I was “tagged” last night by my friend Jeremy Tanner. Jeremy and I are often mistaken for each other. Jeremy lives in Boulder. I live in Boulder Creek. Both have first names starting with “J.” And the closer you look the stranger the “coincidences” appear.

I’ve never before participated in a round of online tag, it being the social media equivalent of a chain letter, and a scam to generate links, but given that something useful might come out of it, I thought what the heck.

The game started apparently with Mitch Joel.

In a moment, my social media “best practice,” but first, a couple of initial ideas that I ended up rejecting:

• Don’t use worn out buzzwords like “best practice.” This particular phrase is ostentatious and not all that meaningful. A student in one of my college journalism classes asked the professor, “What is the most egregious offense a reporter can commit?” to which the professor responded, “the use of the word ‘egregious’.”
• Don’t wear white shoes when posting to your blog after Labor Day. (Trying to be topical here.)
• Add Socialized to your RSS reader.
• I once spilled club soda on the guy in front of me on a plane. I told him a little club soda would wash it out, but he was not amused. It’s true. I did tell him that and a little club soda will wash it out. A best practice, but not related to social media.

So here’s my real suggestion for getting the most out of social media:

• Break out of the social media bubble to get the most out of social media. Ignore the so-called “A-list.” They’re on your newsreader. Links to their posts are on Twitter every few minutes. Everyone’s talking about them. Their ideas will come to you. Instead, seek out something new to read every day. Do a Technorati or Google Blog search on “historical revisionism” or “post-modern literature.” Or find someone who just started blogging, leave a positive comment on their blog and add them to your blogroll. (I know blogrolls are passé, but a link is a wonderful gift.)

And now I’ll tag three of my very good Canadian friends, Martin Waxman, Miranda McCurlie and Rob Cottingham. Have a great Labour Day weekend guys!