Well, I have made it to the sixth day of the Blog Challenge, and I thought I would share a few things with my wonderful readers that have really been helping me.  You see, my blog may be new, but in truth, I came into the new blog with about three years of blogging experience.  But it has been my tactics lately that have been so helpful .  My blog is almost two months old, and my numbers of visitors are now higher than when I was on my old blog.  If you are just getting into blogging, this post is for you, but it might even help more seasoned bloggers.  Don’t think I’m trying to self-promote.  Trust me, my blog is not where it needs to be–not in the least.  I need to clean it up and organize it better.  However, I think I have discovered some fantastic tools to really help me when it comes to networking.

Justunfollow.com has quickly become one of my favorite tools.  I used to go to it once a day, and now it is multiple times.  I was resistant to twitter in the beginning.  In fact, I refused to join twitter when I began blogging.  I finally realized I had to join, so I did.  Up until recently, I have really only used it to promote and enter contests.  But keeping up with a massive twitter list (over 17000) is crazy!  I always meant to follow everyone who follows me.  And so many follow you until you do, and then they stop following you.  Justunfollow is a tool that helps you find the people who recently followed you, recently unfollowed, and more.  I can find my non-followers, my inactive followers, and more.  All you have to do is sign in with your twitter account.  Also, the free version (the only one I use) only lets you unfollow and follow fifty people apiece per day.  I just look up my users on twitter directly.   (By the way, if you find that I have accidentally unfollowed you or not followed you, just sent me a tweet–I will definitely add you back.)

Speaking of twitter, I have found a surefire way to interact with people.  There was a wonderful user who has retweeted my tweets for ages.  She was nice enough to keep reweeting them, but I didn’t know what to do.  Until recently.  I decided to start retweeting tweets on a regular basis.  Before long, people began to favorite my tweets and retweet my tweets.

But networking on twitter involves more than retweeting.  See who has mentioned you recently (I tried this today and it works), and see if you can reply to one of their tweets.  I actually got a non-follower to follow me within the past couple weeks since I did this!  And in so doing, my klout score has increased.  I used to just give klout to others, but retweeting and replying really boosts it.

Last thing about twitter–I have effectively used the justunfollow tool to find people who have not tweeted in several months and even several years.  As far as I’m concerned, I don’t need to keep following those people.  And while I’m on the topic, this tool actually showed that fellow bloggers unfollowed me!  I got a little upset over that–I got over it, I promise.  If I’m going to unfollow someone, it’s going to be a company, not a blogger!

Let’s talk a little about facebook and networking.  I am involved in several groups–way too many.  I do pop in and out from time to time to participate, and it really does help.  There are a lot of threads where people comment on blog posts, retweet, and more, and participation is reciprocal.  I have found lots of new blogs this way.  I also participate in blog hops as I can.

But let me tell you about a big thing that has helped me so much on facebook.  If you’re like me, your facebook likes are pretty massive.  Facebook only allows somewhere around 5000 likes (they actually sometimes let me like 5300 or so pages).  I decided it was time to clean up my facebook likes, and I was absolutely shocked!  Do you know how many facebook pages have not been updated since the end of last year or earlier?  And as far as I’m concerned, I don’t need to follow these pages any more.  I really found some weird things (I also spent some money along the way because I found some amazing products).

So how do you do it?  You go to your profile and click on “More.”  You’ll find a drop-down menu, and you click on “likes.”  When you get to your “likes” page, click on “other pages” or “other likes” or whatever facebook is calling it now.  It then will begin to show your facebook likes in order starting with the most recent page you liked.  The most annoying thing is that you have to keep scrolling down.  I wish facebook would alphabetize our pages, but it doesn’t.  Let me recommend that you open the pages in a new tab or window.  That way, you don’t lose your place.  You can unlike them right on your profile page there or on the page itself.  I usually visit a page before I unlike it.

Now, why is this a good idea?  If you are not able to like pages any more (you have “maxed” out the number of pages facebook will let you like), you can’t like new pages.  So that means that if you want to pariticipate in reciprocal likes with other blogs, you can’t do it.  And if you want to enter a contest or work with a company, you might not be able to.  You also may find some blogs you haven’t visited in ages.  I find that I take a lot of time reading their pages and entering contests.  I have been doing this for a couple of weeks now, and I still haven’t gotten through all my likes!  But I have been able to enter some fun giveaways and help support other bloggers because I have unliked so many pages.

Well, those are a few of my recent networking tips.  Feel free to share your own or comment on any of these.  If you need help, let me know, and I’ll try to help you.

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