Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FriendFeed, LinkedIn. Chances are you are on at least one of these social networking sites. How can you make the best use of these sites though? I am going to share some hacks to make better use of these sites, make you look professional, and make these sites easier to use.

To start off, I am going to share some general things you can do with all social networking sites to make you look more professional. Now these hacks may not be for everyone, but if your looking to get more followers, look professional, or be more social, I would follow these tips.

1. Profile Picture
First impression is everything right? Well your profile picture plays a big part in what people will think about you. If you have a picture of something that isn’t you, how are people supposed to know it’s you? Sure there’s the name, but chances are there are others out there with the same name. Put a picture of yourself as your profile picture, and one where you are the main subject of the picture.

What if you want to look more professional? Don’t put one of you at a party, one taken of yourself in a mirror, or one with many people in it.

2. Smart Status Updates
What I mean by this, is don’t sound like an idiot with your status updates.

How do you do this. One big way is to spell things right. You look like an idiot if you’re saying things like “i is uploadin sum pics to fb now”. Even capitalization, punctuation, and grammar matter.

3. Be Social!
It’s called social networking for a reason. It’s not called “aggrandize-yourself-and-ignore-everyone-else networking”. The point of social networking is to connect with other people, share information, and to be social.

If you are just posting things and not interacting with other people, chances are people won’t be as social with you.

That’s all the general tips I have for right now. Next I will be going into more specifics with Facebook and Twitter as I know a lot about these social networks. If you have experience with another social networking site, why don’t you write a guest post?

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