Justin Flitter

I've seen many different job titles for community managers or social media managers over the last year but there is one that strikes a cord with me.

Whether it's personal or for a business engaging through social networks is about conversations. You're either responding to or igniting conversations with people passionate about your products or services, your industry or just what you're up to. Those conversations are opportunities to build relationships, earn trust, clout and respect. 

A good community manager is a pro networker too. They make connections, introduce people and share insights which stimulate conversations.

Your job is to get people talking. Whether you're creating whitepapers, blog posts, interviews, surveys, asking questions on Quora.com or Focus.com, running LinkedIn groups, syndicating your blog across new networks or directories, sharing through Digg or Reddit or participating in Twitter Chats like #custserv you're nurturing conversations....

Twitter is predominately an engagement platform. It's like you're having a relationship with 1,000's of people all at once, you listen then engage. Sometimes you engage then listen and sometimes you just put something out there without engaging or thinking or listening just to see what flies back.

How engaging your content is, is not reflected by the number of people that clicked the link, retweet you, or perhaps repost as their own. Being engaging is about creating a reaction, it's when someone takes an active interest, it's when others are inspired to take action as a result. That action could be a sign-up, a registration for something or it could be commenting on your blog post, replying to your tweet with their own thoughts or sharing the post with a contact of theres they know will be interested too.

You can participate by just listening and then replying, contributing to the discussion, answering the question etc. Or you can participate by igniting the...

I'd love to have a beer with Frank Eliason. He articulates the issues and points so well. "Be friendly" is a key takeaway for me.

Being a Social Media Manager is a bit like fishing. We're always trying to cast our net wider and further to extend the reach of our brand and thought leadership.

I'm constantly looking for networks and opportunities to reach out to and create new conversations with people that have never heard about us.

One of the ways I'm hoping to achieve this is through blog networks, blog directories and article submission services.

So add this to your list of todo's

Do a google search for blog directories. Go through the categories to see if they have one that closely aligns with you. If so who is listed there? Are any of your competitors there or any industry blogs? Then look at the listing packages on offer to see which one would give you the best value for money exposure. 

Also research things like, do they have a newsletter you can advertise on, does the listing have a direct RSS feed link to make it easy for them to subscribe to your blog?

I...