Many people criticize the corporate world as a “rat race” – a meaningless, ruthless existence. But from what I can tell, the lifestyle of a social media professional can sometimes be even more grueling, competitive and stressful than that of a top corporate exec.

Social media never slow downs or takes breaks. It just keeps going. image: tatrattery

When it’s just for personal gratification, social media is lots of fun. But for those who want to make their ideas and campaigns explode on a mass scale (with any kind of consistency) – it demands an incredible investment of time, energy and attention. The pressure to find, consume, share and create new content is relentless. The complex web of social relationships and implicit obligations multiply quickly – many new backs and egos need scratching. Endless reading and learning is required in order to keep your position.

Publish, Ping or Perish

The academic maxim “publish or perish” applies just as much to the online world. Social media people have an incredibly short attention span and tend to forget about people and destinations that aren’t compelling and clockwork consistent. The fickleness is especially harsh on Digg.com – where people will drop you as a friend if you don’t digg their stories for just a few days. When people get sick or go on vacation – they change their username to something like “Gone to Hawaii for 5 days- PLEASE, PLEASE don’t Delete me!”

On Twitter, too, you have to hustle to keep people paying attention to your updates and links. Ping people, praise people, retweet people in order to stay “tight” with them – or many will flake and quickly forget you and get enamored with the hot new social media girl or guy.

Tips for Making the the Race More Manageable

1. Pay Attention in Small Doses – There’s no way you can read everything, answer every e-mail or @reply, or interact with everyone (and still get stuff done). So interact with more people on a limited basis. Think one or two word replies. A blog comment or a RT once every couple of weeks will keep the door open to a larger number of people – they won’t think you forgot them.

2. Focus and Specialize – Some people have focused really intensively on one particular site or scene, and they aren’t burdened with trying to learn everything. There’s people who just do green social media consulting. Or people who just focus on LinkedIn. Or on Wordpress. That one section of the social media universe is more manageable.

3. Get Help and Support – Pro power users like Chris Brogan, Brian Clark and Guy Kawasaki have evolved past being “one man shows” and have assembled small, dedicated teams of support. Their virtual assistants and partners to help with some of the more tedious aspects of maintaining their presence – like editing posts, booking flights and finding fresh links.

4. Be Okay with Being Human – Not everyone can be an omniscient industry thought leader or Top 10 power user. Some people have too much of a balanced life, care too much about their spouse or kids, or have important tasks that need their focused attention for several hours a day. Don’t feel guilty for being human and not spending 18 hours a day online if it’s not for you. Make good friends with someone who does and download their notes.

Does social media marketing ever feel like a “rat race” to you? Or not? How do you deal with the pace and learning curve?

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There’s a lot of competition out there. Everyday, thousands of new profiles pop up that say “Social media enthusiast.” They share very similar links and conversation topics while hoping for lots of attention. The equation just doesn’t balance out.

Personality and participation alone usually aren’t enough to draw accolades. The best way to get recognized is work hard to develop skills worth talking about and then use your skills to contribute directly back to the community. Here are 11 of most common ways people have made a “big name” for themselves:

1. Become a popular blogger

If you have a flair for writing and a never-ending flow of new ideas + insights, you might be able to blog your way to the top. But writing original, thought-provoking articles on a consistent basis is only half of the blogger’s game – the other part is constantly promoting and marketing your blog. This means doing guest posts, leaving comments, doing keyword research, outreach, partnering, pitching & pimping your blog as hard as you can (without getting people mad at you).

Skills needed: Clear writing, grammar, punctuation, image editing skills, HTML/CSS, social networking savvy.

2. Become a power user

Power users are people with a huge social media presence – the “big guys” with big numbers to back them up. Most spend several hours (or more) uber-power-networking each day. But once you get some momentum and people start to see your name all the time, your connections exponentially increase and it gets easier. Power users like @Zaibatsu, @Msaleem and @BryantSmith have climbed to the top of one site first… and then used their connections and relationships to conquer others. People see their name everywhere.

Skills needed: Stamina, speed, intuition for online trends and memes, great relationship-building skills & online etiquette.

3. Learn video production

If you truly have “rockstar” charisma, wit and personality – you might be able to get away with yammering in front of your laptop camera. Otherwise save yourself the time and embarrassment, and focus on improving your creative and technical skills. Follow the lead of guys like @unmarketing and @dugdale… keep churning out top interviews, comedy videos or tutorials on and eventually you will strike a chord and get recognized.

Skills needed: Visual intelligence, creativity, precision, compression & file format knowledge, $$$ to buy equipment and software.

4. Learn illustration

A picture is worth a thousand words. A clever illustration is worth 2,000 diggs. You don’t have to do “fine art” or photo-realistic quality drawing to get your point across or crack people up. @GapingVoid is well-known for sketching cartoons on the back of business cards, and @Oatmeal has spiced up his smash-hit viral quizzes with cartoon vectors. You can also create info-graphics… or buttons and icons that people need (like RSS or social media icons) – and give them away for free in exchange for lots of links, tweets and bookmarks back to your site. Get a graphics tablet, take an online illustration course… and make your mark.

Skills needed: Artistic flair, geometry, software learning and file-format skills.

5. Create quality tutorials or documentation

High-quality tutorials stand on their own and attract buzz with very little “push” marketing or promotion. @DaveTaylor has gotten a lot of web traffic by offering free technical support tutorials aimed at beginners. Video game blogs compete to see who can release the first “Walkthrough” guide for a new hit game. If you can sense where people are struggling and provide clear answers and help – you’ll be the light at the end of their dark tunnel. People will take notice. And they’ll remember you and thank you.

Skills required: Technical writing, video or image editing, illustration.

6. Do scientific or statistical research

Big companies and agencies often need solid, scientific evidence or statistics to make decisions. @DanZarrella does scientific analysis of Twitter trends and publishing the results into easy-to-understand graphs. @JOwyang of Forrester Research analyzes data, does surveys and predicts trends for Fortune 500 companies. Their solid research efforts plus smooth personalities have brought them large followings, awards and international speaking gigs.

Skills required: Analytical mindset, knowledge of scientific method / social research, graphing and presentation skills.

7. Start a new social site

Starting a successful new social site is quite a coup, but if you can pull it off… you’ll be rolling with ballers like @kevinrose (co-founder of Digg) or @ev (co-founder of Twitter). If you don’t have have the funds to build a site from scratch, platforms like Ning, Reddit will let you create custom, hosted communities frameworks from scratch. They’ll handle the plumbing, and then it’s your job to fill the pipes with people and conversations.

Skills needed: Visionary intuition, team building, project management, usability, investment fund raising, branding and PR.

8. Start a conference or event

If you can build up a successful social media conference or event, you’ll be in a position of power where many of the top players in the industry will be asking you for speaking slots and other favors. Guys like @BrianSolis (Social Media Club), @BTabke (PubCon), @ChrisBrogan (Podcamp) or @AndrewHyde (Startup Weekend) started their own conferences and leveraged them to build considerable connections and influence.

Skills needed: Connections with top speakers, event planning, marketing and strong in-person social skills.

9. Learn how to design & theme blogs

Blog designers are like haute coture tailors. Guys like @pearsonified and @mezzoblue are the elite fashion designers of the online world who create the visual environments and set the trends we follow. They’re a rare breed of human with both brain hemispheres in balance – producing stylish art and perfect, valid code to match it — and their services are in top demand. Want to see your work everywhere? Get a double major in art & computer science and go for it!

Skills needed: PHP, CSS, XHTML + design & illustration.

10. Learn how to develop web applications

Code a new Wordpress gadget or web tool that fixes a problem and you’ll be everyone’s hero. (Until that tool breaks due to some external circumstance or you fail to provide round-the-clock instant free customer support during weekends and holidays – then people will hate you and say you’re a jerk.) Developer rocks stars like @FirstDigg (SocialBlade) or @Yoast (SEO tools and Wordpress plugins) — who create useful tools and keep cool while fixing them — get massive community respect.

Skills needed: PHP, MySQL, Ruby, Air, XHTML / CSS, technical support and documentation.

11. Get hired by a famous company

If you get hired by an influential company as an evangelist, social media guy or product manager… you can ride the coat-tails of the company’s brand power and get instant credibility. Plus you can go to conferences and land speaking slots on the company nickel. Some folks, like @GuyKawasaki (ex-Apple), @VanessaFox (ex-Google) or @Scobleizer (ex-Microsoft) – did some time under the limelight at a big company for a few years – built their name up – and then broke free while keeping their celebrity status.

Skills needed: Team player, cooperative, reliable, organized, superior attention to detail. Proficiency in Microsoft Word and Excel. Ability to lift 30 to 50 lbs. and travel up to 20% of time.

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How are you going to make your mark in Social Media? What’s your dream set of skills?

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There’s a well-documented obsession with “big numbers” in social media. Whenever the mass media does a story on Twitter, they usually mention how many followers each person has. More is better, right? Well… I say that if Pete Cashmore (@mashable) has 1,000,000 followers – that’s quite impressive and valuable – for him.

But if you are intent on climbing higher on the social media ladder, you’ve gotta decide who is most important and strategically valuable — for you — to spend your limited time interacting with.

Reaching out to the less-connected “little guy” has many big advantages. image: schlag

Reaching out to all the 4, 5 and 6 figure “big guys” isn’t necessarily the best strategy for making new friends and partnerships. In fact, many of them are too swamped for you to expect anything beyond a flakey, surface-level relationship – if you can get their attention at all.

Benefits of Befriending Less Popular Users:

If someone just started out last month and only has 87 followers, many people would automatically pass them over as insignificant. I personally think that’s a huge mistake, as the “little guys” can be some of the most valuable people to invest your time in. Here’s why:

• The “little guy” is more likely to see your updates.

@guykawasaki and @kevinrose are powerful players, but unless you end up either investing in their companies or sleeping with them… there’s only a slim chance that they’ll personally see your message. Even if someone is “only” following 4,000… they may well miss most of your updates.

• They “little guy” usually has more time to interact.

She isn’t overloaded with links and requests yet, and is far more likely to have a spare moment to reply to you, leave a comment on your blog, or Digg your stories.

• The “little guy” will never forget you when they become “big” and popular online

New users are starved for help and attention. If you reach out to a newbie and help them figure it out, you’ll stay in their “inner circle” for life.

When I go to the Twitter directory We Follow to find new friends, I feel they have it backwards. At the top they show the “power networkers” with tens of thousands of followers. I skip those people – because I know they’re probably too slammed to pay any attention to me – and go right to the back of the list. There’s where I like to find friends who probably have to time to chat, or extra space on their screens and RSS readers.

Connecting with influential people is also important… but my own strategy is to spend about 30% of my time establishing and maintaining my relationships with “bigger name” people, and 70% of it reaching out to newer people who seem like they “get it.”

I’ll invest time in anyone who shows promise and potential, let the relationships form… and then watch as my “social garden” blooms in a dazzling variety of colors and connections.

Social Media Rockstar Runs on Thesis Theme for Wordpress

Thesis is an easy-to-customize, premium Wordpress theme that comes with full technical support. The beautiful style and pixel-perfect typography makes your writing look more polished and professional. If you’re serious about blogging and you want to focus more on your writing and do less hassling with PHP code… then check out the Thesis theme for Wordpress now! – Brett