Our local PRSA chapter has a blog where member can post questions and information. This post piqued my interest:

I received an email from someone asking for some quick enlightenment on how to get the most for herself and her clients out of social media sites like stompernet and twitter. She wrote, “I’ve joined several but I’m just not sure what to do with them. how can I advise clients when I don’t get it?? Who in the world has time to sit on these sites and browse for other people you know or want to know or to write what you’re doing in a blog everyday?? And there are so many sites that seem to be “a must” how do you choose where to go? Last question.. how do people find you on these sites? Blog directories?”

I posted a reply, and for the sake of those reading this blog, here’s how I responded:

“I’ve joined several but I’m just not sure what to do with them. how can I advise clients when I don’t get it??”

Common Craft has some great, short videos that explain the basics of different social networking tools.

They are simple to understand and can be sent to your clients to help them understand as well. As an example, check out http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter for the video about Twitter. There are many more quick videos there for you to explore.

Unfortunately, advising a client about a social media site without having used it yourself would be like advising a client on newspapers without having ever read one. You’ve got to get your feet wet.

“Who in the world has time to sit on these sites and browse for other people you know or want to know or to write what you’re doing in a blog everyday??”

A really good RSS reader will help you monitor blogs quickly throughout the day. I follow about 20 blogs right now. Most of the time, I read the headline and a few sentences to get the idea. If the subject really interests me, I read more. As far as blogging every day, I have no idea how some people get that done. I just try to blog as often as I can. People are reading, but even if they weren’t it’s good for me to write something for me.

“And there are so many sites that seem to be “a must” how do you choose where to go? Last question.. how do people find you on these sites? Blog directories?”

The best way to find blogs to follow is to look at blogrolls. Those are lists of blogs that people post on their own blogs. It’s the list of blogs that they are following. Often you will find commonalities, and it will be evident who the thought leaders are.