The 18 good habits of a Social Media Power User

Social Media is the buzz. And it’s the carrot to many. A power user is a member with influential powers and has the potential of making any given article popular on the social medias.

Becoming a power user on all the social medias is sure big deal, despite everyone using the social media only a few make it to the top or grabs the powers of a power user. Now, it’s a fact probably that no one can make it easily to the top as a power user in a short time. It requires the effort and time that it deserves. But there are pointers for sure that will help you make it to the top if you get your basics right. It’s all about doing the right thing and following the right methodologies daily in a very religious manner, and one day you’ll find yourself there on the top showered with digg and stumble requests and friend invitations.

So what are the good practices that you should follow to make it  to the top as a power user on the popular social medias?

Understanding Which Social Media works best for you – The behavioral differences of the popular social media sites

First off let me tell you that each social media channel has it’s own unique quality. You cannote use all the media at the same time to get a story popular. Each community has it’s own characteristics and behavioural pattern.

Digg
– Is a news oriented website where there’s no place for internet marketers and bloggers.
- The community gives more importance to breaking news, exclusive stories and articles.
- The community is more techno savvy and if you are targeting to get the attention of technology related crowd, then Digg is the best place for you.
- Digg community does not entertain marketing, self promotion and press releases kind of articles.
- They give more value to the “uniqueness” of the stories and the real value it passes on to the community.
- The secret of getting popular on Digg is to get the maximum diggs in the shortest time span. If you get late getting the diggs, you lose the game.

Stumble Upon
SU is a community which has a different chemistry altogether from Digg – it loves sharing all the lite things(photos, videos, funny stuff) and in between some news articles too.
- SU community does not like anything that is related to promoting your blog.
- Neither does it like people selling their service or products.

Linked in
- Linked in has a very focused community.
- It’s a no nonsense one with no frills but all serious guys out there. Business consultants, CEOs, bloggers and the like.
- If it’s business that you’d like to promote, then probably this is the right place.

Here are the good practices to become a social media power user.

1. Share
   Social media sites are nothing but places to share. If you used to share interesting stories on email two years earlier, now you have Digg and Su to share. This way the original sources of the story also gets benefited and you get a place to share thoughts with like minded people too.
   So rather than seeing them as platforms that generate traffic, see them as places to share ideas, stories and interesting pieces of articles over the internet.
2. Participate
   Social medias are all about participation. Along with user generated content they are also platforms where lot of ideas and thoughts are shared. Most of the social medias today has the groups feature where people create groups based on their interest. These are excellent places to find similar minded people. I’ve seen that making use of these groups and participating in them attaches a special honour to your profiles in the social media and it helps you get make more friends in the community.
3. Be proactive
   I’ve seen many guys complain that one of their friend/friends on the social media never responds to their nudge and they are simply pissed off. It’s completely understandable a problem. It may ask you – why did you add him/her as a friend in the first place?
   The answer to this question is to get proactive. By getting proactive I mean, making sure that you do everything in the first place that you want your friend to do. If you want your friend to digg your articles and respond to shouts, you respond to other peoples shouts first.
   So give before you start to take. If you make a habit of this, it makes life easier at the communities.
4. Contribute to the community
   Social media sites out there are not marketing channels. They are not out there to buy somethign from you. instead they are out there to learn from the internet, from you. So give them something to learn, if you have the resources pass them on, if you don’t pass it on from other useful resources.
5. Be Regular
   Imagine you were with your friends, wouldn’t you be spending time with them daily? And not approach them when you have something to show off?
   The same formula works here. Be a frequent participant in all the social medias that you want to be popular in. Many of them shows the last login time details so others can easily judge from your login patterns as to whether you are a frequent member or not. If you are not, they probably will take you for a spammer, and I think they have all the right to believe so.
6. Be generous, pass information
   While in the community, make sure that you are a generous person. A generous person is someone who will share value with others without a second thought. In a community others give respect to you based on whether you are generous or not. No matter where you get it from, if you are someone who provides valuable conent to the community, then others will accept you and respect you as a master, yes , even if the information you passed on was not really yours.
7. Buy ideas never sell
   Communities are for everyone, for those who are buying and selling. But make sure you are always on the buying part. At least for a major part of your time. Because there are more sellers in this world than buyers. So when everyone is looking for a buyer, be one, so that you have their attention. At a later point, may be, if they find you interesting, you could be a seller. But let that not be your point of interest.
8. Never promote yourself
   Do you have a product to sell or  service to offer? I’d suggest that you keep away your marketing strategies away from the communities. The problem is that the social media community is so sensitive that they can easily make out a marketing guy and a contributor. So don;t act smart trying to sell your product/service by promoting yourself. That’s for the community to decide.
9. Adapt to the customs
   Every social media site out there is a community. And every community has its rules and customs just like in real ife. So in order to get in to one you got to gel to their customs first. If you stand apart from them, you’ll probably end up being an island. You don’t want that to happen.
10. Its almost like real life
    See communities on social media just like real life communities. They are not a bunch of robots out there. They are indeed a bunch of clever guys like you sitting at eth other end of the world. So try to make friends with them treating them just like you are meeting a real person.
11. Make friends
    Forget diggs or stumbles. During your initial days in the social media, make sure you make more friends than anything. Communicate to them through comments, groups etc and make yourself comfortable with the community and learn what’s happening there. Sit back relax and study tha patterns. Don’t do the mistake of going ahead and digging your favorite story in the very first day. There’s no problem as such but had you submitted after making some friends, it would’ve got a better visibility.
12. Never beg
    One of the mistakes I see people repeating time and again is to beg for votes. Well, I’m not talking about you letting know your friend about a new submission or shots. But begging someone , a stranger may be, to vote for you. This creates a negative impression about you to the other perrson and although he may digg your story, the next time you approach him he’ll avoid you. Because you are not passing any quality or value to him.
13. Develop niche groups within
    This is one of the very effective strategies I’ve seen people use in social media communities. Develop small interest groups within the community so that you can share and communicate with the like minded people. Although, please do not confuse this with closed communities. I’m totally against closed communities, they are no good for the sharing purpose. Let your communities be open so that like minded peple can jon and communicate within.
    
14. Reply and respond
    I understand that you have no interest in responding to shouts on email or IM, and yes you may be completely true. Why do you want to reply to those emails, after all you have someone whoting eery minute. But hey, let me tell you, if you does not reply to any of them – fine, nothing bad. But try responding to each of them. Yes respond to every shout you receive and see what happens. I can assure you that, you’ll have at least 10 guys daily adding you as friend on the network. And that’s not a bad thing. All those guys add you as friend because they respect your actions and they see value in you. So I’d suggest that you try reply and respond to every little nudge that you get on the network.
15. Quick guys are smart
    You knew it already. Quick guys are smart. Here in the social media, being quick means being being qucik in responding, being quick in digging stories up the top, being quick in all the activities in the community.
16. Be the first
    if you got to do exceptionally good in the community, one short cut to getting poplar is to be the first in submitting breaking news or interesting stories. If you pick up the best happening story first, others are sure to follow. but this is no easy task, you got to keep a hawk’s eye on the news that is of interest to the community and act quick once it’s out.
17. Believe in quality
    It’s all about quality. If you have 1000 submissions with all of them stories that have been heard before, no one’s going to even bother talking to you. but if you have a couple of breaking stories and interesting, exclusive ones, that sure is going to earn you the respect you deserve.
18. Give before you take
    Essentially the point to keep in mind is before you start thinking about your returns, learn to contribute and share. Don’t count your returns on the very first day. It’s a natural process of getting popular and doesn’t happen over night. Once you have your basics in place, it will automatically throw you up to the top.

I’d love to hear your contributions/additions to the above points.