Step 1: Take a survey of sites you find useful. These days, with everyone and their dog on seemingly every social networking site known to mankind, it’s a good idea to come up with some simple coping mechanisms to combat the information overload that can result from joining YASNS. Take a few sites that you visit frequently and gather a list of the social networking tools they employ. Basically, the whole broad topic of Web 2.0 sevices can be broken down into three basic categories:

Bookmarking Tools: Those little badges for services like Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us make it easy for your readers to save a link to your content and then share their links on their profiles.

RSS Tools: These buttons allow a reader to add a feed from your site to a feed-reader service. While most blogs and feed-enabled sites already offer this via that little orange button you see in your browser’s address bar, there are plenty of services out there such as Netvibes and Google that make it easy to track your favorite blogs via a personalized feeds display. Feedburner, recently acquired by Google, is a good tool for maintaining your feed(s) and the service gives you a feed url to use as well as some button generating tools.

Social Networking Tools: Join a site like Facebook or Twitter and you can get the code to display a badge on your site that links to your profile. Other services such as Google’s Friend Connect and MyBlogLog allow blog owners to build an online network with other bloggers.

Step 2: Once you have a sense of the types of services you want to offer and info you want to display, create a way to keep track of everything. When I sign up for a site or service, I make sure I keep a record on paper of the username, password, screen name and url of my profile page if necessary. And, since a lot of these services like t send you a confirmation/activation email, I have a folder in my webmail just for membership-related emails. (I draw the line at subfolders though. There’s only so much OCD I can take.)

Step 3: Now that you have a way to keep track of your various memberships, go create them! Here’s a list of popular services, separated by category of service:

Bookmarking Tools:
Del.icio.us
Digg
Stumble
Reddit
Slashdot

RSS Tools:
Feedburner (if you only join one rss service, make it this one!)
Google
Newsgator
BlogRovr
MyBlogLog
My Yahoo
Netvibes
Amazon Kindle
Viigo
Bloglines
Windows Live
Wikio
Blog Networks

Social Networks:
Facebook
MySpace
LinkedIn
Twitter
Flickr
YouTube

Step 4: Now that you’ve joined everything, you’ve probably noticed that there’s a lot of interconnectivity out there between services. You can post your Twitter Tweets to your Facebook Wall, your Flickr Feed to your Myspace page and put your LinkedIn badge all over creation. Don’t stress that yet. For now, you want to make sure your loyal readers know how to make the most of your site. It’s time to add some buttons to your site. Sign into your Feedburner account and burn a feed for your website.

Step 5: Once you’ve burned your Feedburner feed for your site, go to their “Publicize” page. Now you can do some “one stop shopping” for some feed chicklets! Click on the “Chicklets” tab and then simply choose the feed aggregator services you want from their 24 item menu. You can also head over to Top Rank’s blog and get even more chicklets. Tip: save the code generated by these services in a plain text file for easy access. You can then copy and paste the code to display these badges wherever you’d like on your site. For example, if you are using a WordPress site with widgetized sidebars, then you would go to your Widgets page on your dashboard, select the sidebar you want and then add a text widget. Then, simply paste in the code and save your changes.

Step 6: Now that you’ve added a way for your readers to get updates about your blog, you should add ways for them to bookmark and share your content. Addtoany.com is a great service that lets you grab a selection of bookmarking icons to add to the post template of your blog. Addthis is another site that lets you get one button that contains all the code for your bookmarking services.

Step 7: Once you’ve placed some feed chicklets and bookmarking buttons on your blog, you can get to work on your badges. Log into your account at Facebook. Then, underneath the left sidebar of your Wall, you should see a link that says: “Create a profile badge”. Simple enough. Twitter has a couple of ways to make your badge. If you go to your Twitter page, on the bottom there’s a link that says “Apps”. Go there if you want to have a badge on oyour site that displays all your latest “tweets”. If you want a button that says something like “Follow me on Twitter” then here’s a site that has an easy to use interface for creating your personal Twitter button. Extra Credit Project: since I can be a bit of what’s politely termed, “A Control Freak”, I created my own Twitter button, uploaded it to my images file and then linked to it in the sidebar with a surrounding hypertext link to a Twitter profile.

Step 8: If you want your readers to join a network of other bloggers and blog readers, then you can also insert a service for that. I’ve used MyBlogLog which offers an free trial period and then charges $25 for a “Professional Account” and they are pretty cagey about what the benefits are. Therefore, I recommend Google’s Friend Connect, a free service which is more user (and wallet) friendly. All you need is a Google account.
#Jenn Tip: I was able to fully customize the code in the Friend Connect badge to fit into a narrow sidebar and also switched out the hexcodes for ones that specifically matched a client’s logo colors.

So I started noticing how much time I actually do spend in front of a screen and realized I had enough time to start looking more closely at social networking sites and strategies. But it does take a while to fully examine all the options out there and hopefully this series of posts will save you some time and you’ll walk away with a better understanding of how to make these tools work for you.

I started by taking a few hours and signing up for the 4 most well-known services; Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter. Here’s my initial impressions of each:

Facebook:
Profile Address/User Name: Jennifer Nickerson
Sign Up Process: A little involved, but it’s damn eerie how the names from your past start popping up when you fill out where you’ve worked and gone to school.
Ease of Use: Fairly easy and basically what happens once you sign up is you are allowed to contact people you may know who are already on Facebook and ask them to be your Facebook friend. Then they can post messages for you on your “wall” and you can track what they’ve been up to as well.
What’s in it for me?: Online networking that doesn’t feel like “speed dating in a tie”. You can post a link to your website in your profile. Your profile includes your Wall, Info and Photos on a tabbed page.

LinkedIn:
Profile Address/User Name:http://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifernickerson
Sign Up Process: Fairly involved, but the more complete your profile, the better your chances of getting a connection to a potential client/employer/employee
Ease of Use:Fairly easy, once you enter the Profile process. Similar connections look-up functionality to Facebook.
What’s in it for me?: This is Facebook and MySpace’s older sibling with a briefcase and a firm handshake. You can connect with other members and trade recommendations for each other. A couple of nice features are the Amazon Reading List (lots of potential for you Amazon Associates out there) and the ability to list more than one website in your profile.

MySpace:
Profile Address/User Name:http://www.myspace.com/jennnickerson
Sign Up Process:Not bad, but there’s no lookup function built in.
Ease of Use: Could be better. You have to be fairly pro-active to take advantage of all there is and there’s 18 themes to choose from. I now understand all those Craig’s List “Pimp My MySpace Page!” ads. Also, when I tried to add my profile photo it seemed to upload fine, but the photo placeholder was still in place. Nothing tells one to click on the uploaded image and then designate it as the “default” photo. In these days of instant Avatar creation, this seemed a little lame to me.
What’s in it for me?: It’s another way to get your name out there and if you want to create a profile focused on your business, it couldn’t hurt. If I was a little bit (OK, a lot) younger, I would focus on it a little more, but for business/colleague networking purposes, there are better options.

Twitter:
Profile Address/User Name: http://twitter.com/jennsweb
Sign Up Process: Painless and there’s a look up function for finding other users you may know and the ability to send them invites.
Ease of Use: Pretty easy and their blog is fairly useful.
What’s in it for me?: You can stay in touch with your friends and co-workers but it’s passive tracking. You just check on people you are “following” and if they’ve made updates you can read them, but there’s no need to respond if you don’t have to.

Jenn Tips:
Here’s a few things to bear in mind before you plunge into the bottomless pool that is online social networking.

1: Gather together a list of all your email contacts and have it handy. Any format is fine. I actually keep a handwritten one since my webmail doesn’t have the capability to print out a list. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook allow you to search for potential connections via popular webmail services such as Gmail and Yahoo, but if you don’t have a full contact list on each account, then the reference list comes in handy.

2: Build good Linked In karma by offering to trade recommendations with others.

3: Decide which website you will always list on each service and get that website in good shape before signing on.

4: Take advantage of RSS feeds, Favorites Folders, bookmarks, or whatever it takes to make these sites easy to find while you are online. Use easy-to-remember but not obvious passwords and treat these accounts like you would your best friend’s dog while they are out of town. Cobwebby profiles can be a kiss of death to a potential connection.