It's just so important to keep going with social networking activity. Just keep logging in and participating. Do this and you will really start to gather momentum.

I think a lot of people, particularly those in business, think that it will be a huge time drain and that it will be boring. But the truth is you can do it quickly and it's actually a lot of fun.

You really "get" it when you experience it. Basically, if you can reach the point whereby you start to get some response to your tweets and updates while you're logged in there'll be no looking back. When this happens you get a real sense of contact with other humans. (And above all, social media is a human process. Unfortunately there's a widely held view that it's a technical, geeky thing.)

As those little notifications pop up you realize that those other users are sitting there at their laptops, or holding their iPhones. When they see you and your tweet, they respond. You can of course have actual conversations with these people in real time. These are great for building rapport and trust, and they do increase the odds that those followers will buy from you down the track. 

But even if you don't have conversations, it's great when you see those notifications appearing before your eyes. This gives you momentum. It gives you a bit of a buzz, too. (Actually it probably means that you're addicted to social media! You're getting hooked on those little hits of dopamine ... Whether that's ultimately a bad thing or not I'm not entirely sure. Will have to take stock in another year or two I think!)

I've realized that you can get there quicker in some niches than others. For example, this point is easier to reach in a niche like politics. They're just more engaged. It can start to happen after a couple of thousand followers on Twitter. On the other hand, it's only just starting to happen on my blogging, marketing account. And that has nearly 4000 followers. Now it might take a bit more or less time and effort than that when you are in still other niches. But I'd say the more specific your field of interethe quicker it happens. 

So my advice is make your social media participation regular, persistent. You don't have to spend hours at it every day, but you do have to keep chipping away relentlessly. You will reach a critical mass after which things get a lot easier. You feel like you're surfing a wave. You've got all this energy underneath and behind you.

People are forever sharing links to interesting articles and blog posts on Twitter. That's fine. But I do think you can overdo this. It's a good idea to make a good proportion of your tweets your own tips, tricks, insights and thoughts. 

They build authority and hone writing skills

There are many benefits from doing this. Perhaps the main one is that they can truly impress your followers. People can tell that you know your stuff because of what you say, not just because of what you share. So they help build your authority quickly. 

Then there's the fact that the limited space you have to use for this requires discipline. You have to cut right back to the central point. So it's a great writing exercise.

If you can get into the habit of doing this, all the better. Practice makes perfect, as they say. Do this enough and you'll start to find yourself thinking up pithy one liners and insights in your spare time. Then when you next log into Twitter, you'll probably have a few up your sleeve all ready to post. 

Can be used in other media

And you should save them on a file because you can use these tips and tricks elsewhere. A compilation of them on a specific subject makes a great blog post. They can also be used in other online and offline media. 

Speeches in particular are a great place for them. As well as live speeches at networking events, etc, you can rattle them off in front of a video camera and upload them to YouTube.

Speaking to camera for a couple of minutes is an oft-used approach of course. So you'll be up against a lot of competition. But you'll be jamming the same number of good insights into a two minuter that you would normally put into one three times as long. And because you're relating a bunch of useful insights that are crystallized and powerful, you'll speak confidently and convincingly. So your content will stand out amongst all the rambling, low quality stuff and attract more engagement as a result. 

They entail a possible risk

There is a potential downside to this overall approach, however. And that is that you might be giving away some of your best lines on Twitter and other social sites. Because they're concentrated and powerful, other people might start to use them, claiming them as their own. 

That said, in the same way that Twitter is making such plagiarism easier, it's also supplying you with a time stamp that shows you created the quote -- well, at least for a while until Twitter dumps your data. That's why you should also share it on another social network, and include it on your blog. 

If you are worried about this possibility, then it's advisable to keep your very best short insights to yourself. Maybe you can save them all up, then put them in a book? 

It's interesting how different kinds of people gravitate towards certain social networks. For example, I've got a niche website about comedy and satire. It's not just a collection of funny stuff. It's got tips, pointers and news items of interest to people who write and perform comedy. As I add more content to it I've been looking for places to share this to a relevant audience. I've found that by far the best site for finding comedians in particular is Twitter. 

Twitter

It's the perfect medium for them after all -- aside from a stage, that is. It's really focused and quick. And 140 characters is an ideal length for one liners and quirky observations.

They can also use it to announce upcoming gigs, etc. But this seems to be less common than tweeting gags and engaging with other comics and fans.

They use it to promote videos of their standup acts and they are big users of Vine, an intriguing spin-off from Twitter for sharing short video grabs. 

People with the same interests or professions will of course tend to follow each other on Twitter (that's what it's there for, after all). But it seems that this tendency is extreme when it comes to comedians. Scroll down a comic's following list and every second profile will have a photo of a guy in a spotlight holding a microphone! So Twitter is obviously going to be a real asset as I develop my website about this subject. 

Facebook

After getting started there I then had a look at Facebook. It was not nearly as useful. Yes, there are heaps of comedians on this site. But they are harder to find. While lots of them have pages that you can discover by searching for words like "comedy" and "comedian", they often just build pages under their own names.

Not surprisingly, comics use Facebook to construct real fan pages in the truest sense of the word. Their posts seem to consist almost solely of news about their upcoming shows, as well as posts about how much fun they had at the last one. They seem not to do nearly as much interaction with their peers as they do on Twitter. And they don't discuss the craft of comedy so much. 

Now these tendencies are different to people with a real interest in say, social media itself. They tend to use Twitter and Facebook -- as well as other similar sites -- in pretty much the same way. They're forever sharing information, tips and relevant news and blog articles.

This is interesting. Not only do people in different niches gravitate towards different social networks. They also use each of them differently. This is definitely something to remember when working out which social networks to focus on.

I have been building up a bit of a following on Facebook to one of my pages. It's in the politics niche, and I've noticed this is easier to do than in others such as online marketing. Political Facebook page likers are extremely engaged. I think this has much to do with the subject being so emotional.

And just as they are very engaged, they are also very loyal. Quite a few of them keep coming back and commenting regularly. So of course I've got to keep them happy by acknowledging their input, showing that I appreciate it. 

This can be tricky sometimes because of course I don't agree with everything they say. And they can be offensive at ties. For example, this page is critical of political correctness, including false accusations of racism. But I'm certainly not advocating real racism! On the contrary, I find it utterly abhorrent.

But every now and then one of the page's fans will say something that is in itself borderline racist! Thankfully, they haven't gone over the line, requiring me to delete the comment. But they do occasionally write things that make me roll my eyes. 

Hard to know what to do when situations like this arise. I don't want to scare them away. But then I don't want them to keep pushing the envelope and end up posting vile stuff that basically abuses my effort in creating and updating the page, either. 

Anyway, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. If it happens again I might add a post asking people to restrain themselves a bit ...

In any case I'm glad I've got this page going and building a bit of momentum. It's taught me heaps apart for anything else. 

The best way I've found to get new likes for it is to log in as my page and then contribute to other popular pages in my niche. As long as I keep commenting thoughtfully on their updates and liking them from time to time I find the new likes for my page trickle in. 

I think repetition and consistency are crucial here. The trick is in constantly appearing in front of that audience. And you must always add value. After a while that page's fans start to think, oh there's that guy again. They read your comments and if they're consistently interesting then they'll keep an eye out for you. Sooner or later some of them look at your page and a certain proportion are sure to end up liking it.

So, you've really got to see this as a long term activity and just keep at it. This goes for Facebook pages in all niches of course ... I think the mistake a lot of people make is they go hammer and tongs at it for a few days and get nothing. They decide that maintaining a Facebook page is just not worth the effort and give up entirely.

It's taken me a while, but I'm getting into the habit of writing blog posts with subheadings. It doesn't come easy to me, though! This is because I started out blogging about politics and still spend a lot of time writing in this niche. And if you look at blogs focused on this subject and related ones they very rarely use subheadings.

Basically, in blogs like these you tend to elaborate on a point, investigating its nuances at length. It's like writing a newspaper column. You'll tend to include lots of text with long paragraphs that are not separated by subheadings. 

They save time 

But marketing and business blogs have a different requirement. Readers are often time poor, and are looking for useful key points and insights that they can implement immediately. So they want to be able to scan content easily. Therefore a chunky, punchy style is much more suitable.

They aid selling

And it has real benefits if you're using your blog to sell products and services. In that case you'll want to make your posts not just verbally compelling but visually so as well. Subheadings, along with bolded and italicized sections, bullet points and the like can give a blog a much more striking, lively appearance.

They improve clarity

Just as this style is appreciated by readers, it also has advantages from a writing perspective. If you use subheadings, they make you think about what each part of your post is really getting at. So they help you improve post clarity. 

They suggest other ideas

Subheadings can also help generate other ideas. If you look at several subheadings, the list will often suggest related concepts. You can include those in the post. So subheadings can help you expand a short basic post into something longer and more substantial, without any fluff.

If you have a blog it's very easy to get obsessed with the mechanical, technical aspects of traffic generation. You find yourself constantly thinking about backlinks, keywords, anchor text, and Alexa ratings etc. Odds are you'll also be checking your stats regularly, wondering how to lift those visitor numbers. These activities can take up a lot of time and make blogging seem like hard work!

It's important not to fall into this trap. It is putting the cart before the horse.

If you focus on what you enjoy, then follow that, it's a much more pleasant approach. And you end up with better results in the long term. (Well, perhaps that's not entirely true. You do have to promote your blog to some degree, particularly on social media. But you should try to keep that enjoyable too. Ease up if it's becoming a chore!)

You can find enjoyment in writing your posts, of course. You can also do this when reading other blogs, and commenting on them. 

As any blogger knows, comment backlinks have long been a ranking factor. Even though most of these are set to "nofollow" by default, having a lot of them linking back to your domain still seems to help with SEO. So a lot of bloggers continue to spam the crap out of squillions of blogs, or pay others to do this. This doesn't work nearly as well as before, and can result in the linked to site being penalized. Yet it still happens a lot. That constantly amazes me!

Really, it's so much better to forget about the link you're getting when leaving a comment. Do it because you like the content and have something interesting to add to it. 

Rather than think "I should do some commenting" go looking for blogs in your niche that you'll enjoy reading. If you find ones that are stimulating, informative and interesting then commenting will just come naturally.

You'll write much better comments because you've got the right attitude. And the odds that you'll strike up a friendship with the blogger go way up. If they develop these relationships can be enduring and keep delivering benefits indefinitely, particularly if the blogger is influential. 

They'll link to your blog in the body of posts from time to time. Or they'll share your content on social networks. SEO benefits aside, their endorsement of you will be seen by others, and add credibility and authority to your name. 

Blog commenting remains one of the best ways to forge meaningful connections with influencers. But this will never happen if you're just doing it for the backlinks. Do it because you genuinely like to read them. If you have this intention it will be much more pleasant, as well as beneficial over the long term. 

It's been well established that certain tactics on Twitter result in more retweets. One of these is simply to ask for them. Do that, and you're sure to get some people who will oblige. 

So it's definitely worth a shot. But I wouldn't overdo it. You'll could easily across as being too demanding then. 

The reason I've come to this conclusion is because there is one blogger in my network who now includes the request in pretty much every single tweet he sends out. It's just so tiresome. And it makes me feel resentful and annoyed. Frankly, I'm even thinking of unfollowing this guy. And that's saying something because he is a good blogger. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thinking this way ... 

The reason I find it so annoying is not just that it's so predictable. It seems to fly in the face of the whole spirit of Twitter. The microblogging site is all about freely helping and informing others.

Sure, everyone is on there to promote themselves, a businesses or a cause. But the best way to do that is to be as generous as you can. Give without expectation of reward, and it will all come back in spades. So if someone is always asking for something from his followers, it really stands out. 

That's not to say you shouldn't ever ask for retweets. Like everything, moderation is key. Just include this request from time to time. Then it will not seem onerous, and people will be happy to oblige more often than not.

It's well established that blog posts with images get shared more often than those without. It's something that I have yet to get into on this blog. I know I should do it but haven't so far, mainly because I'm time poor. Basically, I don't want to be spending ages looking for the right photo to go with a blog post I've already written. (I think a lot of people are in this boat, actually.) 

Another major factor: I do a lot of blogging in the political and news commentary niche. Since much of that is topical and involves a lot of rhetoric, ideology and quotes, text is all important. While it's nice to include images, not having them in posts seems not to negatively impact them at all. If they're good and timely, they still get shared a lot. That being my main blogging niche, I've found it impossible to get into the habit of including pictures in posts on this blog and others. 

Still, I'm well aware of how powerful paintings, photos and infographics in blog posts can be. So I've been thinking about how to include them without spending so much time finding them. And I suggest this more streamlined method:

Instead of writing posts then looking for images, why not do it the other way around? A picture paints a thousand words, after all. (And that length is actually a good one for a blog post. If it's fairly long it is more likely to rank well in the search engines, remember.)

So, get into the habit of collecting free images that you like and that inspire thoughts and observations. Then write comprehensive posts elaborating on these themes.

Obviously this will save time. It will also make the posts themselves more relevant to the images.

This approach is also a good motivation for taking your own photos. If you have a locally oriented blog (as I do) then it's ideal. You can take photos of local landmarks and write detailed and interesting posts about them. Put the geo-specific keywords in the titles and your posts are sure to rank highly for them.

But you can take photos of objects that can be used metaphorically as well. For example, an apple can symbolize health, nature, or even sin! You can include a photo of a stairwell to communicate the concept of progress, ambition, or raised consciousness. Pretty much everything you see around you can be used metaphorically. When associated with clear and well written content it will be absolutely clear what it symbolizes. And it will thereby complement that content nicely. 

So it's a good idea to keep your camera on you. Whenever you see something that can be used in a symbolic way to inspire a blog post, take a snap of it. It doesn't have to be artistically stunning -- just clear and crisp. Doing this will save lots of time. You'll also avoid copyright issues that sometimes eventuate if you use free images from sites like Flickr. 

Recently on Pinterest I decided to do some commenting on pins. The tactic is a great way to get on the radar of bloggers, after all. And since the image sharing site is a bit like its own blogging platform I knew it would be worthwhile.

So about twenty minutes into a session I wrote my first comment. Published that, and promptly found another interesting pin to add my thoughts to. But I was surprised to be stopped from submitting it. A note popped up saying that I was blocked from commenting because it thought I might be a spammer. This annoyed me because there was no way that first comment was spam. It was thoughtful, comprehensive and relevant.

Anyway, I did some Googling and learned that there are some fairly strict anti-spam measures in place. But they are still pretty buggy, and sometimes identify genuine commenters as spammers. 

It seems that if you do a lot of commenting or pinning all at once this raises a flag and it halts your commenting for a 24 hour period, after which everything is reset. 

In retrospect I can see why this happened to me. Before writing that first comment I had indulged in a real frenzy of pinning. That must have raised a flag that limited me to just the one comment. 

Since then I've been careful to not go overboard with both pinning and commenting. I've just used the site in a leisurely manner and the block hasn't reappeared. 

It's worth remembering this when you next log in. Pinterest is not as fast and furious as, say, Twitter. So, work as a slower pace and you will be fine. 

Clearly, the internet has had a huge impact on the way information is disseminated -- not to mention absorbed by readers, listeners and viewers. It's been a hugely liberating medium for anyone who has something to say about a subject they know and love.

In the past you, if you wanted to convey your thoughts and opinions to even a small number of people you had only a few options:

You could take the time to write a book and submit it for publication. Or you paid to have it published yourself.

You could also become a regular columnist with a newspaper or magazine. That was a difficult thing to achieve. Media organizations didn't give such roles to anyone. To be in the running you either had to be on their payroll as a journalist already, or earn sufficient credibility over a long period of time working as a freelancer. Occasionally, people who were highly successful already in their profession or business niche could score a regular column in some publication or other.

All these avenues required years of work, and ultimately a bit of luck. They were all so involved and time consuming that they were simply beyond the reach of most people.

While all of these paths are still available, and many who work in the media pursue them, there's another one that's open to pretty much everybody: blogging.

You can immediately start publishing thoughts about your field of interest. If you keep at it, and make sure you share your posts on social media, you can slowly but surely garner a decent following.

Sure, it's likely that your readership will never rival that of a typical columnist for a daily newspaper
Still, you can certainly end up with respectable numbers of regular readers -- and even make some money as a result. This is enormously satisfying.

Actually, it can be so rewarding that I suspect many who dreamed of having their own syndicated column have settled for the niche market domination that a blog affords.

And what bloggers lack in readership they can make up for in engagement. As well as being an online column, a blog is a kind of community. It's very much a two way process.

Of course today's high profile columnists are expected to engage with their audience online. But the vast majority of their readers don't actually converse with them in comments. They just read their weekly offerings in the printed edition.

In the blogosphere, however, everyone who reads your work can comment, and many do. This gives you a more accurate picture of how your views are perceived, I believe.

There's another advantage to blogging: You can say pretty much whatever you want, however you want (as long as you are not defaming someone, of course). This is not the case if you are working for a big media company. And as well as legal issues there are political considerations to take into account -- not to mention the sensitivities of major sponsors. This could really wear at your soul, particularly if you are a bit of a free spirit.

Last but not least, with a blog you can just take a break whenever you feel like it. That's certainly not the case if you're contracted to crank out a certain number of words every week. Having to do so could end up being a burden after a while, even if you're being well compensated for your work.