Subtle Social Networking for Marketers

As I mentioned in a previous post, marketers do need to be able to be found on Social Networking Sites, but that presence does need to be subtle. One, because many of those sites frown upon commercial promotion, secondly, because the softly-softly approach is the way it works.

This is just a “serving suggestion”, but my plan for maintaining a low profile - whilst retaining a profile on as many of these services as I can - is by joining as a “real person” (strangely enough, that’s what I am) and linking from each of them to my personal website, on which I don’t plan to run advertising.

When I get around to it, I’ll write some blurb there that remains fairly plain and factual, though linking to my commercial and other sites and, leaving it entirely up to the visitor to visit those in which they have some interest.

Likewise, many people link to or mention their day job, so I cannot see that this could ever be disapproved of. There just needs to be enough information, so that these incoming visitors can see what I do and is relevant to them.

Managing profiles in 1001 Social Networking Sites is something that can get a tad out of hand too. There are widgets you can get that allow you to list all your memberships, which is one approach. Those are meant to go in blog sidebars and will probably get as busy and unsightly as any other. I think I prefer to go for simple HTML links below the basic information, after a heading that says something along the lines of, “You can also find me at …“

Since this will mostly remain a one-page, static site, it will not require much in the way of maintenance to add another link each time I join a new social network and, will have the added advantage of providing a sort of “login console” to all of those sites so that I can keep track (of myself).

This is, perhaps, even more pedantically noncommercial than is necessary in most places, but it’s also a bit of a lazy way out in creating a “one size fits all” entry point to various, unrelated and eclectic bits of my online presence, whilst - following Rosalind Gardner’s suggestion / example - also intending to serve the purpose of making me findable if someone searches for me by name (a few odd ones do), which seems to be working.