real social media credibility and reputation building.
So use these 10 ways of boosting it and when people start appreciating you will be able to take as well.
More on similar topics elsewhere:
- 10 Basic Rules of Social Media Marketing — Esteban Panzera
- 9 Ways to Build Your Reputation as a Blogger
- Now Is Gone » Social Media Content Creation Process
- Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: Interview with Jonathon Colman: Social Media Secrets from a Green Geek
- Freelance Bloggers: 12 Tips to Promote Your Work With Social Media
- Social Media Will Change Your Business
- Every Social Network is Different for News Consumption » techipedia | tamar weinberg
- Local and Global Popularity: Successful Blogs | extreme webmaster evernerve
- Part Two: Why Use Yahoo! Answers » Small Business SEM
This thing has 14 Comments
What? You mean there’s no magic formula? But I want instant success for no work! Dammit.
:)
Do not submit your own postings!
On this the opinions divergee largely. Some say no, some say submit only your best pieces.
As a blog with not too much traffic, I’d vote for the second option. For if I am to wait untill somebody submits my pages …
Anyway, if the content is good, I do not think it matters.
Olivier
Yeah, Michael. Now that you say it, social media sucks for not being like the real world where you just enter a library, sports stadium or art gallery and exclaim “I’m the best, buy my stuff!” and everybody buys it…
Olivier: Do not think like Bush in black and white, good or evil categories. You don’t have to submit yourself and you don’t have to wait either. There are subtle methods to achieve social media success. Check my archives to find out about some of them.
By not submitting your own postings, you can have a good reader insight on what people find the most valuable and do it again in a similar topic!
David: Exactly. When you ask someone to submit a story you can also get some valuable peer review too. In my case I rarely need to ask someone to submit my stuff though. In most cases people do it by themeselves.
Regarding point #8, it depends on which timezone you are in. For example, there is eleven hour time difference between Pakistan and USA timezones, so when we have night here, it’s day in the US and vice versa.
Other points, I agree with. :)
These are really simple but great tips to help you boost your credibility in social media.
I would like to add than when we you use avatar always make sure that you are using the same avatar so that your contacts from other social sites can recognized you when they come across you in other sites.
#10 Be yourself… quite problematic because people generally acting in their specific capacity as users of certain online systems ;)
How many times can this same list be posted on the web over and over and over again? The truth is that SEO best practices can be learned by anybody in about two days and beyond that it’s just tactics and trickery to try to get to the top.
Another consideration — some sites (StumbleUpon comes to mind) allow you to just tag, or tag + review. You don’t need to review EVERYTHING you tag… but adding the occasional review will impress upon people that you’re not just there to participate on a surface level.
Thanks, I am tring to use stumble upon to build traffic to my site. Your comments helped me see what I was doing wrong. As of now I don’t enen have an avatar.
Don’t forget social media users can smell a fake a mile away!
Great post — and I think every company wanting to get into social media should have an ‘authentic’ user on staff.
Mohsin, Joy, SexySEO: True but manageable.
Paul: Good tip.
Shaun: You’re welcome. Good luck.
Yes, Kelly: That’s what I assume for a while. Every larger company needs someone who is socializing all the time without doing marketing overtly.
Good points! I agree, don´t post your own posts and post only stuff that you think could be interesting to other users too.
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