Marketing Your Social Media Profile

There is a reason that social bookmarking sites and news aggregators do not have anonymous members. It’s true that many of those who submit content to these sites are doing so for the pure need to inform others and raise awareness of a certain topic regardless of how surreal or illogical it may be. For others however it is a whole different modus operandi. I’m talking of course of working to build one’s social media profile and the desire to market it.

I have an account registered at multiple different services all across the web. All of them use the same profile image and username. By now people are starting to recognize my consistencies across the web and that is becoming a very valuable thing. Each day I have a couple more random followers on Twitter and Pownce all due to properly marketing myself to the rest of the crowd. My routines consist of browsing through many different popular and unusual media aggregators. It may be a active webforum, some confusing Italian blog or a historic IRC channel but what I’m looking for is that diamond in the rough, that piece of social media that gets a reaction from everyone and with that more recognition for myself.

By now, having a submission promoted to the front page of Digg or getting 20 @replies on Twitter doesn’t give me the same sensation as it did six months ago, yet I still insist on it continuing. As your stories are promoted so is you profile. People start contacting you via instant message just to say thanks or hello. Some might ask for help with a blog post surrounding social media; essentially they are crowdsourcing on a private level. That is of course why we advertise all of our contact information in our profiles, to allow the conversation to continue wherever possible.

Last month was a groundbreaking social media experience for me. A blogger was asking in a public Skype (text) chat about any designers the few of us in the room could recommend. I immediately thought of someone who could work well with this blogger and I let the designer know of the bloggers interests. Soon the two met in the chat room and discussed a few details before taking the conversation completely private. In a matter of minutes I had brokered a deal that was worth a few hundred dollars. My designer comrade was very kind and eventually kicked back 50 bucks to me for recommending him.

These familiarities give acknowledgment to active users and keep the building blocks of communities secure. There is defiantly a social network out there for everyone but I find connecting in some way with them all can strengthen each individual profile I use.

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