How To: 5 Techniques to Cash in on your Passion with Social Media

by Andrew Ran Wong on December 3, 2009

Passion

Passion

Social media has become more and more widespread in our society. Not only do people use it to stay social and connected with their friends, but more importantly, they also share what they are passionate about with others in different social networks. Have you ever felt so compelled about something you believe in that you have to share it on Twitter?  I have those sorts of impulses all the time (mostly about social media).  With the openness of Web 2.0 tools, now is the time to cash in on our passions. In this post, I will cover 5 techniques that let you share your passion with people you meet on different social networking platforms.


1. Twitter – Create a Hashtag

Hashtags (#) on Twitter have the ability to make your message go viral in an instant. If I wanted to emphasize certain aspects of my message, I usually would add a hashtag to highlight particular words.  For example, in the following quote, I wanted to emphasize the the word “Life.” Hence, it goes something like this:

#Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”

You see my point here.  A hashtag helps other twitterers find relevant tweets easily and quickly.  Most importantly, it highlights what your “passion” and helps you establish relationships with your followers.

2. Facebook – Create a New Page

Out of all Facebook’s features, the most I like is its ability to create fan pages.What is so critical about these a fan page is that it draws closer all like-minded people and helps with the development of meaningful communities.  For example, there is a Facebook page called “Cooking for Busy People.” Its mission statement is put like this:

Helping Busy People Have Tastier, Healthier foods in Less Time with award winning recipes made with 7 or fewer ingredients and in less than 30 minutes!


Simple but powerful, this statement is exactly what bonds 600+ people together (still counting). So if you are passionate about cooking but do not have a lot of time, joining this group seems to be a viable option.

3. Meetup – Organize Focused Conversations Offline

While Facebook gathers people online, the opposite of it is to use Meetup to organize meetings offline. If you do a simple search on the Meetup website for a particular topic, the search results reveal a list of groups sharing the same interests in that topic.  In other words, if you are passionate about a certain subject, you can always create a relevant Meetup group .  Here are just a couple of examples:

4. Digg, Delicious, & StumbleUpon – Bookmark with the Right Tags

The social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicious, & StumbleUpon is another excellent way to share your passion. Just tag articles with corresponding words you like the most.  Later, when people search for related topics, the keywords will lead them to your bookmarked articles. For example, I am passionate about social media and entrepreneurship.  That’s exactly what you will find the most if you look at my Delicious profile.

5. Tumblr, Posterous, & Wordpress – Blog Your Passion

It is almost a no-brainer to start your daily web log and write to share your passion with the world.  I use all three of them - PosterousWordpress, &Tumblr. It’s an wonderful way for me to do some cross-promotions on different blogging platforms.  Most importantly, leveraging all three of them lets me reach a broader audience and share my passion with the world.

How do you cash in on your passion?  If you don’t have a way yet, the least you can do is to implement one of these five techniques by the end of today.

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  • I would add Scribd to this. The social bookmarking sites link doesn't work.
  • Thanks. It's now fixed.
  • I thought you were going to suggest how to make money. But great post.
  • Thank you so much for the mention. The Cooking For Busy People facebook fan page is really starting to gain momentum. This was the first step that we took when we decided to explore new techniques to increase traffic to our site.
  • Hey Andrew,

    Thanks for the article, I enjoyed it. I guess I'm missing point # 3... and you gotta take those relationships offline I guess.
  • Exactly. Meetup allows you to organize meetings online and meet people offline.
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