8 Ways to trap a social media power user to notice and befriend you

I just hope this works for you, it worked for me, and I tell you, its a lot of hard work..anyway here goes.

For every social media user, be it facebook, twitter, digg or stumbleupon, its an untold / unwritten truth that the power users control almost the rest of us. I mean, its not like that but they are the influential guys out there so, no matter how bad you try, if you got to really enjoy the power of social media, you have to be with them, in their league.

And there are lots of groups out there, power users on Digg, power users on Twitter..they have their own “echo chambers” (as @msaleem puts it) who’re ready to support and echo out pretty much anything they say or order. Hah ! so much for democracy and crowd sourcing, but that’s the truth. You got to be powerful to make a statement. And to be powerful, you got to drive attention towards you, from the guys who has the powers.

So here are some humble tips from me that’ll help you get the power users “notice” you and possibly, befriend you so that you can be in their league

Alright, here goes.

1. Use facebook to connect with them

Facebook is an excellent medium to “show off”. I mean, I love the way it functions, if one of my friends makes a comment on another friends photo or status, I get a notification on my profile/dashboard, which is cool. And I can even reply without a page refresh to that comment and all my friends see it. Its bloody viral and we can’t even imagine how much powerful this tool is. Okay, so if you want to grab a power users attention, I’d suggest that you first search and befriend them. If they accept you, you have an opportunity to show them your talent. They’ll have status updates, things posted as links and videos and you always have an option to comment on it. Great, use it wisely. Don’t go around kissing ass, but be smart, and make interesting comments. I’m sure facebook is one place where users can’t ignore the updates or replies, they come straight to your email, so, use it wisely.

2. Re-Tweet and reply them often

Twitterers love re-tweets I tell you. No matter its Guy Kawasaki or ehh..me. We love re-tweets and we all watch them quite closely. Re-tweeting a power user frequently ( without giving him any clues that you’re a bot ) and replying to his questions/statements often will definitely make him notice you. I can bet on that.

3. Contradict with them

Now, I don’t mean to piss them off here. While you’ll watch the tweets/status updates closely, you’ll see that they make statements, may be about a new product or a news story or anything..just watch them closely and find out opportunities to discuss this further with them. Don’t just go about bluntly saying “I disagree” to everything. Put it cleverly, bait them to think over it, frame your replies carefully, probably ending with a question, leaving them space to respond back to you. If your replies and questions are good enough, and you do it cleverly not pissing them off, I’m sure they’ll notice you once again.

4. Use the same avatar everywhere on the Social Media

Talk about online reputation management. But yes, while you practice  all the above strategies, use a recognizable avatar that they can recall you from. Almost all the ower users use the same avatar everywhere, heck..some obsessive guys like me use the same username even. Its just a strategy to make you brandable and give you more “recall value”, if you know what I mean.

5. Stalk them everywhere

This is going to be a bit boring, but works for sure. Go to every social media channel and follow the power user guy you want to notice you. Digg, FB, Twitter, Sphinn everywhere.. Now one important thing here is that, these guys would pretty much be active everywhere but there are certain communities where the competition or crowd is less. For instance Mixx, is a nice community like Digg where the user count is less (its increasing though). And at these communities, if you stalk these guys, you have a higher chance of getting noticed.

6. Study and mimic them

If you’re really serious about it, study these guys performance everywhere. Find out what time of the day they’re active, find out what their topics of interest are, find out what stuff they submit/discuss often. Try to get along with it, and mimic them. Like if there’s a website from which they’re regularly making submissions to Digg, you subscribe to their feeds and next time there’s a new story being published, you submit it first before they do. How clever is that ?

7. Interview them

Who wouldn’t like to get interviewed ? Ask them for an interview/chat and impress them with your questions. Some people only allow interviews with reputed guys, but some people do let everyone interview them, if not by audio, at least by email. You just shoot them a set of questions by email, to which they’ll reply.

8. Review them and let them know

There’s no guarantee on this one, it depends on what type of guy you’re following. But a good idea to get noticed is to review their work/website/social media profile, give them a rank or something, compare them with others, make a chart, make the review more scientifically correct and let them know. People love to hear good about them, so a review is like a sweet pill. no body would want to say no to it.

So that’s it. Eight clever ways to get noticed by a power user and possibly be their friend on the social media. Now before I wrap up, there’s something important I want to tell you. If you’re really looking forward to connect with a power guy, you need to have some credibility and reputation earned prior to meeting them. That’s really, really important.

I can assure you one thing. If your profile is looking real good, the guy whom you are targeting (can’t believe I’m so mean) may not even reply to you immediately but he may be reading all your stuff, and reply to you at a later stage.

But if your profile doesn’t look good, you’d be wasting all your energy stalking him. He wouldn’t even care to read it.

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