Making Social Media Optimization Work for You - Differences in Social Sites
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There are several different kinds of social sites. Not all of them will be conducive to your purposes. Even the ones that are will be structured in a number of different ways, which means you’ll need to approach them differently. I have seen people claim that there are only two types of social sites, but I think there are at least three and maybe more. Feel free to disagree!
The first kind of social site I think of as a social networking site. These are the kinds of sites where users usually have profiles (such as LinkedIn) and sometimes have blogs as part of those profiles (such as Zude, MySpace, and other sites). You could become known on such a site by building a profile for yourself and/or your company, writing a blog, commenting on the blogs of other users, and so forth. Becoming part of such a site means becoming part of a community.
The second kind of social site is also community-based. You become noticed mainly by posting links, voting on links, and making comments on links other people have posted. Typically these are sites like Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, Fark, and many others. You need to spend some time reading these sites to get a feel for their quirks and what interests their readers. You wouldn’t post a story on home decorating to Digg, except possibly if the home decorating article talked about someone who made their apartment over into a reproduction of the U.S.S. Enterprise (and even then you’re likely to get a yawn and an “it’s been done.”). These communities are usually hypersensitive to spam, so you want to be really careful about what you post. As you would with an online forum, you want to get a feel for how they work before you put up your first link. It's usually a good idea to lurk for a while with these sites before posting.
The third kind of social site is similar to the second kind, but the focus is a little different. Users post links as bookmarks for themselves and to share with others; these sites may be a little less news-focused than the second kind of site. Often the site is built around a search engine that is fed by the bookmarks. Users tag their bookmarks with keywords to help the search engine determine the relevance of particular links. As with the second kind of social site, you’re likely to see users voting and making comments on particular links. Good examples of these kinds of sites include del.icio.us and Searchles.
I think it’s worth noting that many sites are a “mix” of these kinds. And if you ask someone else, they might divide social media sites into different categories. For example, some will split them up by genre, into news, media, wiki, networking, and bookmarking sites. However you want to split it up, the key thing is to understand the site’s purpose (and no, it isn’t to make you rich by bringing you traffic!). Work with that purpose, rather than subverting it, and you stand to profit.
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