1. Be careful with whom you connect - so you can keep the network personal. When someone I don’t know asks to connect with me, I always email him/her and ask how do we know each other, and why should we connect. If I don’t get an answer, I ignore the request. This way I can feel comfortable with writing a status message such as “Kfir is having a bad day” without feeling, well, bad.
2. Create groups in areas that are not saturated, and you can add value to the community - when I signed up for Facebook, I felt that there is a need for a Vloggers group. So I’ve opened one, and reviewed it periodically. I’ve met a lot of interesting people through this group, BUT
3. Don’t nag people in the group too much - this is Facebook, not Ning. Learn from Chris Brogan’s Grasshoppers experience.
4. Choose the applications you use carefully - don’t Myspace your Facebook profile. I check all the applications I find, but I am very careful with the ones I keep on my profile.
5. Invite your friends only to useful or fun applications - and no, Zombie is not one of them
6. Constantly review the groups you are member of, and engage in the discussions there. Nothing new here - this is a social network, so, be social.
7. Try to be a member of up to 30 groups - so people can see what are your topics of interest.
8. Initiate discussion threads between your friends - but don’t spam them. This is a great way to create a conversation with your friends not only you are talking with people you like, you are also helping them to connect amongst themselves. Did we mention that this is a social network?
9. Make your profile interesting to read - I invested a lot of time in creating a profile that not only provides information but make people read it through. Applications like iRead, friends wheel, flixster, and wordpress plugin (if you have a blog) bring my profile to life.
10. The most important tip of all - use it as a part of your social media toolbox - mesh it up with your blog, create events that are relevant to your day to day live, share your posts and video material and so on. it is like a snowball effect - one effort feeds the other and increase the impact of your online and offline social activities.
Twitter users tools free !
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
