Social Networking 201 - Soc Graces Lesson 2 - Industry

I'm not talking about your 'industry' as in which company you're in but rather your work output.  How industrious you are.

When I first joined twitter I was a lost puppy.  There were millions of people tweeting and they were so busy, many of them with computer lingo I had no idea of, others were posting links, uploading videos, adding comments on blogs.  They all seemed so important and so busy and so connected.  How do you get in on that?

I had a huge life change nearly three years ago and I was left with two close friends on the PLANET.  I do not exaggerate that.  So I had to start from scratch.  I knew no-one.  And worse, I had no idea how to get to know anyone or how to connect with anyone on Twitter.

I had stumbled upon (pardon the pun) a small site in beta phase involved in social networking and I started playing there. Playing because I had no idea what the hell I was doing. So I made it up as I went along.  Soon I found that I had some people following me.  I couldn't work out why because I felt I was totally boring.

Anyway, as it turns out, they were also on twitter, so that enabled me to follow them.  And then the social networking miracle happened.  Their followers started to follow me, and I started following them and before long I had a huge timeline, reading all sorts of tweets, from world breaking news, network dramas that I could not understand, but these discussions had me in awe of these people.  They really knew what they were doing because obviously I had no idea what they were talking about.

I began to follow their followers to learn about what they were doing.  And I do sort of get it now, but it was a steep learning curve.  But also, they shared some amazing insights to me and what I could do to improve my twitter experience.

So the point of this lesson is to SHARE.  Even though it may seem trivial to you.  Like, cleaning up the kids cake mess, I ended up running a whole series of photos on that, which turned out to be really popular because people could relate to me as a human.

I was sharing part of my life.  The more you share, no matter what it is you feel compelled to, the more people start to pay attention to you.  Do NOT spam.  But share.  Don't make it all about your business, or site.  Share something funny.  I found a really funny link once to a mouse that solved a maze in 10 seconds that had taken researchers nearly two years to build.  I got heaps of hits and replies because it was FUNNY.  Share your sense of humour.  Share some of you.   What you find interesting, informative, entertaining.

The more you contribute to the time line the sooner you will see people following you.  This begins the alpha effect - more people want to stay in touch with you.

Sizzle on

Kath