link to previous article on process for registering for an ICO - https://steemit.com/steemit/@cryptobanyan/ico-investment-series-4-registering-for-icos
Each topic that I touch upon can be very detailed and complex. Where possible I give links that help give deeper details. I refrain from any deep discussions because of 2 simple reasons - 1. I am not authority on these topics, but more importantly 2. I want to cover a broader perspective of ICO investments and any deep discussion will take us away from our goal.

Having a social media presence

• Whether you like it of not, most ICOs attract investors through their social media channels. They use these channels to publish updates and inform interested parties (those who are subscribed on their social media channels) of upcoming ICO progress and processes that you need to follow. These processes and steps that you need to mandatorily follow if you want to participate in the ICO are time critical. So getting information first hand is also time critical.

• Many ICOs these days are mandating that you be part of their social media channels to even be eligible to participate. So consider this very important.

• Some ICOs like Open Networks, Friendz etc even gave points to their subscribers for liking, commenting and sharing their posts. These points would then add up and you could qualify for the ICO only if you met a certain points in total (since you would be competing with 10 of thousands of participants, you would try and get as many points as possible just to stay in the race of being able to invest). The ICOs claim that this shows your interest in their project and that they would only like to sell their coins / tokens to a participant who is very committed to their project by sharing such proof of care and not to those who are around only to buy and flip the investment on an exchange soon after ICO. Not sure how this works, but it sure gives the ICOs a lot of mileage.

• Many ICOs also run bounty campaigns (more on this in a later series) on social media channels and if you participate you will get free tokens. Don't think of this as trivial. If your participation in bounty campaign is good and just in case you have a large network on your social media channel, then you may end up raking in 100s of dollars worth of coins / tokens for free (without making a dime of investment - now can it get any better)?

What Social Media should you be on?

Depending on your level of interest I would suggest the following:

• Only interested in ICO investment
  • Twitter
  • Telegram

• Some ICO mandates that you like, comment and share their posts (some even provide important updates here)
  • All of the above
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Medium

• You would like to be part of their Bounty campaign and participate in all free airdrops as possible
  • All of the above
  • bitcointalk.org
  • Youtube.
  • Steemit

• Others
  • Slack
  • Twitch
  • Discord

I would leave it to you on whether you want to register on all media, enter in bounty campaigns and free airdrops and earn free tokens or just keep it to bare minimum that allows you participation. I learned the hard way that this is a very personal choice as what actions you take on social media have other ramifications within your network and how others perceive your influence. I plan to write about this in a separate blog, but not as part of this series.

Disclaimer - I am only sharing my limited knowledge and for the sake of knowledge alone. This is in no way an investment advice or legal or taxation counsel. I am not qualified to provide any of these. This is also not a recommendation or encouragement to invest in cryptocurrencies or ICOs