Everyone knows we all need to network. But I’ll share the three pillars of Public Relations- as I learned from my PR guru teacher in college- anyway: Networking, networking and networking. Yes, everything is about networking. Networking is basically growing a net of people you know by adding new nets all the time. It is a concept you already benefit in your everyday life, in many areas. You just might not have given it much thought. Below are two examples:

*Romance. How many of you dated or are still dating from someone from your friends’ circle? Someone your friend knew? From work? From school?

* Work. More often than not, it all depends on who you know. Recommendations and references are results of successful networking. You may be the best, but without building successful relationships, who will know that you are the best?,

 Image via http://www.theecommercesolution.com

Social networking is even more crucial in writing. Everyone has internet so the media are pretty standard. How do we differentiate ourselves? Well, the obvious answer is to get out there. However, it is not enough. After you start using the social media, you need to spread your work widely and you need to do this on a regular basis. Fortunately, we have a lot of free options to do just that.

• Facebook: Almost everyone has a Facebook account, and many people have at least a 100 friends. Put your links out there. As much as people are inclined to share weird and funny stuff, the right audience will share the informative and useful stuff too. Add links to your writing. Not all of your friends will pay attention. But some will. You can also join groups who hold similar interests, make new friends with similar interests and well...as the list of your supporters grows, you will get more motivated. Meeting new people takes time but since you don’t want to spend money on advertising, this is the best alternative. Use it. You will end up knowing some great people on the way as well.

• Twitter: It is free and it doesn’t take much time. Because twitter can be integrated with your blogs, Triond accounts and most other sites; so that the process becomes automated.. Surely, you can spend time there and make even more use of it, but not using Twitter means you are not taking advantage of the online world fully.

• LinkedIn and/or Xing – both of these are business networking platforms. So they are especially great for business writing, but you can gain audience for writing about anything if it grabs attention. And they can be integrated into your twitter accounts. Plus there are tons of groups you can join and mingle in. I recommend it specifically if you have a full-time job. You set- up a profile, put your resume and interact with potential employers as well as your colleagues and friends. I have my full profile on both and since they are integrated with Twitter and my other posts are integrated with Twitter, everything I write is automatically visible on Linkedin as well.

• Digg: While Digg is not complicated, it is a little tricky. You can join Digg for free to “digg” stuff you like, which is basically a giving a thumbs up. You can also bury what you don’t like. However you shouldn’t just “digg” everything you write.If you digg your stuff only, Digg is more than likely to label you as spam.

Also, keep in mind that a digg is just one digg. Most of the time, you don’t even get noticed after at least a bunch of diggs. Plus, you compete against everyone and everything from professional marketers/writers to latest celebrity idiotic behavior featured on Yahoo News. Get your account and make friends. Digg stuff you like. And throw in a couple of your stuff while you are at it. You might want to Digg your most popular Triond or Factoidz articles. In that way, you have some attention guaranteed. Support strangers, writer friends and yourself. It is a long shot, but you never know what might make to front page. And that means more attention, clicks and comments. Comments are where you interact with people and attract more attention.

• Stumble Upon: It is like Digg, you can vote stuff up or down. It comes with its own toolbar but it is easy to download. Don’t vote anything down unless it is something morally or ethically disturbing. People can check who voted and in the long run, negative votes can cause negative karma. You are there to network and make friends,not to destroy other people’ hard-earned popularity. It also loves you more if you don’t just vote your own stuff. Again, you need lots of votes and friends.

• Other Social Bookmarking Sites: There are a lot of sites social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon: mixx it, buzz up (yahoo), reddit, mixx it, Google buzz, etc....There are also a bunch of others. So my suggestion: pick 2 like these digg,stumble upon, buzz up, etc. Facebook and Twitter should be non-negotiable since their return is solid. I am talking from my traffic graphs; both from my blog and Triond. You should also note, however, that different strategies and social networking sites will work differently for everyone.

In short, you should test, analyze and act accordingly when it comes to social media sites. My stumble upon traffic currently outdoes my Facebook and Twitter traffic, for instance. When I first started using Stumble Upon, the traffic I got was not a lot.