Everyone can find a way to promote themselves while helping others. The helping others part is really important. Make life easy for someone and have a hidden benefit for yourself. Everyone wins.

My twitter profile was previously set to show ever time I ‘fiddled’ with a post. My partner did not. I found his Twitter profile appeared better than mine because people don’t care when I make one change. They are possibly interested in the details that I provide, but not the minor details. I think that was an important change. I also have a twitter for each of my blogs, one blog is more business and one blog ‘feels’ more like me.

My area does not do well in Digg. Each time someone diggs a post I have a maximum of a dozen others that follow suit. It is very important to make sure that each person chooses the social media that is most appropriate for our sites.

I am a fan of stumbleupon because of the traffic it brings to my site, but I know that the stumble traffic does not lead to conversions at the same rate as other traffic. This does not bother me because it helps the Alexa rank, if nothing else. [Is Alexa important? Not really, but some people do use it to give a level of importance to a site.]

My partner was active in a social media group. For beginners a social media group can be a big win. Each person diggs or stumbles the others posts. My partner has an account in 100 social media sites and is active in 40 of them and an occasional user in the other 60. This may seem a lot, but in the social media group he has one person that submits to health sites, so posts in 8 sites for that one person. On the rare occasion that I post on something that can be considered health related, he has that other person submit for me and he follows up.

The same holds true for other areas of social media. Example, I have posts in French, so there are the French social media sites. I have a social media in Greek, Russian, Japanese, German and probably other language specific sites.

Friends. So important the friends we keep. For someone starting out in social media I advise that they find people that have lots of friends, and follow them. Spend a month working for other people before asking them to do anything for you.
Comment. Each time you stumble, digg, tweet, wink or ximmy a site make sure you leave a comment related to the post and say that you did you social media. Example, I just thumbed up this post in stumble. Very often people will follow back after they see that you did something for them. Sometimes there are big name social media types that will post or stumble for you. I have had people that are REALLY well known that have done a social media action for me because I did something for them.

Reviews. Michel and Sylvie Fortin created a new product which I bought. It was really worth the money so I wrote a post about it. Michel did a post on his blog with only 2 or 3 lines that said he found an unsolicited review of his product.

The one thing that we don’t do is promote our profile pages. Maybe not enough time in the day. I know that my partner has done reviews for other people’s profiles, but does not ask people to review or rate ours. Maybe that is something that will go on the to do list.

This comment is long enough to be a blog post by itself. You may see part of this comment on my blog some time in August.

…so far I have like 20 profiles that i can barely keep track of. but i def update my faves like StumbleUpon, Twitter and a few others.

I think your point about keeping your profile updated is a very important one.

It’s way too easy to set up accounts at this type of place and then forget to tend them. You have to think of them like a garden. They need a little work, on a regular basis.

Prune old material, plant some new seeds and generally spend some time and love on it. It means the difference between a garden you’re proud to show, or a wreck filled with weeds.

The same applies to your social media profiles. After all, very few people would let others see them wearing dirty, torn clothing, would they? If you’re going to have a profile you should at least keep it up to date.