The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users

you don’t like what a person shares, don’t follow him or her. You’re not paying to read the person’s post, so don’t feel entitled to tell him or her what to share. The sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, and the Internet doesn’t revolve around you.

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

I find posts that are titled “How to . . . ,” “Top Ten . . . ,” or “The Ultimate . . .” irresistible. These words say to me, This is going to be practical and useful. The folks at Twelveskip compiled the following infographic of seventy-four great titles, so be sly and use it.

Here’s my top 10 from the infographic on the next page:

How to Rock
Quick Guide
A Complete Guide to
Questions You Should Ask Before
Rules for
Essential Steps to
Most Popular Ways to
Tips for Busy
Tactics to

Our experience is that the sweet spot for posts of curated content is two or three sentences on Google+ and Facebook and one hundred characters on Twitter. The sweet spot for created content is five hundred to a thousand words.

An effective profile is vital because people use it to make a snap judgment about your account.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

I got this tip from Belle Beth Cooper, a talented social-media blogger. She searches for topics using Google Scholar, a subset of the Google search engine, to find serious academic treatment of topics. For example, here are the search results for “persuasion.”

Alltop is an aggregation of topics ranging from A (adoption) to Z (zoology). Alltop researchers select RSS feeds from thousands of websites and blogs and organize them into more than a thousand topics. For example

Futurity enables you to scoop the press, because it publishes research findings from a consortium of universities. An easy way to access Futurity is to use Futurity.alltop.

Many services provide good content using techniques that range from manual curation to black magic. These are our favorite sources.
Alltop
Alltop is an aggregation of topics ranging from A (adoption) to Z (zoology). Alltop researchers select RSS feeds from thousands of websites and blogs and organize them into more than a thousand topics