Listen to the 2 minute audio above. It’s great advice.

Most folks joining Twitter or Facebook today, they’re advised to follow a bunch of folks. Likely these aren’t folks they are not only direct contacts with in the physical world, but not even a friend of a friend.

This sounds like fun until that newbie drowns in the messages, messages with no meaning. Sure, they might make one or two friends out of that mess, but likely they’ll initially just be frustrated.

In the end, the recommendation to follow a bunch of strangers is just bad advice. There’s no relationship building going on. It’s like trying to make instant bake success.

So what works? Organic one relationship at a time growth of contacts. Instead of focusing on stratospheric numbers, focus on one new contact at a time.

How to do this?  Best advice I’ve received is to watch who your friends engage with. Listen in on those conversations. See what those folks who do interact have to say and how they say it.  If you see something you enjoy, friend that person.

New contacts you add, be sure to let them know how you found them. Be sure to mention the shared connection, and considering adding a note about one of the new friends messages. It lets them know you’ve been listening.

In summary, build your network one valued connection at a time. Give them your best. Your network will grow fast enough.

Keith shares his perspective on focus in social networking and media.  Are you just spinning your wheels? Is your company?

Best Buy Remix is hosting their first Virtual Developers Conference. To make it really virtual, it will be held on Twitter. Right, just you, the Remix team, and some developers. And oh yeah, the hashtag, #DevConf.

The event is being held on April 21st, starting at 3:30 PM Eastern Time. To join in the conversation, use and follow the #DevConf hashtag on Twitter. Recommended tools include Twitter Search, Nambu, Tweetdeck, and Twhirl. My preference would be Tweetdeck.

Along side of the conference on Twitter, there is a Ning community. The community is tied to the conference. You’ll have to specifically join, setting a user ID and password.

This is a no-brainer to get involved in as there is no requirement to sign up ahead of time, nor special site to visit.

Watch for our Best Buy Remix host, Keith Burtis.

From Keith Burtis:

Skills for the Social Media Ninja – Part 1 (Monitoring): “Ninja skills
I am not listing these skills in any specific order and I am not classifying them for business or personal. However, I will say that as a person that makes his living in the social media space that it may trend towards the useful rather than the mundane. Also, there are many, many advanced paid tools that you can learn, but I will stick with a few that are available free.”

That’s the kick off for Keith’s take on the first Ninja skill for being a Social Media Ninja. Each post focusses on a specific skill and the tools to focus the skills on.

Keith mentions some tools most of us are familiar with such as Google Search and Google Blog Search. Important to me though was another tool, Social Mention. Social Mention is new to me.

Rounding up the best tools is only have the problem. Keith’s article addresses how to handle the data flow and how to use it. Though he only briefly touches on those topics.

Technorati Tags:
ninja, social media, social networking, Google, search

Keith Burtis of, Magic Woodworks, is interested in finding three very creative blog posts. He’s presenting at Podcamp Boston on that very topic.  Care to help him out? Watch the video, visit his blog, leave a suggestion, or even reply on Seesmic. Are you creative enough?