9 Social Media Sites For Local Networkers

I’ll have to agree with Matt McGee about using social media marketing for local networking.  It’s easy at first to discard social media as something for the big guys, but you can be quite successful in reaching local people through social networks if you know how to market yourself successfully. It isn’t a matter of bombarding people with come-ons. That rarely works. What does work is treating people like human beings and getting to know them. Provide value and they will want to go deeper.

The 8 social media websites Matt recommends for local networking are:

• Flickr
• Facebook
• StumbleUpon
• Twitter
• Yahoo Answers
• outside.in
• Placeblogger
• LinkedIn

I’ll have to say that I agree with every one of these. I have accounts at all of them except for one and I am a regular user of three of these and an occasional user of two others. I’d also add one other social site to this list and that’s YouTube.

Using Social Media To Network Locally
Flickr, since I am just a casual user, has a cool tool that I didn’t know existed. You can start and join local meet-up groups. I just searched and found a group for Gettysburg and joined it. It took me all of five seconds. What a great way to network locally. Hook up with me on Flickr and add me as a friend.

I use Facebook fairly often. What I like about Facebook is that it is organized by local communities, which makes local networking through Facebook easier than perhaps any other social media site. I am a member of the York, Pa. community in Facebook because Gettysburg doesn’t have one. But you can connect with me through Facebook. I can always use more friends.

I use StumbleUpon more than any other social media site. It’s easy to use and navigate, plus the SU toolbar makes saving my favorite websites a whiz. Join me on StumbleUpon and follow my favorites.

Twitter is another site I use every day. In fact, I’ve made over 1,000 tweets in about six weeks. I’m still new to Twitter but I like it and am having fun making new friends and interacting through the 140-character limit they impose. I thought when I signed up for Twitter that it would take up a lot of my time, but I was wrong. I can send up quick tweets in five seconds throughout the day without breaking a stride. Sign up and follow me. You’ll see.

I’ve used Yahoo! Answers and I have an account, but I don’t use it often. It’s a good site if you want to share your knowledge and network with people through the Q&A it offers.

I joined outside.in but I’m not real active. I’m still fairly new, in fact. I joined it to see if there were other bloggers in my neighborhood, but being that I’m a rural blogger in Gettysburg, there aren’t that many of us. Outside.in is probably better if you live in a big city or large metropolitan area.

I didn’t even know about Placeblogger until I read Matt McGee’s blog post. I will join it and if it looks promising then I’ll be active based on initial results.

I don’t know why I haven’t been more active on LinkedIn. It’s a useful site, especially if you are into traditional business networking. It doesn’t have all the fluffy bells and whistles that Facebook has, and that’s one of its charms. You can meet some very influential people through LinkedIn. I am moderately active here. I should probably do more. You can look me up at LinkedIn; add me to your network.

YouTube is a video sharing site. You can make your own videos and upload them to YouTube. Through channels you can network with other YouTube users and grow a list of local followers who follow your video uploads. It’s better than Flickr if you’re into moving pictures. I’ve used YouTube mostly to find videos to use on my blogs and have uploaded a few of my own. I should probably do that more. Network with me on YouTube.

Local Adams County, Pa. Residents
Can Network Online
Anyone living in York County or Adams County Pennsylvania, or the surrounding area, and you want to use online social media for networking, feel free to look me up on these sites. I love meeting new friends and getting social.