I'm a Generation X'er, so it has taken a bit longer for me to warm to all the technology floating around nowadays. While 'iPod Girl' there (above) has grown up with a silver iPod plugged in her ear, super fast broadband and a hot mobile phone enabled to access the web, I grew up listening to Madonna on vinyl and later when CDs finally came out... how cool were stereos with CD players when they first came out? Mind blowingly cool.

"It's called a CD player.

It cost me, like, seven hundred bucks, 
but the sound quality's outstanding."

"You wanna play a record?"

"No, Jules, it doesn't play records. It 
plays CD's. It's a CD player.

I'll be upstairs hooking it up."

The Wedding Singer

My family's first foray into computers was the Commodore 64. It was slow and clunky and required a tape recorder to load games (type RUN to load game). If you were very tech-savvy, you might have been learning basic programming around this time and would have been enthralled at the prospect of turning lines of code - that you typed up yourself - into an active program on the computer, i.e. you made the computer do something at your command. Very cool.

No - I could never be bothered to type up lines of code.

Is print dead?: little writer goes to university

I arrived at university at the exact right time to be told that newspapers were dying, everything had been hijacked by the PR machine and the lecturers held grave fears for the Fourth Estate. Great! So in this sombre atmosphere, we learned about print journalism skills and ethics in complete uncertainty as to whether we would ever get to work in the industry.

Hand written essays were happily accepted and if you wanted access to a computer, you could book some time in the PC lab. The computers in there had access to a cool new phenomenon .. the i.n.t.e.r.n.e.t.

Sorry to bury the lead

Apologies for taking so long to get to the point, but Gen X and Y really need to understand that some social networking queens are made, not born. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and the rest are not only new phenomena historically, but also represent a completely different way of communicating and interacting that requires some adjustment.

I still don't get why Facebook is so great and I find the privacy issues alarming, and as for Twitter - who cares what random thought just popped in your head? I have, however, learned a few things about the value of interacting with others online if you want to establish the online space as your 'workplace'.

So now we get to it .. like three paragraphs in, but we got here. I have spent a good long while reading around the notion that social networking tools can actually help market your online articles and hubs (and lenses ... if you swing that way). What I've decided is that you can use these tools to market your work and drive traffic - but not necessarily in the way many so-called 'experts' would have you believe.

There is an ethical code to social networking

When you sign up to any online group, you become a part of an online community and must therefore behave in accordance with the customs of the land. Put simply, it's bad form to just squat there, not contributing anything and just leeching off the villagers. Furthermore, the sites police such vagrant behaviour and will punish the offender with either exile or invisibility.

Go to places like StumbleUpon and Digg with a clean heart and sharing spirit, not just to flog your wares like a snakeoil salesman. The villagers will reward you for your active and genuine participation by forging links with you and 'networking' in its true sense - meaning you will get the traffic you so crave through hard won good-will.

A few simple DO & DON'Tguidelines to using online social networking as a marketing tool:

Don't Stumble or Digg yourself

Overtly promoting your own site is frowned upon. Instead, make genuine connections with the people you meet online and let them seek you out of their own accord.

If you went to a party and started giving out business cards to everyone you met without bothering to even say hi, people would think badly of you. The same applies online, except that the site's 'police' will find you out via a complex algorithm and institute punishments to prevent the continuation of this behaviour.

Do make the best use of your profile page

Let people know on your profile page who you are and where they can find your work online. This is the place to add links and information about you as a writer / blogger / hubber. If social networking users take the time to read up on you, there's a good chance that they will go looking to find out more.

It's a bit like a seduction, people; a coy glance over the shoulder is sometimes enough.

Do contribute to the online community

When using social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon,Delicious and Digg, make sure to recommend sites that you honestly believe people will enjoy. This will earn you points as a vauable citizen in the community and give you more power to control where traffic is sent from the site. You need to earn the trust of the members on the site.

Do recommend information and websites on a personal basis

Marketers and Account Managers know how far a little act of thoughtfulness can go in the eyes of a client, and the online world is not much different. Information is currency and if you have 'met' someone online who you know could benefit from something you've seen - recommend it to them personally.

Do work it in reverse

When you get comments about your work, don't be afraid to tell people about social bookmarking and your participation in that world. If you can enourage people to recommend your work in this way, you help generate targeted traffic to your blog, hub or article.

Do 'discover' sites

Social bookmarking sites tend to give extra credit to the person who first flags / recommends a new site of interest. Be an explorer and deliver the bounty unto your online community.

Do let the sites recommended by others fuel your ideas bank

If the online community have voted that a webpage or site is worth visiting, it makes sense to consider why people like it. What is that blog or article doing that your work isn't?

Don't recommend the same site more than once

The temptation is there to recommend all your own work or that of friends, which may be effective once or twice, but then the site will be onto you and instead of helping your marketing efforts it will come back to bite you.

Do recognise the branding benefits

If for no other reason, social networking is valuable in the same way as old fashioned networking: getting to know people and getting your 'brand' out there.

If you can avoid being obnoxious and give back to your online communities, they will generally give back in kind. Be respectful of other people and embrace the principle of reciprocity.

All images supplied by Photobucket.com