My Half Hour Social Networking Plan: The Final Ten Minutes

Part 1- The First Ten Minutes
Part 2- The Second Ten Minutes

We reached the home stretch, the final ten minutes of my half hour social networking promotion plan. Actually I really shouldn’t have called this my social networking plan, I should have called it my social web marketing plan, but anyways. The key word in both of those titles is “social”. Right now we are reaching out an awful lot and not really participating socially at all, which isn’t good. Interaction is key in using the social web, it is a give and take, except for the forum posting and the stumbling of others pages we are mostly taking.

This next phase is going to give you a lot of options, personally I rotate doing these throughout the week.

Step 7: Interaction- Comment, message, and interact on various platforms in order to show appreciation, build an audience, create back links, and just participate beyond your own blog.

• Respond to your MySpace messages- If you are using the program I talked about in the first section of this series then your messages and comments will probably pile up every few days. By simply taking the time out and replying to the messages you are creating a connection and a loyal reader. If people think you are trying to be above them you will lose touch, a quick simple reply goes a long way in building a relationship. Plus it is just polite. I make sure that I respond to every message I get on any social networking website I am on.
• Send Messages to People that Stumble Your Post- When you are on a post that you know was stumbled hit the comment button on the toolbar. This will allow you to see who has stumbled and commented your post, if they left you a nice comment take the time out and drop them a message that you appreciate it. It is a good way to build your stumble friends and a good way to bring them back to your blog.
• Comment Blogs within your niche- Don’t look at other bloggers in your niche as competition, look at them as potential resources. Drop a useful comment on their page, maybe they will start reading and linking to your blog. Make sure you take the time out and give them some link love if you see a post of theirs that you particularly like.
• Comment “Do Follow” Blogs- A quick way to build back links to your blog is to comment blogs that are listed as “do follow”. Do follow means that the bloggers in question have set it up so when you comment and put your link in with your name that it will back link to your blog. This helps build your google ranking but also more importantly if you leave a worthwhile comment people will come and check your blog out. The power of a good comment, be it witty or informative can go a long way. Most of the b5 media blogs are “do follow”, so right there are over 200 blogs you can comment on and start with. Also there are multiple lists throughout the web of “do follow” bloggers, Courtney Tuttle has a list of over 200.
• Become active on message boards within you niche- Besides posting links to your blogs it would be good to spend some time just interacting on these message boards, so you can build your reputation up as well as become part of the community. You will find you will gain better results by interacting. Also make sure to put the url to your blog in your avatar or as part of your profile, if you are pretty active on these boards you will be surprised how much traffic this can bring.
• Comment on stories on Digg- This is another easy way to increase your visibility.

I think you are getting the point, I don’t want to end up being redundant. Commenting and interaction is the key to growth using the social web. Anyone that has any form of success will tell you that from Dane Cook to Tila Tequila.

What I don’t have listed here is responding to e-mails and comments in your blog. That is something you should be doing away from this half hour plan. If you get behind you can substitute it for the last ten minutes, but it will hurt your growth because at that point you are just maintaining and not expanding.

Time Spent: 10 Minutes

I hope this series was informative for you, it was really enjoyable to write.

Technorati Tags: social web, social networking, commenting, marketing, digg, stumbleupon