Everyone uses social media in their own way. While some people want to be connected with everyone, everywhere, others would rather keep certain profiles private for friends and family only. The following is for those who want to be found on social networks, or for the networks on which they want to be found.
Why You Want to Be Found on Social Networks
Think of your profile and activity on social networks as creating brand recognition. At the recent Social Media AZ event, the keynote speaker talked about how having a catalog on your coffee table increased brand awareness. Sure, that catalog may sit there for months and months, but one day when you are ready to purchase something that the company sells, that catalog will probably be in the front of your mind and lead you to hopping on the company’s website or going into their stores to do your shopping.
The same thing can be said of social media. One day, you may realize you need to brush up on your SEO, and the first resource that comes to mind is the SEO expert whose tips have been coming through your Twitter timeline. Alternatively, someone could be reminded to visit your site after seeing your name pop up in their Facebook news feed, simply thanks to your recent activity. Any reminder of your presence online could translate to a hit to your website, comment, promotion, or even a new client.
How To Make Yourself More Socially Accessible
Do you want more people to connect with you socially? Here are some tips on ways you can make yourself more socially recognized and accessible.
Include Your Top Social Profile Links on Your Website
This seems pretty obvious to most, but there are still some sites I go to where I know the person is on Twitter, but if I had to base that off what I could find on their website, I would never know. If you want to create a stronger social presence / brand for yourself, be sure to start with including your main social network links on your website. There are many ways to do this, from simple links or icons in your sidebar, embedding your Retaggr profile link or card, or using WordPress plugins such as Cute Profiles to display your profile icons on the side of your webpage.
Include Social Profile Links in Your Email Signature
Another great place to include your social media profile links is within your email signature. Think about how many people you send emails to… some of which may not even know you are online. Include simple text links to your Twitter or Facebook along with your website, or use add-ons such as WiseStamp to create a signature with icons linked to your social media profiles.
Kristi Hines
WordPress Customizations, SEO, SMOPortfolio: http://kristihines.com
Blog: http://kikolani.com
Directory: http://dofollow.info
WiseStamp has almost 50 different social services to choose from to add to your signature, although you may not want to actually add that many to your signature.
Connect Your Email Addresses
Do you use one email address for responding to your blog readers, clients, blog comments, etc.? Make sure that email address is linked to the social networks on which you want to be found. Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and many other networks allow you to have more than one email address associated with your account, so if you have a few different email addresses that others may have in their online contacts lists, make sure they are all linked to your social media accounts.
Create a Recognizable Presence
Are you using a particular image for Gravatar when blog commenting? Do you have a well known image on Twitter, and are now trying to build up your Facebook profile contacts? Why not also use the same image across all of your social networks so that you will be easily recognized? This way when someone sees a new friend request, they will know who it is coming from and be more likely to accept.
Name Branding
Since Facebook, LinkedIn, and many other networks go by your real name, you will want your name to be known so people can easily connect your real name to your website. It can be as simple as changing your WordPress admin to display are your full name, displaying an author’s box at the end of your posts, or including a small snippet in your sidebar naming yourself as owner of your blog. Branding your real name helps if you have created social profiles with various usernames – your name is more important on some networks than your username / URL.
Interconnect Your Social Profiles
For all of those sites that allow you to somehow connect your social networking sites – make sure you do as much as possible. This can be done by:
- Including HTML links in your About Me section (like I have on StumbleUpon).
- Including applications such as Web Profiles that will let you add social networking profile icons and links to your Facebook profile.
- Filling in your other social network usernames (sometimes referred to as “services”) as a part of your profile, like you can on FriendFeed.
One thing to note – you will want to make sure to fully understand how your accounts are being linked. Some networks simply include a link to your other social profiles, while some networks will update your other social media profiles with your activity on their network.
How to Socially Connect with Blog Readers
Prior to the WordPress 2.9 upgrade, I was using a nifty little plugin called Meet Your Commenters. It linked the email addresses of my commenters to their social media accounts, so I could easily browse through and connect with my commenters socially. Unfortunately, after the upgrade of either WordPress or some of my other plugins, Meet Your Commenters went haywire and had to be deactivated.
So how can you find your blog readers socially?
Export Commenters’ Email Addresses
WordPress offers a plugin that will allow you to export the email addresses of your commenters. Please note that you should not spam, sell, or otherwise distribute the email addresses of your commenters. That’s not the point of this plugin. What you can do is take the list of emails, import it into your contacts list (I used this method of creating a CSV file and importing into Gmail), and then search for them via the friend finder searches on the social networks you use most.
Look for Social Profile Icons on Blogs
If you can’t export your commenter’s emails, or they are not using emails linked to their social media accounts, your next best bet is to visit your commenter’s websites and look for their social media links and icons. Most blogs or websites will have these in their sidebar, header menu, footer, contact page, or about page.
How Socially Accessible Are You?
Can people find and recognize you easily on social networks? What are some more benefits of being socially networked, and what other steps can you suggest to help others build their social networking communities?
This post brought to you by Kristi Hines
Kristi Hines is creator of Kikolani which focuses on blogging tips and social networking. Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Kristi has written 310 awesome article(s) for Kikolani.
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{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
Kristi,
Excellent insights and a real tour-de-force on using social media more effectively. Great Social Media Dataflow graphic. Quite a few sites/services to keep up with. Hard to find enough hours in the day on many occasions. Challenging to come up with a strategy that can optimize my time spent on social media each day without it ruling my life. I found the tips about locating your blog Commenters via social media interesting and very useful. Thanks.
New from Mike @ Computer Tips New Intel Processor for Netbook Computers
Great article! Big help for people like me just getting started with the whole social media scene.
New from Andrea@brite2briter If you register your site for free at
Great post! Very helpful for a social media newbie like myself, I plan to implement these strategies right away! Thanks so much! God Bless!
New from Marta Daniels There Are Regulars and Then There Are Rockstar Regulars!
I made an account at all of the major social networking outlets, simply because I wanted the top results in Google to feature ways to contact me when my name was searched.
I haven’t gone through the lesser-known networks that I don’t recognize in the header of this article, but I don’t think I need to. (I have good listings in Google already)
New from Mid Mo Mortgage Jan 29 – Market Growth Surging As GDP Reports Forthcoming
I think that the mainstream sites like Twitter and Facebook can be utilized by almost everyone, while he lesser known networks are more important for niches, like musicians using Last.fm, Pandora, Blippr, etc.
You’re right! I actually tell all my musician friends that they absolutely need to get their band on Playlist.com.
They don’t listen, though. They think it’s a waste of time. I can’t even begin to tell them how many great bands I adore after finding them there!
New from Mid Mo Mortgage Jan 29 – Market Growth Surging As GDP Reports Forthcoming
Good stuff Kristi, I have cut myself down to 6 (maybe more, but that is all I can think of off the top of my head) social networking services because it is easy to get wrapped up in doing more social media than creating content.
I much prefer to comment on blogs these days, it seems to provide more sometimes with networking and discovery.
New from Keith@ Hot Blog Tips Passion Without Knowledge Won’t Make You Money
I think social media sites can help with generating new content. Take Twitter for example. If you can tie an article in your nice to a trending topic, you can expose your content to a larger audience just by applying the hash tag. Or if you look in active groups on Facebook, you can see what people are asking questions about, and write on those topics. Plus, if you are socially connected with people, they are likely to promote your content on that social network as well.
Good stuff,
I haven’t been around in a while, but glad I dropped in. I knew I was forgetting something; email signatures. i am all over the place beautifying my brand and getting my name out there and I forgot something as simple as email signatures.
I am finding the best way to get your name out there is to get involved with people and communities. Share information and go wild with possibilities.
New from Freddie @ social media marketing 10 Reasons You Must Have a Website: #8 Exposure
I wasn’t too big on extended email signatures until just recently, but it definitely pays off. I have had a few freelance inquiries based off of people checking out my portfolio link, and I have gotten new readers for my blog based off of people following my blog link who didn’t know I was even online. It may not be significant, but since it’s a one time setup, it’s a good method to reap the occasional benefits.
It’s so clear to me how social media can help on generating ideas! I am accessible socially on most of the networks, I just need to rethink of the way my online relations are belt, maybe we should check it from time to time to make more related to our niches and do some cleanse!
New from Hesham @ FamousBloggers Is CommentLuv Selling your Blog Comment Links for Advertisers? Andy Bailey Clearing Things Up
I’m actually experimenting with the “cleansing” process on a particular social network. It never worked for me even though I had a large contact list because the contacts were ones I made before blogging, and I’m sure that 90% of them could care the less about blogging and social media. So I’m starting it from scratch, building contacts based on interest, and seeing if I can make it become useful.
By exporting people’s email addresses to contact them off-site, do you specify this in your site policy?
New from Ari Herzog@Online Media Strategies Top 70 Commentators in January 2010
That’s a good point.
I hadn’t thought about it before because I was using that plugin that checked your commenters for their social media accounts, and before that, my comments were being fed through Gmail which picked up the email addresses automatically and put them into my contacts list, and I regularly use that address book when I search for contacts on social networks.
I did add a little disclaimer in my privacy policy that says I will not use email addresses for any purpose than to contact the email address owner directly via email or social networks.
The phenomenon of the Social Media was crazy since 2009. I actually decided to include my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profile URL on my signature a few hours ago. What a coincidence
New from Michael Aulia SteelSeries Xai Review
This is a really great article! With social media, I basically use only three which are Twitter, Digg and Stumbleupon. These are the ones I use frequently but I also have a profile in all other social media marketing networks. Like you said, make yourself known, if you want to be found
New from Andrew@BloggingGuide How to Make Money with E-books
You should check out Reddit as well. The user base is much more intelligent (or maybe just mature) than Digg. I switched a year ago and never went back to Digg!
New from Mid Mo Mortgage Jan 29 – Market Growth Surging As GDP Reports Forthcoming
Hi Kristi,
I love using social networks. I have found that there aren’t enough hours in my day to go to many of them. But I’ve concentrated my efforts on Twitter right now as it’s so easy to use and fun
I definitely need to improve and start using it all more. I’m slapping myself (on the wrist) because I haven’t done anything on Myspace nor Friendfeed. (I’ll get there eventually – LOL)
Blessings,
Eren
New from Eren Mckay Family bonding activities – insights to help connect deeply
Thanks! This is very useful especially for a person like me! I always wanted to socialize.. Meet new friends all over the world! Endorse my business and etc. These tips can be my stepping stone in order to meet new friends and promote what i got..
New from Kathy Holiday Holiday Cottage in Cornwall
I just started using WiseStamp not long ago and quite impressed with the feature. It’s something I need yet never thought of doing before.
The email-add-export plugin sounds very useful, I’m glad Ari brought up the policy issue and I need to check on that too. For me, generally I’ll try to stay connected with commenters via post-visits & add them to my social media sites. However, the job doesn’t end here so I’m constantly thinking how to really bond with them effectively. Real time conversations to me is still the best.
Great plugins shared, will tweet this for visibility. ^^
@wchingya
Social/Blogging Tracker
New from Ching Ya 6 Points To Ponder Before Using Automatic Status Updates
Thanks for sharing! I updated my privacy policy to basically say that I was the only person who would contact them via email or social networks using their email addresses.
Great tips.. Two ways I make things easy for people to find me, is I use the same avatar pic everywhere and I also stick to the same color theme as my blog.
New from John Paul@Make Money Blogging Just Released: New Twitter Dummy Guide
Very informative article. I have social network profiles but I haven’t put much use to them. I think I have some new ideas for exploring social network sites and connected with like minds.
New from meka@earning money online Is Earning Money Online Distracting You From Earning Money Online?
Hi Kristi
Thanks for the diagram. By the way i want to ask what is the e tags there, same with the api.
New from Lloydi@sikat ang pinoy Bata Reyes Billiard Player of the Year
Your Social Media post is good and brings up some valid points, glad I found your post! I believe that social media is going to be the future home for any and all advertising and marketing. With Google’s real-time search and other search engines catching on quickly you will see many SEO Companies becoming Twitter SEO Companies very soon!
I am an avid Twitter user and focus on building the value that I add to the rest of my social network, I help to promote any and everyone that asks me for help (as long as they are not loco in la cabessa!). I believe that optimizing your profiles is very important, just as optimizing your website is, but the most important part of any SEO efforts is having quality content. The same goes for Twitter, you need quality content and updates for people to read and link to. If you tweet about the right subjects you will notice more and more incoming links to your twitter profile when your tweets start being republished on other people’s blogs (provides some temporary page rank). Also you can do your own personal “Social Media Press Release” and some good old fashioned article directory link building with your Twitter profile.
Social media is the first step to an “open-source” media and news. My twitter username is @gohewitt for anyone looking to follow. I am excited to see what comes of all of this and feel that we still don’t have a clue what being “Connected” really means just yet!
New from Florida SEO Twitter Profile SEO
Yup nice article on Social media strategies i want add here Just one thing, Social media marketing takes your full time, you need to be updated with your social circle.!!
New from SEO Company Strengths of managed hosting services
I’m trying to establish my presence on different social network and I’m on my way. I have a good presence when someone search with my full name but still trying to beat Lt. Yaser Arafat in the keyword ‘Arafat’. I know that is hard but I know I can beat the president one day on Google.
New from Arafat Hossain Piyada Speed Up iPhone and iPod Touch syncing on iTunes with BackOff
Aren’t you worried that the websites you get links on, using your name, will be associated with your name?
I think it’d be a little off-putting to search someone’s name and then right below the result you also see it on article directories.
New from Mid Mo Mortgage Feb 2 – Small Business To Get $30 Billion In Loans For 2010
Kristi-
Just wanted to say that you gave me the motivation to go back to Twitter and see what was new. I found out some cool things have changed, such as using the hash symbol to instantly put your tweet into real-time results.
Ok, ok, I might see what Twitter is “cool” now. It’s just neat to post something to a specific region, subject, or emerging topic.
New from Mid Mo Mortgage Feb 2 – Small Business To Get $30 Billion In Loans For 2010
Always wondering about people not using they real name on social media, real name is great for social branding, I heard a lot about this. I think is never to late to use social media to spread my blog, I’ll try to find ways to using it and get the maximum benefits.
Thanks Kristi.
New from Latief@AnotherBlogger Win Some Amazing Prizes in the Blazing Minds Competition
I do understand the importance of becoming accessible on Social Medias, however, I still need people to connect with. In fact, I have a very few friends on my social circle from the blogosphere.
Anyone would like to connect with me may find me out on facebook at facebook.com/aisajib and twitter @aisajib.
Thanks Kristie, for a nice post.
New from Aminul Islam Sajib Twitter Tool: How to Unfollow All
Thanks for the tips on connecting with blog readers. Very useful.
Now this is a novel approach. This entire Comment by Alberta Business Plans was lifted verbatim from my Comment — see Comment #1. I’m not so sure that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
This would kind of make me wonder what type of “Business Plans” this commenter generates. Perhaps Business Plans lifted/copied from other people?
New from Mike @ Computer Tips Powerline Computer Networking – Home Wifi Alternative
Sorry about that… that’s what I get for approving comments while still waking up. I spammed him!
I’ve been noticing more and more of these kinds of comments… I think there is some kind of software / automation involved in lifting comments off of the page and then posting them.
Krisiti,
No problem. My reply to @Business Plans was written kinda tongue-in-cheek and with a bit of humour. Managing comments on a busy site can definitely be a time consuming task.
I had not seen this method of Comment Spam before where the commenter just regurgitates an earlier comment. Seems that the spammers never stop evolving.
New from Mike @ Computer Tips Powerline Computer Networking – Home Wifi Alternative
I have seen it before, but not recently. Some of the more creative ones grab a piece of several comments and stick them all together. Those are hard to spot, unless it just flat out doesn’t make sense.
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