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Why it is important to know the networks you plan on using.

jcheray | Jan 13, 2010 | 0 comments

I encourage people to understand the social networks they belong to for a few reasons.

In order to reach your target audience easier you have to get a feel for how the users utilize a particular site. For example I will use my favorite StumbleUpon. I was chatting today to a gal in my weekly chat how say someone who is in to arts and crafts as a business could use it. Say this business owner wanted to just surf the net to find sites related to their interests for new projects to create and sell, this person could create a Stumble profile and then add to their profile their interests. As they use StumbleUpon it will become intuitive to their browsing habits. This cuts down on time searching Google for ideas.
So there is the time saving reason for one and now secondly when I was going through the early phases of blogging the advice out there was to be careful what network/media you submit to. You wouldn’t submit an article on gardening to Plug IM as that is a site that is geared toward tech related issues. Unless you could write and submit an article on how to use technology to grow bigger and tastier tomatoes.
Then there is the functionality of the service with your browser that I also pointed out. StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, Delicious and Blogger are five Web 2.0 platforms that I have installed on my Firefox. When I get stumped for things to blog about or research I just click the Stumble icon on my toolbar and go Stumbling for ideas and inspiration. I used to do this heavily when I was immersed in the world of Paint Shop Pro. Also when I find a page that I like and want to bookmark it I can not only bookmark it in my bookmarks but I can also submit it to De.lic.i.ous. Oh and I also have a Squidoo plug in as well so if I were to find something useful to post to a lens I have on there I could add it to a lens without leaving the page.
Lastly it is just good business sense to do this. When you understand how a site works it is easier for you to attract visitors to your site and it is more helpful and less aggravating to those who use those platforms.