Written By Susan Soares
In our last visit, I shared with you my favorite social networking sites. This month, as promised, we will discuss the Do’s & Don’ts when participating in these sites. Keep in mind these tricks of the trade are geared toward promoting a product, whether it be comics or not. I encourage you to pay close attention to both the do’s and the don’ts. Both can make or break your promotional campaign.

Do:

Let’s start our visit today with what you should do. First and foremost, you should enroll yourself in as many social networking sites that you can manage to regularly update. As you build a group of friends, your frequent news updates will be in hot demand.

Once you have established yourself on your chosen networking sites, your next step and a definite “Do” is to add friends. Depending on the site, you only have to get started and before you know it, people are adding you. There are some sites, however, that you will need to be somewhat aggressive. As you receive friend requests, be careful to make sure they are legitimate members, not spam. Only a couple of sites have this problem. You won’t experience it in Facebook, ComicSpace or DeviantArt.

If you are someone who is looking to derive your business from these sites, it is very important to post contact information. Now I know all of you are reading this and thinking “Duh!” You would be surprised how many artists we found who failed to provide contact information. They lost out on business from us. So, if you want work, make yourself available, and reachable. If you don’t want to post your personal email address, I can appreciate that. To solve that problem, I suggest setting up a gmail account.

If you are a comic book creator, always use your logo or a cover image as your avatar. This helps you generate brand recognition, which is critical. Your fan base spends a great deal of time online and they will see your avatar over and over depending on how many messages you send out. These same fans attend conventions and visit local comic book stores. The more recognizable your product is the more likely the fans will buy it. And I can personally attest to this because someone at New York Comic Con approached our table and purchased our book because they recognized our Jolly Roger.

If Facebook is the one social networking site that you choose, remember to not only create a profile for yourself, but I highly recommend you establish a group for your product. On Facebook, I currently manage 2 groups: one for Sky Pirates of Valendor and one for the Comicbook Artists Guild. As I mentioned in my previous article, this group feature allows you to communicate to a targeted audience. You can post links to reviews and interviews written about you and your property. You can add events like convention appearances and signings, and invite the members of your group to attend. We have found tremendous success from this feature. The key thing to remember here is you are communicating with folks who want to hear what you have to say. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have joined your group.

Don’t:

Recently, I was telling a friend of mine that I was writing my next article on the Do’s and Don’ts of social networking. The first thing he said to me was that he hates when groups send out too many notices. In past times, I have been guilty of this myself. It almost becomes a bad habit, especially when you have significant developments like a book release. Your bulletins should always be timely and brief. Avoid sending out a bulletin about a book release until you know it is at the printer or on its way to you. Avoid sending out notices too early for convention appearances. If you are a mainstream artist, it is advisable to send a notice when you are added to a guest list. Some fans actually do plan to attend shows depending on the guest list. However, if you are independent artist who will be setting up a table on Artist Alley, it is best to send a notice the week before.

A major part of social networking sites is the ability to chat and post messages on other users’ walls/profiles. I caution you, while making friends, contacts and fans, to be mindful of what you post. You want anything and everything that is visible online to be non-derogatory, professional and age-appropriate. If you create an “adult audience” product, remember to keep the promotion of such product at a “general audience” level. While you can control who buys your product, you can’t always control who is exposed to your promotion, especially on social networking sites like Myspace or even Facebook.

One of the latest fads in social networking is widgets. Facebook started with them and now Myspace has them. They are also commonly known as applications. If you are going to set up a profile to promote your property, I advise you to not set up too many of these widgets on your page. The more widgets you have set up the longer your page will take to load. Similar to the Myspace pages where people have music loaded, it can take forever. Speaking from experience, if I visit someone’s profile page and have trouble loading it, I never return. As cool as it may be to have all the bells and whistles, if no one visits your page, it is pointless.

Before we end our conversation this month, I have just one more “Do Not Do.” It is critical that you do not bite off more than you can chew. What I mean by this is do not get involved in so many social networking sites that you cannot keep them updated in a timely fashion. Fans like to see new and fresh material. I am guilty of breaking this rule at times and then struggle to get caught up all at one time. So heed my warning and pick the most effective sites to promote your products and do them well. My suggestions – Facebook and DeviantArt. ComicSpace is a very close contender, simply because it is so easy to update.

So those are my thoughts on social networking. As the column continues, I will throw in bits and pieces that involve using these sites relative to the topic of discussion. Here is the challenge I want to leave you all with. I challenge those of you who currently do not use social networking sites to sign up for one – just one. It does not have to be elaborate. And if you do use social networking sites, I assign you the daunting task of updating your page. Add some new friends, post a bulletin or two, share some new artwork. Get in touch with your fans through cyber space. And get ready because next month we will venture to the exciting topic of conventions and public appearances. Don’t forget to leave me your comments and thoughts in the meantime.

Similar Posts:

• Promotionally Speaking #3: Click to Add
• Join Septagon Studios New Home and Get paid
• Twitter Talk #1
• Introducing Twitter Talk
• Twitter Talk #2