The ides of networking and using all of the different social networking sites to gain traffic and stature seems a little off to me. Maybe I am reading into things a little too much here, but I know for a fact that maintaining even a couple social networking profiles is time consuming. I am going to run a few hypothetical numbers here and see what you think.

Let’s propose that I spend 1-2 hours a day using sites like Entrecard, StumbleUpon, Sitehoppin, Digg, del.icio.us and so on. These are all great ways to get my name and brand out onto the open Internet market. But could that time be spent better elsewhere? I am willing to bet that spending 1 hour a day finding blogs just like your own that focus on similar niche topics would be much more worthwhile. 

What if you emailed each new blog or website you found and offered to swap blogroll links for the month? Or perhaps swap 125 avatars or maybe even blog posts… Would that be too crazy? I am going to run a live experiment here, doing just the things I am talking about. Each day I will spend the time to connect with at least 2 different bloggers. I know this might not seem as easy as using Digg or Stumble, but it will be easy to send similar emails and ideas to different bloggers.

Time spent actually connecting with others just like you would do volumes more for establishing yourself within your niche. If you aren’t ranking #1 or on the first page in a search, will Digg or StumbleUpon improve that? The people who will stick around and add the most to your blog are going to be the people who find you while searching for what they are looking for, not finding you by accident. Start small and build from there.

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