I remember when I created my first site on wordpress.com, it was a site related to fence products and installation methods (I was a sales manger for a fence company at the time), and my reason for starting a blog was purely to promote the company I worked for. I was compelled to do this by a friend of mine Scott Pooler, and he helped to teach me so many things I don’t know if I could ever repay him. Shortly after that, my company downsized and the owner decided to take my job. At that time, I decided to start my own fence company and hired Scott to build my site. This is where my addiction started….

I began an addiction with Social Media during that time, partly due to all the hype about Twitter and all the other start-ups that were coming out. It wasn’t long before I was spending more time on these social media and networking sites than I was being productive for my business. If I saw it mentioned in an article, I joined it. I had chicklets for more than twenty submission sites on my website!

It can be very easy to lose track of your goals by getting lost in the noise on these social sites. Don’t misunderstand me, I use social media and networking sites, sometimes I just use them more than is needed.

The hard part is finding the ones that actually benefit you. Over the last couple of years I have signed up for literally hundreds of these sites, and as a result, I have been able to weed out the ones that didn’t produce any results, and let’s face it, results are what most bloggers join these sites for.

Here is a list of the ones I mainly use now:

Twitter:

I have my frustrations about Twitter, but it still produces results. It consistently refers traffic to my articles and I am always making new connections.

Facebook:

Until recently, I kept Facebook to mainly personal use and am now learning better ways to use it.

StumbleUpon:

My use of stumble varies, I will go through periods of heavy use, and will not use it at all for months, but nothing compares to getting a major boost from a great article on Stumble.

BlogEngage:

Blog Engage is new for me (as for many of us) but I get constant traffic from Blog Engage unlike any article submission site I have used before.

Digg:

I haven’t been as active on Digg until the last couple of weeks, but in the past, I was able to get good traffic so am working it again.

LinkedIn:

This site I use more for business than any of the others. I network with manufacturers, suppliers and distrubutors of products for my fence site, it works great if LinkedIn is used correctly.

Conclusion:

I went through many sites to narrow it down to this list, what sites are you using?

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Filed under: Social Networking

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