Digg, Facebook, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, YouTube, Bloglines, MySpace, Blogging Zoom, Twitter, Sphinn, Technorati, Mixx, LinkedIn, Hi5, Slashdot, Reddit, Flickr… arggggh! How the hell do I keep up…?!?!
Social media and user generated content are so hot right now! It seems like another Digg or YouTube clone surfaces every day. But as social media outlets continue to grow, so does the challenge of mastering them. In fact, unless you are a self-employed consultant (with a severe shortage of clients), the task of managing and participating in more than a handful of social sites is downright daunting. So how the heck can you use all the social media outlets to your advantage…?!?!
You can’t. Try subscribing to more than 10-20 blogs and you’ll soon find out why. I subscribe to just six online marketing blogs (found in my Blogroll), yet opened my RSS reader yesterday to find over 150 new articles. Woo hoo… fat chance of reading all of those on a Sunday. And that’s before I even went to Digg, Sphinn and others to see what’s making news. Without a strict social media filter you’ll quickly find yourself drowning in information.
The key is to find the social media outlets that work for you. I’ve filtered my list down to a handful that help me meet a range of personal objectives:
Objective 1 – Keeping up with industry news and trends
My Blogroll lists my favourite blogs for industry news. Anything that they don’t cover probably isn’t that important. I use Bloglines as my RSS reader to aggregate content from each blog. I tried a desktop RSS reader but found it inconvenient & annoying to run another desktop application. I also subscribe to a range of email newsletters from Clickz, Marketing Sherpa, Search Engine Watch & Imedia. I do so to manage my email and RSS volumes. Too much volume in either format tends to send my brain into meltdown… 
Objective 2 – Shameless blog promotion
While I haven’t begun hammering promotion of this blog as yet, it is only a matter of time When I do I’ll be turning to StumbleUpon, Sphinn and perhaps Reddit. I’ve found these social news sites to be the most effective in generating targeted traffic to an online marketing blog. Given that I find these news sites the most beneficial, I also try to ensure I retain at least a semi active account in each network. When I come across an article I like in my daily reading, these are the sites I will submit and vote on.
Objective 3 – Bookmarking
Notice that I didn’t write social bookmarking. The reason is that I don’t use any social bookmarking sites. Google’s toolbar gives me the basic benefit of accessing my bookmarks from any computer, minus the social aspect. I figure I’m using enough social sites already. I don’t need to add del.icio.us to the list. Perhaps I’m missing out on something, but I figure I’m also keeping a little bit of my sanity.
Objective 4 – Socialising and maintaining personal relationships
Facebook was the first social network to capture my interest, and is likely to be the last. I don’t see a lot of point maintaining profiles in MySpace, Hi5, Orkut and others, particularly when I would maintain a similar friendship group in each. So Facebook it is for now… We’ll see if that changes when the next ‘hot social network’ arises (as did Friendster, MySpace and now Facebook).
Finding your right blend of social media
My social media usage is heavily influenced by my objectives. Yours should be too. Before jumping in, think through what you want social media to do for you. Once you have decided what you want from social media, you’ll be ready to try out each player and determine which ones work best for you.
I couldn't help noticing you're new round here. If you like what you read, why not subscribe to my RSS feed. It's what all the cool kids are doing
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey , interesting take on things. Different. I am posting a link to this page from my blog! Peace.
Hey Steve,
Thanks for the feedback. Glad you liked the article. To me the best approach is to master a select few social networks, and then move on if you’ve got the time/inclination.