Once the number of people in the social media network gets to be of critical mass, often the network will continue to grow organically — without a proactive approach to finding new followers or fans — because its core group attracts others easier once it’s gained some momentum. And one of the most common inclinations is to follow or friend back all new followers, so that the network size seems large to those just looking at the numbers.

But a large network is not necessarily a healthy network. By healthy, I mean engaged and responsive. If you have 10,000 followers on Twitter, but they only retweet you or respond to you or click through your links very seldom, it may be time to give your network a check-up.

4 Tips to revive your social media network:

1. Engage them first: Just like at a real life cocktail party, you can’t always expect others to begin a conversation with you first. And wallflowers who never respond to anything are virtually invisible.

What’s your icebreaker? Your elevator speech? How often do you go out of your way to help someone else or to introduce people that could benefit from a connection?

2. Drop the auto-follow mentality: Do you need to follow everyone back just because they’ve followed you? It seems as though even the ‘experts’ disagree on this one, with those who follow everyone back believing that’s the ‘right’ way, and people who believe the opposite feeling just as strong that they’re doing it ‘right’. My belief is that there isn’t any one ‘right’ way, only ways that work best for people.

For example, if you’ve followed 5,000 people on Twitter, but their updates are about topics that are not important to you, and you never respond to them or click through their links, then it may not be working for you. If someone is not adding value to your experience, but rather just filling your stream with things you’d rather ignore, it may be time to hit that ‘Unfollow’ button and move on.

3. Unfollow those who never reciprocate or respond: By the same token, if your mutual social media friends (Follows) never retweet you, or send you replies, then one of two things may be happening: Either they’ve simply added you so that you would follow back, and they have no real interest in your field, or you’re not adding value to their network.

If you’re being ‘baited’ (followed to just get a follow back, then unfollowed or ignored), be a little more judicious about those you follow back, and make sure you really do want to follow them, not just inflate your numbers. Unfollowing is not a bad thing – it’s just one way to keep from being overloaded with irrelevant information.

It’s also important to remember to add value to your followers. Sharing other people’s links and info regularly, regardless if you consider them to be your competitor, helps you to be considered a resource for your network – not just a broadcaster who only serves himself.

4. Follow those that do respond: You probably have a group of people who do respond to your messages, tweets, and shares. Those are the people you can count as fans, and not just as part of your follower numbers. Following them back, retweeting, and responding to them is a sure way to build a healthier network.

How do you keep your networks healthy?

[Derek Markham is a writer, a father, a WordPress addict, and social media butterfly who loves to share what's new and interesting in his world in under 140 characters. Hit him up with an @ reply anytime for help, advice, or just to say hey!]

Image: © VectorZilla.com – Fotolia.com

And we were skeptical because it feels as if we’re already over-saturated with social networking services (plus, wasn’t Google Friend Connect supposed to be the next big network? Or was that Google Wave?).

We have already invested our time growing our Twitter network, and we’ve built up quite a community on Facebook. We’re tweeting and sharing links, we’ve spent the requisite time developing relationships with our clients, our customers, and our peers on those networks, and now here comes Buzz.

How are we going to manage yet another one?

After a week of using it, I’ve got a few observations on Buzz:

When I first opened Gmail and saw Buzz already waiting for me, I jumped right in, and quickly noticed that while Google had already connected me to people I email or chat with regularly, I needed to change that. I’m already communicating with those people on other platforms – I don’t need to also follow them on Buzz.

My second thoughts were “Are we going to have to go through the process of following and attracting followers again? How can I use this differently than Twitter?”

Since many people were already connecting their many services to Buzz, I was getting their Twitter updates, their Google Reader shared items, their blog RSS feeds, and updates from digg.com and Friendfeed.

Every time I checked, I had numerous unread items, and it was rapidly becoming a source of noise, not information. So I unfollowed everyone except those whose updates I really didn’t want to miss, and started only following people that are leaders in their field – people I wanted to be sure to listen to.

My advice for using Google Buzz:

Your Buzz activity shows up on your Google profile, so keep it relevant. You might not want your next customer to see the latest picture of your family poodle that you sent to TwitPic, unless you’re in the dog business.

Only connect feeds to Buzz that won’t overload your followers (like Twitter, for heavy users). Those feeds will update automatically, so make sure you aren’t sharing the same link from multiple services)

Follow the thought leaders in your industry, commenting on their Buzz posts regularly. But don’t act like a spammer or link dropper – only comment if you can add something.

Listen deeper. Find other influential or interesting people to follow through their comments on those posts. Many blogs are now sporting a new “Follow us on Google Buzz” button, making it easy to connect.

Only share the best. We don’t need to know everything you read today in Google Reader. The tendency is to want to share everything with everyone, thinking that gives us a bigger reach, but the reality is that smaller, targeted networks are more engaged.

Manage your attention. Just as you shouldn’t check your email all the time, or leave a tab with Twitter open continuously, you will need to keep the time you spend with Buzz under control. Or, if you’re an info-glutton, you might want to consider a social media diet.

Use filters and labels to manage the flow of information and keep your inbox empty. Find some other Buzz tricks to make it work for you.

How have you been using Google Buzz?

[Derek Markham is a writer, a father, a WordPress addict, and social media butterfly who loves to share what's new and interesting in his world in under 140 characters. Hit him up with an @ reply anytime for help, advice, or just to say hey!]

Image: topgold at Flickr

You know you need to be active in social media networking to get more exposure for your business, so you’re all signed up with a brand spanking new Twitter account.

But now what?

With over a billion tweets sent every month, Twitter can be a rich source of information and networking, and the best place to start is by listening to what others are saying about the products, services, and issues in your field. You can do that by finding the leading voices in your niche to follow, and then watching the conversations they have with each other.

A simple way to grow your network is with one of Twitter’s built in tools: Twitter Search.

For example, if I was a local business, I would start with the nearby area. A framing store in Santa Fe, NM, would begin searching for Tweets about Santa Fe, then add in searches for Tweets mentioning both Santa Fe and art, and continue to drill down on keywords that are related to photography, art, or galleries, in the surrounding area. They would also use the advanced search engine to input location or further filter the results.

Businesses should also search using those same keyword terms without the location, as they’ll be farther ahead the larger their network is, even if they aren’t local customers. For a web-based business, you can skip the location searches and go straight to keywords that relate to your business, including as many longer tail keywords as you like.

Search, Subscribe, and Save:

When you find some searches that really hit home for your business, either subscribe to the RSS feed for those searches (top right hand side of search page), or if you search from your home page, save the search there. That way, you can easily tap into the results on a regular basis without setting up the original search again.

Follow or Filter:

Once you’re viewing the search results, click through to the listed users’ profiles and follow them if they are an interesting or influential voice (my rule of thumb). Higher numbers of followers doesn’t necessarily translate into an engaged network, so don’t get sucked into thinking that the best Twitter strategy is to follow massive amounts of people and to amass the most amount of followers. A smaller group of followers who are actually listening to you and responding to you is much more useful to you than those of most ‘mega-follower’ accounts.

Add Value:

If you have anything to add to their conversations, send them an @ reply with your view on the subject at hand. They’ll see it in their stream, and notice you, perhaps following you back as well. One especially important task in social media engagement is responding to questions or helping to solve an issue for them – the more you do that, the sooner you’ll begin to be seen as a resource for your industry.

When in Rome:

It certainly doesn’t hurt to just lurk and listen at first, especially if you don’t understand how others are using Twitter, but my advice is to simply start tweeting, regardless how many followers you have.

The temptation (and a big no-no for new users) is to just start broadcasting only links and information about your company, but that doesn’t help you to grow your network or to build relationships. A smarter strategy is to start sharing other people’s links and tweets, adding in some links to yours here and there, with the ratio staying heavily on helping other people out.

Rinse and Repeat:

If you’ve followed along so far, you should now be following a good-sized group of people that share information about the topics you’re interested in, and you will have the searches saved on the homepage or subscribed to with your RSS reader.  This is your base – something to build on a little each day.

You’ll scan the searches for potential conversations you can add value to, for new and interesting people to follow, and for ways to help others with their messaging. Use a Twitter scheduling application or a multiple Twitter user application to schedule these tweets throughout the day or to collaborate so that someone is always monitoring your niche. If you devote even a half an hour each day to these tactics, your network will grow larger every day, and it will be a focused network, not a general one.

Tip: If you find yourself closely following a smaller subset of people, start to filter those conversations by either putting them into a Twitter list, or using the ‘group’ feature found on many Twitter applications. You’ll be able to focus in easier on the people you need to pay attention to, and you won’t waste countless hours wading through the Tweet-stream looking for it.

[Derek Markham is a writer, a father, a WordPress addict, and social media butterfly who loves to share what's new and interesting in his world in under 140 characters. Hit him up with an @ reply anytime for help, advice, or just to say hey!]

Image: © Photosani – Fotolia.com

But love the concept or hate it, the iPad does represent a much more robust option for anytime, anywhere access to social media applications, compared to the smaller form factor of mobile devices.

MediaFunnel on iPad

Below is an approximation of how MediaFunnel will render in Safari on iPad.  For MediaFunnel, iPad represents a device that will allow mobile users to easily manage multiple social media accounts within a single iPad view.  With its 1024 x 768 resolution, iPad will give users the same level of control and access as with a notebook or desktop computer.  With soon to be introduced Facebook support, there will not only be access to multiple Twitter accounts, but also to multiple Facebook page walls — all within a single, iPad screen.

iPad will also allow MediaFunnel administrators and editors to review and act on queued tweets and posts no matter where each person happens to be.  MediaFunnel contributors will have a more convenient interface for contributing content from events, conferences and more.

Overall, iPad will provide social media teams with a variety of ways to create more content and better content — and to more conveniently engage with their audiences.