Monday, June 16, 2008

Social Networking Resources

with help from John Newman

As I’ve been working and learning about all the many types of social networking sites on the net, and as I’ve been sharing that experience with others, I’ve been asked if it would be possible to compile a list of resources to use to explore.

Now, there are so many sites, it would be impossible to include them all. What my colleague and I have compiled here are some of the biggest and most well-known and used. In addition to all of the general ones, however, there are a lot of smaller ones that are about a specific subject area. I call them “Micro-networks”. I can’t begin to list them here because there are so many possible subjects. Go and Google and you shall find…

So, here they are, broken down into five basic categories. A note about the categories, too. You might disagree with the way I’ve set these up. You might think that one of them should be in this other category, or whatever. That’s fine. Many of them could easily crossover and be in multiple lists. Others contain features of multiple categories (MySpace, for example, really is a community, but it also has a blogging feature).

What do you do with this list? Dive in and explore it! Enjoy it! Discover the vast world of interactivity!

Blogging – These are sites to help you setup, maintain, and promote a blog. Some, like Blogger and LiveJournal are site primarily for creating and hosting blogs. Others, like Technorati and BlogCatalog are all about helping you to find good blogs. The “Ping” sites are those that help you to alert search engines and directories when you post a new blog entry.

Personal Publishing – Personal publishing is tough to define. In a lot of ways it could be like blogging, but it’s a bit different. It’s basically a place where you can share information about a topic and links to other sites and resources about that topic. You can share your knowledge, your ideas, your self with the world!

Social Bookmarking – These are places where you can show the world what you thing are other great sites. Help other people find good information, including your own websites!

Communities – Interact with people on the ‘net! Make friends, build a contact list, find your niche and your audience.

Micro-Blogging/Life Streaming – This is a way to interact with other people in a surprisingly immediate and direct way. Tell others what you’re doing at the very moment you type it. Adding something to your site? Tell your audience all about it. Find a great new resource? Share it with a tweat!

Mark is the co-director of http://seotrafficmagnet.com, the search marketing consulting arm of Clickincome (http://clickincome.com). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)