How Social Networking is Like Nerds, Not Skittles

Ari,

A fun post. I was with my nephews this weekend and am currently chewing my Fav childhood candy (or is it s gum) that I haven’t had in years: Razzles – tThey still don’t put enough lemon or grape ones in for me, and still too many blue ones.

I agree with your post. I do think that there IS one way that it is better to be more like a Skittle than a Nerd. Each Nerd candy looks completely different; while Skittles candies are all pretty much the same shape. If you are trying to increase your visibility on various networks, especially for small business, using the similarity aspect of Skittles can be helpful.

You want to be yourself (who you are and what you do) from site to site, so consider being like a particular color of Skittle, perhaps a yellow one, on each site: have the same, or very similar display name/handle on each site; like the yellow outside candy shell. We know what to expect.

Also, think about using a similar profile/bio on each site; like the expected lemony flavor inside the yellow Skittle. What if you bit into a yellow Skittle and it was cherry inside – no big deal, but it’s not what you expected. In the social networking arena, if someone finds a cool post on your blog, and then looks to see if they like what you have to say on Twitter, then check your stuff on Flickr – or sees a comment you made on someone else’s blog, they will think – “cool! I like this person’s stuff, I’ll check them out.” That consistency, or flavor profile as the Food Network might call it, helps to keep them coming back for more; makes them more likely to hit that RSS feed button; it won’t hurt your “Google juice” either.

This may be more important for those working in the social networking space than for someone setting up an account to connect with their friends. And I will admit to crunching the candy analogy a bit to far, as the individuality of each Nerd candy piece also holds it’s appeal; if we said the same thing on each site everyday, no one would want seconds.

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Like you, Ari, I’m active on a few networks (Twitter, FB, LI, and ones internal to my company) and passive on others. So when people ask to connect to me on Plaxo, I will — because apparently they derive value from that connection, and because I know it will help up get in touch when we want to.

But the key to beneficial use of social networks is to *engage* with them — and as you rightly suggest, you’ll make yourself sick / frazzled / crazy if you try to maintain a good level of engagement across all of them.

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