Saying It Social

Musings on Joining New Social Media Sites, Site Recommendations and On-Going Participation

A while back I set up accounts on Amplify and Clipmarks. I think I played around with them for a couple days and then didn’t give them much more thought. Today I received an email notification telling me that someone had added me as a Source on Amplify, so I decided to hop back on and refresh my memory as to what my profile looked like, out-dated no doubt. After a few minutes of doing some re-arranging and updating my profile I was back in business. Perhaps I didn’t quite see the value when I first created an account but I can definitely see this as a great (FREE) social media channel now. Clipmarks is similar to Amplify and if you create a Clipmarks account, everything you post on Amplify can auto-post to Clipmarks, giving you more precious back links.

I also finally joined Go Articles today. I’m not sure what took me so long because I definitely have seen its value, I’ve even used it for clients before; now I’m finally on. In fact, I set up a writer account for myself as a Real Estate Resource and separately as a Social Media Marketing Resource. When I received the confirmation email after I submitted my first article to Go Articles, they prompted me to join and post my articles to Dropjack as well – also a free site, offering even more exposure, why say no?!

One day, four new sites. Certainly you wouldn’t want to go around joining four new sites each day but I think it’s definitely a good idea to spread yourself across various social media channels not only for the extra back links but more importantly to make sure you’re casting as wide of a net as possible for prospects doing their own social site exploration out on the web.

As for checking back, I admittedly dropped the ball after I initially set up my Amplify and Clipmarks accounts and I don’t want to do that again. If I’m going to set up a profile on a social site I want to make sure it stays current and that I’m participating – if I can’t participate as actively as is deemed “normal” by the sites’ users, I think it best to remove my profile. I always say it’s better to have no presence at all than to have one left abandoned – people are more likely to understand that you haven’t joined a site “yet” but may become curious if they stumble upon a profile that seemed to just stop participating. The last thing you want to make someone wonder when they stumble upon you on the web is, “Did this company go out of business?” To avoid social site abandonment, keep an excel spreadsheet with the name of each site, access information, and profile URL. Make sure you check back to this sheet once a week and revisit where you haven’t recently.

What are your experiences with trying out new sites? Are you open to the idea or are you content riding the big waves of Facebook, Twitter, etc..? How often do you visit each site on which you’ve created a profile? As always, your thoughts are welcome!

July 12, 2010 - Posted by AK Stout | Articles Sites, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking | amplify, clipmarks, dropjack, goarticles, social media marketing, social media sites, social networking