How to make the most out of social media?

I got a private plurk message at my Plurk which asked me the question:

Syed, How do you make the most out of social media. I see that you have joined Plurk recently and you have a Karma higher then alot of us who started way before you. How do you manage to make the most out of social media?

The question asked above is a bit difficult therefore I will try to take my stab at it and if you guys find that there is something you can add on please put it in the comments.

The key to social media success is excellent time management skills. Any Social Media Network will require you to spend time on it. Now that there are so many Social Media Networks, you have to be very picky. You have to make sure that you join a one that benefits you the most. This is the only rule of thumb in my social media book.

Other than the above, everything is different with each social media. I have went about different ways in different social media networks. In twitter, I went about following people massively, and with the big numbers, I expected to see some results. In Digg, I went about finding the people who digg the most and are very good at digging the topics that I post about, and added them as my friends.

With Plurk it is way different. It is not about how many friends you have. It is about how active your friends are. Because Plurk ranks you through a Karma System. The reason for my success at Plurk is reliant on two things. One, it is still not as big as twitter, so people notice me. Second I made some good friends through whom I got more friends.

With Plurk, you cannot add massive friends. Like I said it goes different with each network. In twitter, I added massive friends and it worked out. If I add tons of friends in Plurk and half of them rejected me, then my Karma will decrease.

I wrote about People like to see Numbers. If you have a high Karma you will get alot of new fans and friends. In twitter, if you have a high number of followers by default you will get more followers. But the trick to get the most benefit is to make your profile mostly oriented towards you and then about your website.

There are some places where you are just experimenting and there will be other places where you would like to stay serious. I am serious at Plurk, but twitter was one of those things where I experimented alot. I am already seeing different results. When I ask someone to digg a post on Twitter, I don’t get much response, but when I ask people to digg on plurk I get a response. Why?

Because when I am plurking, I write about my personal life, interesting things, so people like to read that. So if once in a while, I throw in something like my ebook or ask for a digg. Most likely than not I will get it. Whereas in Twitter, it is my feeds mostly and I go there sometimes. Therefore I don’t get a high response.

Social Media can be a big distraction so you have to make sure when you want to spend time on it. How you want to spend time on it? Who will be the best friend? Once you have that down, you will be on your way to be a King.

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