10 Ways to Ramp Up Your Social Networking Activities

Hey there! Let's face it, social networking has engulfed our lives, so why not maximize your presence and reach on the social networks, since you spend time there anyways. Not to mention how incredibly powerful the social networks are at reaching people. Before the days of Facebook and Twitter, there was Plaxo and Linkedin, which started as simply ways of exchanging contact information and vcards. Personally, I embraced these technologies at an early stage because at the time I was very into business development and connecting with people to promote the company I was with at the time. But I definitely saw the potential and tried to maximize them for all they were worth, which resulted in acquiring a lot of contacts over the years. Nowadays, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram dominate the social landscape, so you have to force yourself to utilize them to their fullest potential. Here are some good ways to ramp up your social networking activities to better take advantage of the opportunity:

1. Daily Routine - every day when I start working, the first thing I do is load Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in browser windows (they are usually already there from the day before). I scroll through the updates and start liking, sharing, reading, commenting on people's updates that I find interesting and the one's that are just good news usually. You would be surprised how many people you can touch by just doing that for 10 or 15 minutes. Then, I let my regular work day dictate how much I'm back on checking my social networks. But I usually spend probably an hour or 2 a day checking Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for things I can do to be proactive. I frequently hear people tell me I'm everywhere, so I know I'm having a good effect on my social networks. I get business inquiries from my content sharing and interacting. I like to share informative articles that have been put into my social network feeds, and then turn them around to my connections. I like to think of myself as a hub of news, information, and knowledge related to Internet Marketing. So I take a lot of pride in being that person that is always exposing people to helpful information and education. So be sure to make social networking part of your daily routine and you will see benefits to your business or business development.

2. Social Karma - I'm sure this term is being used for something else, but I like to use "social karma" to describe what happens reciprocally when you proactively interact with other people's social postings and status updates. Facebook and Twitter have forced people to interact socially online and will continue to compel people to be online more because this is how they make money through advertising. I have found, through being a proactive social networker, the more you interact with others doing things like: Liking, Sharing, Commenting, and Retweeting of their content and postings, the more they will return the favor when you post something. Usually, the more compelling a post it is the more likely it will be interacted with, but in general the more you make the effort the more that will be returned to you, which exposes your content to their streams. In my opinion you can never be proactive enough with your friends and followers. It's something that has to be focused on and made part of your daily routine. Once you start really interacting proactively with others, you will see them return the favor and your content will be shared to more people.

3. Adding Friends/Connections - All the social networks have made it pretty easy to add friends and contacts to your social profiles. You can even connect networks with networks and cross-invite people to your networks. One of the best ways to ramp your connections is using the Add Friends from your email contact list. This can pull a huge list into your invites and blasts them all an invitation. You may need to clean out the people in your invite list you don't want to connect with socially. You can also add friends right on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as most other networks, that you see suggested to you or that other people are connected to. Be outgoing and click Add Friend as much as possibly and you will build your friends quickly. On Twitter they have great search features for finding other people you can follow with similar interests, or that are following people you know. It does take time and effort, but well worth it.

4. Be Brilliant and Helpful - Most people use Facebook for sharing their personal and family stuff, which is great, so when you post business related or informational content on an industry it should be really compelling in order to peak people's interest. There are always going to be some people you are connected to that don't care about your business postings and will never interact, but there are plenty of people that might just interact if your content is either helpful, informational, or just plain brilliant. The more compelling your content is the more people will interact, but you can't count on it happening, you just have to try hard and be as frequent to possible to illicit a response (but don't post your same content repeatedly, maybe twice at the most). People also like helpful, informative articles that enhance their understanding of a subject or provide some new information they can become hip to. You should mix in a good amount of helpful articles into your stream so you're not always self-promoting.

5. Fan Pages - Everyone should operate their own Facebook Fan Page if not more than one. ou should have one for your company, website, blog, group, organization, whatever it may be you should really focus on growing and building out your Fan Page. Fan Pages are great because they can really grow if people like your company/service or your content is good. Make sure to load up your photo section (quick content), videos if you have them, and really build out your Discussion area, as they tend to have great Google rankings. Fans can be advertised for as well. By running a Facebook advertising campaign you can add additional targeted fans that "like" certain core keyword phrases and entities. This does cost money, but is an awesome way to expand your reach and then get back in front of them with status updates and direct email messages. You can even make a nice custom Welcome Page for new fans that encourages them to click the Like button. So building up your Fan Page should be a really high priority for any business, website, or organization. You can never have too many fans!

6. Be Positive! - the world is filled with bad stuff happening and there is so much negativity out there these days, so make sure to have a great attitude and be positive when you are social networking. Put good energy out there into the social networking environment and people will jive with your good vibrations. It's always a good idea to encourage people and be that uplifting voice that makes people feel good or better. Nobody likes gloom and doom on social networks...so be optimistic and excited with your social postings and people will gravitate towards you, not to mention share your content!

7. Content Creation - Yes writing! You know, putting pen to paper er uh typing on the keyword more like it. When you create content, i.e. articles, blog posts, etc. it gives you something to share with people to enhance their lives. It also gets into the search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, and brings you free traffic. Make sure you are making your website as "sticky" as possible so your visitors can connect with you via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, so they can follow your subsequent content. Also, be sure you are "retargeting" your website visitors with companies like AdRoll so you can truly capitalize on the free traffic coming to your website. Once you have posted a new article, make sure to share it and hashtag it on your favorite social networks and into LinkedIn groups of relevance so it's gets out there. Content drives free traffic on the Internet, so you should absolutely have a great content creation strategy in place, or pay someone to write the content for you.

8. Advertising - this can be tricky because it costs money, but advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can be very effective if you go about it properly and improve the process over time. For instance, you can Promote your personal posts on Facebook, Boost your Facebook Page posts, Sponsor your LinkedIn Updates, and Sponsor your Tweets on Twitter. All valuable ways to grow your traffic, connections, and exposure. The nice thing about Online advertising is that you can budget it very carefully so you don't spend too much while trying it out. You have to do a really good job at capitalizing on the traffic and exposure it brings you or you are basically throwing money down the drain, but with a really good strategy you can leverage these social networks to build business and traffic to your website.

9. Instagram - whether you like it or not EVERYBODY is on Instagram, so you should be too. There's a reason Facebook bought it, the traffic is HUGE. For business, you should be running a Instagram presence for your company, and hashtag your posts to get new followers, then they might just visit your website from your description. One of my agency's clients gets most of their business from Instagram, so I've seen first hand how it can positively impact ecommerce. So go out and take some pictures, some selfies, and have a ball with it. Oh ya you can connect to all your Facebook friends, so it's not hard to get up and running easily.

10. Be a Beast - Social networking really defines "you get out of it what you put into it." You could literally spend all day interacting, posting content, retweeting, liking and sharing, but who has the time for that. What you can do is spend an hour or 2 a day being a beast, going fast, chatting it up, and really showing you care about what your friends, followers, and connections are doing. I like to spend time on my social networks on the weekend, which is a great time to do your interactions and content creation. You want to be one of those people that seems like they are "always on" like me, it brings me business and referrals. :)

These are a few ways to maximize your social networking activities. I mean you are spending time there anyways, you might as well get the most out of it. Look at it like any part of your work day or productivity and try to increase your effectiveness and efficiency. The social networks will be working hard to force people to be on social networks more, so why not take advantage of that and ramp up your social networking! Thanks for reading, please let me know what you think by commenting below. Also, make sure to share this topic on your social networks. Have a great day! - Evan