This article is not for those who casually use social networks casually. I composed this guide for those who use social networks for idea generation, promotion and networking. At the end of the article is a link to a template you can use to implement your social networking strategy.
Define Goals
First, you need to determine what results you are expecting from social networking. Idea generation? Increased traffic? Partnerships? Feedback?
Once you determine the results, you can define metrics and monitor your progress.
Contribution
To become a effective social networking, you must contribute. Be free with your ideas and resources. Always think of how you can give and help. For social news websites, you will need to find quality content to contribute to the community. Free services such as Notifir.com will help with that.
Friendships
It is important to have some kind of friendship relationship management system. For this, I recommend HighRise, from 37 Signals. The idea is to turn random contacs you meet on the web with similar interests into quality relationships. As I mentioned before, always think of ways you can help your contacts and friends.
Voting
Spend time helping others by voting on thier content on sites such as Digg.com, Reddit.com, StumbleUpon.com, Mixx.com, Sphinn.com and Propeller.com.
Tracking
Based upon your goals and defined results, you need to establish metrics and spend time at least weekly in review and analysis. For example, if traffic is important to you, make sure you are using a good analytics tool that can give you the data needed to measure what methods are producing results.
Resources
Usefull article…
Can you please guide me how to increase friends network in Digg.com?
I suggest you take a look at Muhammad Saleem’s (msaleem on Digg) manual: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/265428/The-Social-Media-Manual—by-Muhammad-Saleem