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.

If you still haven’t Join PLURK Now

I don’t know if you guys noticed the change in my Profiles list in the footer, but I have added Plurk in the list also. Well, this is a new version of twitter, but believe it or not it is much more addicting then twitter.

First of all, this is much more unique then twitter because of the time wall, and Karma. I am going to try it out and see how it is for a month and will traffic results. I got some good traffic from twitter, and I believe plurk will get me even more because right now, it is not as big as Twitter, so I will get more attention.

Right now it is a good time to build your Karma and rank really high on this. There are multiple ways of gaining Karma Point. Most Important, Be Active, Network with your friends, change things around.

While you are doing that, add me as your friend. Balkhis Plurk Profile.

If you are not a member then join Plurk Now.

In my opinion, Plurk is a good place to network. I think it will stay alive longer than twitter because of the innovative ways. When you will first go on, it will look weird and kind of different, but as you get used to of it, you will get a hang of it.

You will see me more active on Plurk rather than any other social network for now atleast. Lets see how will this work. As of what I noticed so far, Nick Throlson, Darren Rowse, Sizzler Chetan, Shoemoney and many other webmasters and bloggers are there. So what are you waiting for, Join Plurk Now.

Just incase if you missed the message of this post:

JOIN PLURK NOW

A few weeks back, I wrote about myself joining twitter. Well since the end of the month is coming along, I wanted to share my results on twitter. First of all, I did spend quiet some time on following people and kind of got tired after following over 20,000. But in result, I got over 900 people who are following me, and I recieved a good amount of traffic.

Here was my strategy:

I am not a famous person like shoemoney or johnchow, so not many people will just follow me. Therefore, I decided to follow everyone else. Someone will follow me. Maybe I won’t get a 100% return in the beginning, but sooner or later I will get enough followers. Well I spend a good amount of time following people, and then now I have left it alone. Each day, I get over 30 – 40 new followers. So My strategy seems to be working.

Now Twitter increases traffic to my site, but I like it as a tool also. First, I am sure people can just link to their post in all of their new entries, but that would be spamming the service. So I don’t post a link to balkhis alot, it is in the sidebar though under my website, so people visit through there.

In the past month twitter sent a good amount of people. Screen shot below:

Now I think that is a good amount of visitors. Now I got one designing contract from twitter, and have had some good conversions from just visitors to loyal readers. I think it is a good tool, but don’t spend too much time on it. Otherwise you will get addicted like me

If you aren’t at twitter, then get twitter. Also remember, sometimes twitter can outrank your own site. I have seen some examples where people pick their site’s name, and twitter rank higher. I picked balkhis the name, and I am hoping that google stays in my favor.

Anywayz good luck everyone this is my stats from twitter. I believe it is a good way to advertise your new products.

Running a contest is a very smart advertising technique which I have mentioned multiple times in my earlier posts. But this type of advertising only works if you can run your contest successfully. In this post I am going to share the type of contests you can run. Along with the ways to setup those contests. Also I am going to share the techniques of advertising the contest, and getting prizes for your contests. In this post, I have also added the advantages of donating prizes to the contests.

Before I go on with the post, I would like to show you some of my stats for my last contest which was Balkhis ML Contest.

Comments in a week – 900
Average Page Views – 6832 views a day
Average Unique Visitors a day – 1643
Increase in readership by 123 readers
Total of 53 fans on Technorati
Tons of Natural Backlinks

and much more….

Type of Contests

Before you start contests, you always have to plan ahead. One of the major things you want to know is how long will this contest be? Long Term, Short term, or Periodical? Because there are different ways you can go about in either ways to try and make it successful. (Read the rest in full post……)

I want to gain backlinks, and gain them quick… First thought of a beginning webmaster who just learned about websites. Thinking what is the success behind all the other bigger sites, and the first thing that pops up is their keyword rankings in search engines. That is due to backlinks… Not noticing the fact that the other site is well established and has been online for quiet some time. They have tons of backlinks yes, but it took them time to gain all those. Well not many people understand that. Since they want to gain backlinks, they will go ahead and do everything and anything possible that will cost them lowest amount of money and effort.

Question rises, what is the quickest way to get a backlink? Directory submission, but man that takes too long. Lets hire one of the services offering MANUAL directory submission for just $5. Biggest mistake of your life as you can loose all the credibility of that site by doing that. While I am not saying all of these services are a rip off, but a good proportion by which I mean almost all of them are a rip off. Manual Submission?? If it is a manual submission, how can one even show a report as what I see that most of the reports were generated by a software, and it shows Success: Yes, Date Submitted, and Time Stamped. Do you still think that was a manual submission? How many of you will go ahead and do 100 directory submission for $5 and put down exact time and second and put down which one was successful and which one was not. I know I won’t, and not many people would either because $5 USD doesnot worth enough. Not in U.S, not in any other country for that sake because the electric bill you would spend on using the computer far outweighs that $5, rest aside the internet costs, so this will eliminate those who will say Countries in Asia would do it.

It is simple that these people are using softwares, and claiming it to be manual. Yeah, the only manual part of the software is that you have to enter captcha on some directories, the form is auto-filled and its being run by a software. Some reports even have the link to the software and their copyrights at the bottom. How stupid is the user to believe these services?

Now next thing is how trustable is this service? Maybe the person just did the service once, and never did it again, and is keep generating the same report over and over? Half of these auto submissions are spammed. Do you know why? Because they submit your sites to paid directories and leave without paying giving the editor no choice but to remove the listing. You might gain 100 views from $5 .. that is expensive but neither of the editors were targetted users. I know that when I was running my directory, I didn’t look at any site that didn’t pay, so there you go you lost one user who was like me so now it is 99 users for $5. I am sure I am not alone in doing so.

Ensuring the quality of directories. How many free directories are really quality directories? Not many because they will just approve anyone, and most don’t even survive more than a year because they are sold, and than sold again, and than left alone, and than shut off.

In the final line, what I am saying that these directory submission services are a waste of time and money. Note: I have nothing against directories, and you should submit links to them, but submit to quality directories. Really hard to think that the guy will submit to 100 quality directories for $5 because I can’t even think of 100 quality free directories, and I have been keeping up with directories for about 2 years or so. Avoid these services, otherwise your site will be blacklisted among the directory owners, and many others because theser submission services will leave without paying them and they don’t know who is doing this. For all the editor know it is your site, and you are submitting it and leaving without paying. Don’t give your new or established site this reputation.