How much time to spend on social networking?

[jcorkern]

The amount of time I spend on 2.0 is directly related to what I am marketing. Some get zero and some get an abundance of time.

Some things work well on 2.0 and others with search. Just a matter of matching what you are marketing to the right medium.

If I were to market a travel site, I would use 2.0 and search, news/politics would be strictly 2.0. But the local plumbing site would be strictly search, because I am sure the traffic on 2.0 sites would not amount to much within that subject.

Just a matter of targeting your subject and then matching it to the right demographic.

[andrewwee]

One way to think about social networking is to avoid thinking of it as some way to trick or game traffic to your site.

Conversion into affiliate sales totally depends on how well the traffic is suited to your site profile or your offers.

If you get 100,000 high school kids to your payday loans site, you're very likely to end up with 0 conversions.

If you got the same traffic to an xbox360 or iphone fan site, you'd do very much better.

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The hallmark of successful social networking has to do with understanding the core audience/customer for your product and going out to the relevant social networks to find them.

BTW, although there're new-fangled networks like digg, plurk, twitter, friendfeed, etc, I find that old "social network 1.0" sites like forums, yahoo groups, google groups, newsgroups and blogs work just as powerfully.

For example, a large part of my success has been my success in blogging. Not just from generating affiliate sales, but also establishing partnerships with other marketers in the field, becoming a trust advisor to affiliate networks (the super affiliates payouts don't hurt too...!), and being brought in to look at and test products and services before they're launched to the mass market.

The bottomline with social networks/social bookmarking: It's really not about how new or shiny the tool is...It's how you use the tool.

[helen_gracio]

That's a very good point, Andre. We only use 2.0 sites and a just only blogging and forums. Recently all the 2.0 media got very popular and people talk about them a lot. As I said I spend a lot of time there and discover ways to succeed. Networking and building relationship is a huge matter. We need to get to examine 1.0 potential too.

[ChrisMonty]

I agree 110% with what Andrew said. I spend a lot of time reading blogs, commenting on blogs, and posting on forums.

I don't consider it some spammy trick to get visitors to my blog. I consider it good networking.

You can't sit in your little hole and expect the traffic to just magically come to you...unless you pay for it or are an SEO wizard.

[Mousee]

It depends on a day. In working days I'm rather buzy and almost have no time. But on Saturdsy I can spend the whole day reading and commenting)))

[genjimee]

I only use social network marketing when I add a new post to my blog, then I just add it to everysite I use. No need to spend priceless time to optimize..

[MarketLeverage]

I sat in Gary Vaynerchuck's keynote at BlogWorld this past weekend and he recommended spending 2-3 hours a day leaving comments (non-spam) on other blogs.

[Linda Buquet]

Whoa, 2 - 3 hours a day? When do you get everything else done???

Well actually if I didn't spend so much time posting in the forum I
maybe could, so I guess it just depends on you business and strategy
and how many hats you have to wear.

I imagine if you were a full-time blogger and that's all you did,
then it would make sense because your main job would be
to try to drive traffic to your blog.

[simonjohn]

can anyone give a list of good social networking sites.

[Linda Buquet]

simonjohn here you go.

Mega List of Social Media Lists