There are thousands of social networks creeping up all over the place, pretty much one for any topic you can think of. Here you are trying to build up your personal brand and your online presence, how many social networks should you become a part of and how can you maintain all of your profiles?  There’s actually a new tool called usernamecheck which let’s you check if your desired user name has been taken on a number of social networks, it’s hand if you want a quick glance for your user name.

I’m all about quality relationships and am a firm believe that if you’re going to do something, you need to do it right. What I mean by that is I would rather be an active member and contributor to 3 social networks then a non-active non-contributor to 100 social networks. I find that between this blog, twitter, linkedin, and facebook, that I have a solid online presence and I don’t really need to be a part of other networks. That being said I also do have accounts with myspace, stumbleupon, mixx, flickr, viddler, plurk, and pownce, but I never really use or update them. I just don’t see the need to.

Don’t spread yourself too think because that eventually diminishes your value. Let your users know the core places where they can find you and make sure that when they do find you that you are pumping out some quality content and building those relationships/connections.  I may not belong to as many social networks as some other people out there but I respond to every message, email, and comment that I get from the networks that I am a part of, and to me it very important that I can maintain that.

What about you?  How many social networks are you a part of and how many do you actually maintain and contribute to?

thanks for reading

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