Nob Hill, etc, has terrible, terrible parking. I have a good friend that lives there that I no longer visit unless it's in the middle of the day on Saturday, because of the terrible parking, you could literally spend 1 hr looking for parking after 6pm. If parking is not an issue (no car or get a scooter), then it's a viable option, but not having a car in the Bay Area ends up being severely limiting.
There are plenty of other cost-effective places on the west side of SF that can go for less than half the price of SOMA. For someone new moving into the area, my advice would be to get a cheap single place in Outer Sunset with hopefully a short-term lease, and then once you meet more people, you can band together with people that you know well and rent a bigger apartment somewhere else in the city. Signing a lease with someone that you don't know has tremendous long-tail risk, so I would take the hit in terms of moving a bit further away when you first move to SF, and do a lot of due diligence and get to know the city and your potential roommates better.
Another viable option is to not live in the city, especially if you don't work in the city. Places along the peninsula are much cheaper, and if you do work in FiDi or SOMA it's probably more cost effective to rent a place outside of SF and Caltrain it in.
My own strategy is:
1) Check Craigslist once an hour, or more depending on how much web surfing I'm doing.
2) If I find a place in an area that I like, I immediately contact them and ask for a showing that day or as soon as possible.
3) I come with all my documentation ready, including my checkbook.
4) If I like the place, I immediately submit an application.
5) Continue looking at other apartments, because they're no guarantee that I will get this one.