Learning Social Networking Dos and Don'ts The Hard Way

Social Networking can be very intimidating, especially if you're just jumping in. Robin Sullivan at Write to Published just posted a very helpful piece called 5 Steps to Building a Platform When You Hate Selling Yourself. Good gentle advice.

It's much the way I did it when I first started. I tentatively opened a Facebook account, added a picture and a profile, and then did the same with twitter. Then I spent a good amount of time lingering and watching. Every once in a while, I'd enjoy a post and press the like button. Fairly safe. On twitter I'd dare a reply to a friend I knew personally. Then I started to retweet people when I liked their tweets. Not so difficult.

Then they'd thank me. Oh no. An actual conversation. And it didn't kill me. I'd respond to another post, and they'd reply back. After awhile, updating my status or posting a tweet was like riding a bike. Talking to people on line was Easy Peasy. I was ruling this thing.

Until I discovered that thirty-two friends just wasn't going to cut it if I wanted an effective platform. I was going to have to amp it up, baby, but how to do that?

Well, read the experts, and find out, that's how.  Here are three books I recommend to anyone wanting to branch out in social networking, platform building and ultimately effectively selling books. Though I don't recommend following each one religiously, I'm sure they will inspire you. I know that each one gave me a different gem of wisdom and insight.

We Are Not Alone, by Kristen Lamb: This book felt dated in a few ways, but her enthusiasm to just get out there and do it was catching. I did fall into the trap of over-zealously following and friending  and wish that this book had given me a few more "rules". But still a good read.

I discovered Twitter Rules by reading this book, Dollars & Sense: The Definitive Guide to Self-Publishing Success by Carolyn McCray, Amber Scott and Rachel Thompson. The beginning was a bit of a cheering session, but the middle section was very practical.  I'll share important THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT TWITTER,  at the end of this post. I'm not quite finished this book, in the Facebook section now, where I'm probably about to learn how I've screwed up there, and hopefully how to fix it.

The third book worth reading is How I Sold 1 Million e-Books in 5 Months by John Locke. And no, it wasn't because he priced them at .99.  This book had me take a second look at how and why I blog, and in some ways took the angst out for me. It's okay if I don't blog every day of the week. It doesn't have to negatively effect my books.

So back to Twitter. If you have a twitter account perhaps you've added a nice background, to personalize it. I happen to really like mine. In the right column under your user name you'll see these words with a number behind them: Tweets, Following, Followers, Listed

Those numbers mean, how many tweets you've posted, how many people are following you, how many you are following, and how many have included you on a personal list they've created and saved.

Here's what I didn't know. The number of people you follow can't be too much higher than the number of people following you--it's a certain percent (I don't remember exactly). And that percentage goes down once you hit 2000 followers. If you cross that barrier, Twitter freaks out, accuses you of being a robot and puts you in the corner. No more new followers for you.

This is what I learned when I went on that building up my followers spree. Bad Elle.

What to do now? How to get out of the corner once you're in?

Well, I learned from Dollars and Sense, that there is this nifty Twitter management site where you can unfollow people who aren't following you back. This is really useful. Why drag along people who don't care about you or know that you exist anyway? Unless of course it's a fave author and you're happy to be a fan, then fine, keep those ones. But Joe Blow writer and his endless book pitching? Ditch'em. And all those unfollowing tweeps who hardly post anyway? Dead weight.

The catch is, just like you shouldn't follow more than 50 people a day (I didn't know that either, thus the robot status), you shouldn't unfollow more than 50 people a day.

So I've been doing this for a few days now, knocking off 50 unfollowers, getting my percentage back into a reasonable level. It's amazing how cathartic it is.

One more last tip, in case you've never heard of Tweet Deck or Hoot Suite. Once you get more than a hundred followers, you might find your twitter feed flowing faster than you can read and respond. Tweet Deck allows you to create columns, so that you can divide your followers into different smaller, more manageable groups. Because we all know that the numbers aren't important if you're not engaging in the community. See the beginning of this post. It's about the conversations.

How about you? Have you learned any Social Networking secrets the hard way?