Making Friends in the online Social Networks

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If you can remember the first time you signed up for Facebook and you had no friends or very few. You hear all these strategies for utilizing these platforms but with few friends to start with, its kind of hard to be taken seriously.

I am often asked where to start?

Social marketing is all about getting the most out of social networks. Here are some important friending techniques to be aware of:

Step 1 - Creating your networks

First of all, create your presence on different social networks like facebook, MySpace and Linkedin. Set up your accounts and customize your pages.

Step 2- Adding people to your network

Once you have your pages all set up, you need to get people onto your network. First of all make sure you can distinctly define what kind of people you would want to add as friends. These will be people who can benefit your business in any way. People who are part of your market segments, people who are domain experts, people who can benefit you through synergies, people who are influential in the industry, people who look up to you as an expert.. etc

There are different levels of potential friends on social networks: First of all, add all of those people that you know directly. If you know someone, then approach them in an a way you would to a real human being and not a robot. That is, introduce yourself.

I get friends requests all the time from spammers who use automated software for friending or cut and paste the same message to hundreds of people they find in other people’s friend networks. Be realistic - thats no way to befriend people. Be warned that if you do this you can be locked out of the platform for spamming, your IP address can be blocked from ever accessing the domain again. Recipients can click a link in each request that says, “report as spam”. A few of these reports against your name and you’re out of the game.

So when finding old acquaintances out of the blue, approach them like you would if you had seen them in a crowded bar. I’m assuming that if you come across them after a long while; you would walk over, re-introduce yourself and engage them in brief conversation after which you would initiate a desire to share contact details to remain in contact.

Its no different in these online networks, except that the crowded bar extends across the globe and its open 24/7 and you don’t need to exchange contact details. You simply send a friend request.

Next, you can introduce yourself to the friends of your friends by letting them know who you know in common. It’s not recommended to say “hi, I am a friend of John Smiths do you want to be friends on Facebook” - although a lot of folks do adopt this tactic.

I prefer to look at the persons profile to find something in common. I then introduce myself on the basis of our common friend and try to reference the topic that person seems interested in. Its an idea to be positive and complimentary where you can and end your comment with a question so it’s easy for the recipient to reply. If done right you can come back at their reply and before you know it you’re no longer strangers - so at a convenient time you can ask them if they would like to hook up as friends.

Thirdly you can search for groups in whatever niche you’re into and invite the people in these groups to become friends. Its recommended to join the group first and always contribute to the conversations in the group in an intelligent way before attempting to friend its members.

Expand your network as much as you possibly can.

Follow and be followed:

Find people that you want to have on your lists and follow them on twitter and other social network sites. Later, send them invites - a good percentage of them will accept. Social networking is all about following and being followed. Its about giving first and then expecting something in return. The more you follow and the more you contribute towards adding value to the more you will be followed in return.

The rule of thumb is the more value you bring to other people’s daily lives by what you do and say; the more people will follow you. Its no different to life offline, really except its far less forgiving than real life.

Web2.0 platforms take life as it has always been and makes it possible to maintain relationships with far more people that the offline world ever could. It takes away the factors of space, distances, traveling and communication logistics - and viola, there is no limit to the number of people you can befriend online. Um, yes, you will need high-speed internet though. This changes the social dynamics somewhat, which I will go into in another post but the thing you need to be careful about is that in the online world everything is recorded.

Everything you do leaves a footprint so there is less room for error. Offline if you say something you regret to someone, the damage can be limited to those who hear you say it first hand, those that hear what you said second hand and to a lesser extent those who hear it third hand.

Make the same mistake online and what you did or said can haunt you for life, so be careful.

A good writeup from the blogging world around us…

What Social Networking Can Do For You - Social networking is literally the way of the future.

Networking like a pro

Posted by writer

Networking results in sales and deals and is therefore important for all businesses. Most of us are so tied up running our businesses that we hardly take the time out for professional networking. The good thing is that even a few minutes everyday for online networking can go a long way.

First of all, make a mental distinction between the two types of network groups: a- your peers, colleagues, like-minded folks, could-be partners, vendors, industry authorities etc. b- your potential clients, potential customers, potential audiences.

There are many things that you can do to network;

1- Linkedin is great for staying in touch with your professional networks and to share business advice. It’s a social networking site where you can manage your contacts and find other relevant people to connect to. I call it the massive business card holder. You can choose who to add to your network and have intellectual discussions over the platform. Just like in real life, you can meet people that your friends know (second degree connections). The power of this community is great, because you can find a lot of business opportunities there.

Make a good profile for yourself and add connections to increase your visibility. Add links to your website or blogs so that you can redirect traffic to you through your Linkedin Page.

2- Create a following online. Networking is all about being in touch with your contacts on a regular basis. If you choose to follow relevant people on their microblogs, blogs and sites; chances are that a good percentage of them will follow you in return based on internet etiquettes. So, choose your contacts wisely.

3- Correspond regularly with your business contacts through email or other online mediums. You can set up reminders for emailing or sending cards if you have a busy schedule, so that you don’t forget about one of your biggest asset, your network.

4- If you think you are too busy to manage your contacts, participate in discussions, send emails or put up status updates, you can choose to outsource this work to virtual assistants. I have some friends whose businesses depend entirely on networking but have their hands full 24/7. They’ve successfully distributed a reasonable part of this work to reliable assistants and are comfortable with the way their work is being handled. If you think you can do that as well, give it a try. Otherwise, allocate time from your weekly schedule to network.

Event Planning - how to leverage social media to build hype

Posted by writer

Using social media channels to market events is a great strategy for getting attention and building excitement around an event. It is a low-cost way to promote your events to a larger audience and build hype and fans. I tried some pre-launch marketing steps that helped me generate a lot of buzz around a live coffee talk-show at the New Port beach a while ago. I am sharing the steps with you:

Step 1: the social networking pages
It is important to understand and build the brand of your event first. What makes it different and unique? Why should people care to attend? After you have a fair idea about your brand, the first step is to create your event pages using social networking sites, like facebook, myspace, squidoo etc. A great example of this is how Tech Crunch markets their annual conferences on independent specially designed pages for the event. These pages go through a cycle of pre-launch information to live updates during launch to post-launch winner lineups. It’s a place where you can participate in the discussions, see who else is coming, review the startups that are going to pitch, and just get a feel for the buzzing activities around you.

The great thing about social media is that it is offers the flexibility to design the pages in community specific ways. The pages that you build for a official conference can be very different from the ones you make for a club party.

Step 2: building traffic
You can get traffic to your social pages directly or through referrals and links. The more the links your webpage gets, the better the search engine rankings. The better the search engine rankings, the more likely your potential customers or audiences will be able to find you. The traffic coming in from these secondary sources should not be undermined, since it brings in people who are more likely to be inclined towards being interested in what you are offering. Social media traffic can easily be managed through strategic marketing methods.

Step 3: communicating with your audiences
The more you can communicate with your audiences on a one-on-one level, the better your event will be. You will be able to gauge the audience’s expectations from the event, so that you can design and plan the event accordingly. A friend of mine was organizing a concert in Orange County once and realized later that the most active people in the county preferred a different taste in music. The great thing about the internet is that you can quickly and easily find this kind of information by interacting with prospective audiences directly.

Step 4: building hype and excitement
Although this seems like a simple step in the process, it isn’t. Webpages on social networking sites are only successful if they can perpetuate and grow. This can only happen if you have managed to build a large group of supporters or like-minded folks to spread the word about your event. Your brand story plays an important role here. If the story is exciting, “camp on the big bear lake”, “first ever fusion dance party”, “scary Halloween party close to the night safari”, “top ten jazz singers night”; the supporters will more likely spread it. If they can understand and build on your events brand story, they will spread it like it’s their own. That’s just the way it works. So, build hype, get people talking and launch right on the peak of their excitement. Bam.

Planning social marketing is more of a strategic thing, rather than just following best practices that worked for others. While these steps helped me manage a small event well, they may or may not work for all of your events, as is. However the underlying principles of interacting with your audience are things that I would strongly advocate, regardless of what specific steps you take to do so.