Five Social Networks You Need to Belong To
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Recently I have been exploring more and more “social networking” sites. These are sites that let users connect to each other and some even provide a “live chat” type of experience. Social networks allow users to see who others in their network know. I have used this feature to find past colleagues and co-workers. What are my top 5 sites? Here they are..
- Twitter I use the thwirl client and have it constantly running so I can receive updates from people I am following. PS - Follow me and more than likely I will in return follow you.
- Facebook - I used to think that this service was mainly for college students but have learned that over 1/2 of the registered users are 25 or over. I have alot of exploring left to do on there to figure out all of the ins and outs.
- Linked In - I use this site to connect with past co-workers and employers. You can also join groups on here just like facebook. You can also ask questions and answer questions to be known as an authority on LinkedIn.
- stumbleupon I use this site to share cool or unique sites I come across while surfing. Stumbleupon creates a toolbar on my browser that has a “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” that I can click on when I am on a site. If I am the first to “stumble” a site I get a popup window to describe the site or article and also tag it. If I am bored I can also click the “Stumble” icon to find sites that are similar in the interests I selected in my profile.
- del.icio.us is a bookmarking site. Del.icio.us adds two new buttons to my browser one of which is “Tag” which lets me bookmark a site to del.icio.us and add a description and tags for the entry. The other button is to view my bookmarks. In firefox this button opens up my bookmarks in a sidebar on the left. I can see all of my bookmarks and also search them. I can also “not share” a bookmark making it private for me only. I can also send out a bookmark to my network on del.icio.us. Right now my network is small on there please feel free to join del.icio.us and join my network.
That is it for the ones I use daily. There are others such as myspace and squidoo. I am looking for comments on any sites I am missing that you feel are important. What sites do you use and have you been able to build your brand using these site or make any business deals? Please share your experiences.
Dead on, Justin. These are the five I use primarily as well. I also dabble with Sphinn. The idea is to focus on the ones that make the most sense for your particular needs, business objectives, etc. And I mean focus. If you are working more than 5 - 7 social networks, you aren’t working any of them well.
Comment by Harry Hoover — April 18, 2008 @ 8:42 am
Thanks for the comment Harry. I agree you do have to limit what you’re doing or you’re not going to do anything well.
Comment by Justin — April 18, 2008 @ 1:14 pm
My site is a UK travel site so keep that in mind.
The only social networking site I have had success with is stumbleupon. I have gotten from 250-1200 visitors over a 3 day period for the pages that I posted with them. The traffic wasn’t nearly as good as Google traffic the click through rate was very low. On the other hand I got some rss subscriptions and backlinks from them.
Craig’s last blog post..buy DVD England
Comment by Craig — May 5, 2008 @ 2:57 am