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In his 2005 article, My Outsourced Life, Esquire magazine writer AJ Jacobs describes a week of taking his day to day duties and having someone else do them. (Most administrative tasks were performed by an ultra efficient virtual assistant in Bangalore named Honey. In my next career, I want to be the person who gives “American” sounding names to overseas personnel.)

Because of the intense overwhelm in entrepreneurs lives, we’re all looking for ways to take things off our plates. You can hire someone to stand in line for you, walk your dog, clean your house, balance your books, pick up your kids from school, have your baby, shop for you, contact your clients, make your appointments… and yes: maintain your social networking sites.

But if successful social networking is built upon relationship building and credibility, how naive do you think the public is when the majority of your “posts” are generic sound bytes?

Think of it this way: if you were invited to an in-person event where you could meet some amazing contacts, would you send your assistant to represent you? Most entrepreneurs (especially solopreneurs and consultants) wouldn’t be able to do this. When you’re representing your company, YOU are the one who makes the impression.

Here’s the start of a big list on the Do’s and Don’ts of Social Networking Outsourcing.


10 Things you CAN Outsource:

1. Short birthday greetings
2. Grouping Facebook friends into mailing lists
3. Inviting people to join your groups (provide a template invite and criteria of who can be invited)
4. Setting up post dated Tweets in www.TweetLater.com
5. Signing you up for all the many social networking sites and uploading your basic bio, photo, URLs, etc.
6. Social bookmarking articles and blog posts
7. Uploading photos, videos, etc.
8. Optimizing photos, videos, etc.
9. Integrating your many social networking profiles with sites like http://www.FriendFeed.com, www.Ping.Fm, or www.Hellotxt.com
10. Making sure your Twitter Tweets pop up all over the place, like on www.Plaxo.com , www.LinkedIn.com , or www.MySpace.com

10 Things NOT to Outsource

1. Any kind of generic “Thanks for the add!” response for people’s Facebook walls.
2. Fake blog comments that are veiled attempts to get people to visit your web site or buy your stuff.
3. Status updates. Do I really need to explain why that is ultra lame?
4. Boilerplate promotions for a class… that you “just happened” to leave on people’s walls.
5. Answering your personal messages.
6. Proposing joint ventures. This can come across as arrogant if not done well. People like to feel special, like you noticed them (not like you’re a royal subject being summoned by the Queen!)
7. Writing on people’s Facebook walls. Once again, it’s super obvious that it’s not you.
8. Any kind of comments (especially the generic ones) on people’s photos, videos, etc. OK, maybe “Nice picture!” is passable, but even that is kind of shallow.
9. Rabid friend acquiring.
10. Recommendations (unless you pre-wrote and pre-approved them) on www.LinkedIn.com .

Help me grow this list by leaving comments with your Do’s and Don’ts!

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