On expanding your social media networks

By now you probably have a profile with Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. Also occasionally you expand your network using features like “invite friends from your Gmail account” that each of these tools have. And, naturally, over time your network grows.

There’s one practice I noticed recently that will help you increase your network faster. Instead of growing your networks separately, try expanding all at the same time. Here’s an example:

Periodically, (daily, weekly, monthly) send out a tweet that invites your Twitter followers to connect with you on Linkedin or Facebook.

• Positive outcome: your network grows faster and your social profiles are becoming more uniform (same friends across your networks).
• Negative outcome: you may not want all your Twitter followers to be come your Linkedin or Facebook connections / friends.

So, it’s up to you to use this method of expanding your social media network or not. If you choose to do so, feel free to use HootSuite to schedule your periodic Tweets / status updates.

How do you expand your social media network? Please share in the comments!

How companies benefit by using Twitter

Just reading an article at iMediaConnection about Twitter Experiments and how companies are using Twitter to get closer with their customers, create and enrich the conversations. I’m still one of those who has no solid idea on how to use Twitter productively for business purposes. Please let me know how your company benefited by twitter. In turn I’ll post my insights on the tool. Below is the snippet of the article with URL.

Article Highlights:

• H&R Block’s feed is 75 percent @replies
• Glam Media’s Tinker allows brands to sponsor filtered Twitter feeds about hot topics
• A mobile L.A. eatery uses Twitter to keep customers aware of its location
• Microsoft sponsors a collection of tweets from top executives

To read the article: 5 Twitter marketing experiments