10 Habits of Highly Efficient Social Media Power Users
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Many people view social media as a waste of time while others expect them to be some kind of promised land for self promotion.
Why social media does not work for you
Both naysayers and self-promoters will never use social media to their fullest potential. The truth lies of course somewhere in between.
While it is easy to waste your time on addictive social media sites you can use them responsibly. Excessively selfish promotion is not social by definition.
When used correctly social media both benefit yourself and also the respective communities. I’m not entirely free of addiction and have to fight time wasting tendencies myself.
I have – by now and after years of participation – found out several key factors of using social media in the best possible way.
I’m not zaibatsu but I’m a very active user at the 3 above mentioned communities:
Moreover I am actively participating at
While I am not trying “to leverage traffic” directly from these communities most of the time I benefit from these is several ways:
- Industry recognition as a social media specialist
- Direct contact to clients, some approach me, others look me up
- Entertainment – I feel better afterwards when I take a break to pin
- Information – I’m the first one to know what’s going on in my fields of interest
- I’m famous – this is no joke, people from all over the world know me
To make sense social media need to work both ways. It needs to work for the site and you too.
In case you spend hours daily as a user generating content for free you are basically working like a slave.
There must be a mutual benefit so that you do not get exploited. Do only two or fewer of the above points apply to you? Do none other positive outcomes come to your mind?
When social media sucks change your mind
In this case you should rethink the way you use social media. Then these companies use and abuse you as a free workforce.
You are the product not the customer when there is no tangible benefit of social media usage for you.
The best way to make social media work for the mutual benefit of you and not only the venture capitalists behind them is setting up a blog. Remember that social media otherwise own all of you:
- your social relations
- your content
- your time
Having a self-hosted blog means remaining your own master. As a blogger you can use social media to drive traffic to your blog or not, but at least nobody can
- take away your content
- make you pay for contacting your friends
- resell your private data
- make money off your work
while you earn nothing for it.
Your blog is your focal point of your social media activity.
Implying that you already have a blog you should try to stick to the following 10 habits of highly efficient social media power users:
1. Use social media in the morning, during breaks or at the evening. Socialize when you’re not able to work yet or already. When tired relax at the virtual water cooler.
Social media will allow you to spend the time somewhat productively despite fatigue. Of course do not spend all your free time using it and do not waste your best working hours.
2. Do not read daily newspapers or direct news sources, let the “wisdom of crowds” of social media users filter the important stuff for you, this way you spare time in fact. Check only websites you really can’t live without directly.
3. Use a feed reader like Feedly or Netvibes and only read the headlines relevant in a given moment. Feedly offers many useful premium features to power users.
On Netvibes I have a tab for SEO blogs and another for green blogs. I only read the green blogs when I’m done with my work.
4. Socialize with your friends on several platforms. This way no company can take away your social capital or sell it back to you once they leave beta, their share plummets or the company is swallowed by another less scrupulous one.
5. Never actively search for content you could share on social media, submit stuff that you read and like anyway.
6. Share things that are popular on one platform to another if you think it might be suitable for this audience as well.
7. Focus on only a few of your favorite social media sites. Use not the most popular ones but those which have the most benefit to you personally either by suiting your interests best or having a positive impact on your online presence not necessarily via traffic only.
For instance Inbound.org is less important for referral traffic but very good for my reputation. Also Google+ is negligible for traffic but I established many relationships there with my peers.
8. In case you want to get traffic via social media use them like Domino: for instance in the best case I just need to share a story on Google+ in order to get it tweeted by others or submitted to Inbound.org
9. Do not submit your own stories at social media communities unless they really condone it and you are a well known and/or respected community member there.
10. Do share content of your favorite bloggers and peers. Link them in your blog posts and befriend them where it does make sense.
For instance befriending people on Twitter or Google+ does only make sense in case you want their content served in your personal stream.
They are also able to send you messages. This can get annoying. Inbound.org has only a rudimentary follow feature in contrast but you can befriend the people on other sites.
When you develop these 10 habits you will get quite popular on social media just after using them for a while.
Be there and contribute or fail
Participation is key. When you do not expect instant gratification via loads of traffic you will succeed in the middle or long term also as a blogger. Eventually you will get loads of traffic anyway.
Social media is not a one night stand, it’s a stable relationship. Participation means contributing value on a regular basis without automating everything or acting like a robot.
Once you understand that, you’re on your way to become a power user. To be honest it’s not solely about power, influence or reach though.
You don’t have to be a top user to be a power user. It’s not about numbers. It’s about how you participate not just how much.
A few die hard supporters are more important than thousands of casual visitors. True fans who listen to you for years are immensely more valuable.
Original version published: January 30th, 2008. Updated and published V2: May 26th, 2014: Removed defunct or irrelevant social sites and replaced with current ones. Changed wording a bit and improved text formatting. Added a new image. Last updated: July 18th, 2017.
* Creative Commons image by Hakan Dahlström
One of the nicest things I have found with social media is that I tend to bump into Web friends in different places and it suddenly makes you a little more confident in newer circles.
Thanks for this Tad, brilliant as usual.
Although I have to admit, I’m still struggling with Mixx – every time I go to submit something, someone else has done it for me. I think that’s a direct consequence of having changed my reading habits to only half a dozen blogs daily and focusing more on other stuff…maybe I need to get out there and read more… seems my friends are all reading the same stuff as me – and usually, pointing it out :)
My kids were watching me on SU, Twitter and MyBlogLog last night. One of them looked at me and said…”Mom it’s like everywhere you go you see the same people, over and over. These people must be the populars.”
That’s what Social Networking efficiently can produce. Even a teen can see it…
Great post Tad … can I add 2 more?
Can I suggest a catheter as #11.
IV feeding as #12
Good stuff. I should really use these social media sites. I pretty much enjoy coming back to the blogs I normally read and any recommended to me through those blogs. One thing is I don’t do this to get traffic, I just like reading SEO and marketing posts.
Lid: Yes, it’s known mishap. It always happens to me on Sphinn. All the good posts are submitted already.
You can vote more instead of submitting. People will notice that as well.
supermon: Yeah, kids learn 100 times faster what’s importnat than we do.
Jeff: You need a cold turkey!
david: Yes, recommendation by someone you accept and follow is the best thing that can happen to you.
Your completely right, you may get a little something from a one night stand but a stable relationship will provide more positives!
[…] 10 Habits of Highly Efficient Social Media Power Users […]
Great article. There is a wasteful and beneficial side to most things and it’s a misconception to group a person based on their interests.
Thanks for shedding some light!
Some interesting and valuable points you make here.
I’ve got a question though: Why don’t you add any timestamps/date to your posts, nor to comments? Why I ask is because I’ve stumbled upon this post on SU, and without seeing the dates I have no idea when you wrote this article, and how relevant it is today (I can see that this particular post is pretty relevant, but I might not be able to see for other posts).
Dear Friend,
A group of researchers at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, are investigating effects of Weblogs on “Social Capital”. Therefore, they have designed an online survey. By participating in this survey you will help researches in “Management Information Systems” and “Sociology”. You must be at least 18 years old to participate in this survey. It will take 5 to 12 minutes of your time.
Your participation is greatly appreciated. You will find the survey at the following link. http://faculty.unlv.edu/rtorkzadeh/survey
This group has already done another study on Weblogs effects on “Social Interactions” and “Trust”. To obtain a copy of the previous study brief report of findings you can email Reza Vaezi at reza.vaezi@yahoo.com.
[…] Nicky Cakes makes me wary of self promotion via Sphinn. And articles from respected commetators Tad and Patrick advise against social self […]
inspirationbit: People tend to judge the relevancy based on dates. Like with daily newspapers. I write for eternity or at least for a few months. If a piece of info is very time sensitive I add a date inside the post like with this post here.
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[…] There’s a fantasy out there that has intrigued many Digg homepage hopefuls. The perfect story. Everyone wants it. It has the ability to launch your website to fame. Did you really believe that?! Go check the front page of Digg RIGHT NOW. No matter what minute, or hour, or day it is, there will always be random, stupid articles and videos there. (Even photos now!). There is no perfect story, no silver lining to fill your social media heart with high server load. Only the reality that Digg is nothing more than a portal for crap that is controlled by the social media power users. […]
People should write good content which will guarantee good exposure in social media networks. With crappy content you can find millions friends and never get any good traffic from social media site.
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[…] 10 Habits of Highly Efficient Social Media Power Users […]
[…] 10 Habits of Highly Efficient Social Media Power Users […]
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An excellent topic, Tad, since we all have this time-allocation problem. I think you have to do a certain minimum amount of social appearances almost daily so that you maintain the visibility of your hopefully unique username. Once you’ve built up your ‘brand awareness’ then you don’t need to invest a lot of time if you have other time pressures. However you’ve got to do the minimum so that people don’t forget you.
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[…] 10 Habits of Highly Efficient Social Media Power Users […]
I have observed DIGGING routine of some famous power users (won’t name them :) , and have come to conclusion that it’s almost like a full time day job. On an average they are spending somewhere between 2 – 6 hours/day on digg. Time alone is not the only factor, as you mentioned in the post, i) what to submit, ii) how to leverage network connections are other important factors. Excellent analysis Tad.
these tips are one part, but i feel that the job of a good blogger is hard, he’s to first think of good content, then draft-edit it, and then get traffic to it. for good blogging one has to be an one-man organization which handles innovation,research and marketing all at the same time !
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