Successful Social Networking

Group: Better Networker Results
  Written by Elaine Garrett on Nov 25, 2008 2:21 pm

Read More: Marketing  |  Social Networking

 

Be A Better Networker is the lead story in this month’s issue of Fortune Magazine. Writer Annie Fischer talks about the importance of having a strong circle of people who you can call on and who can call on you.

I actually landed on the article by accident on my way here. It isn’t often Better Networker gets bumped from first place on the SERP!

But it was worth the side trip. Fischer made goods points that easily translate to online marketing.

It isn’t enough to spend 5 minutes on a social site like this one or the countless others we belong to, make a general comment and take off to score another check on our to-do list.

Successful social network marketing, the heart of MLM and countless other businesses, relies on branding yourself as an interested, helpful person.

Forget presenting yourself as an authority. People will decide for themselves if you know what you are talking about. Just strive for presence; that means making useful observations on what other people are talking about.

Ivan Misner, CEO of an international networking group, was interviewed for the article. He put the challenge of network building into terms into terms we can all understand.

Misner said, “Most people treat networking like hunting - they're out there trying to bag the big one - but it's really a lot more like farming. You have to cultivate relationships over time."

His comment reminds me of a webinar I listened to last spring. Eban Pagan was trying to get across the correct approach to social network marketing.

Pagan said that if you expect to attract customers from the social web, it isn’t enough to spend 10 minutes on one site and 15 on another. You have to make substantive additions to the ongoing dialog.

Further, he suggested that if the social web is where you are looking to build your network, you should be spending the majority of your day there. Traffic is the lifeblood of any business. You should focus your efforts in the traffic stream and not on make-work projects that no one will ever see.

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About the Author: Elaine Garrett

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Member Since: 06/24/2008

Company: Self-Employed

Industry: Affiliate Marketing

Primary Web Site: http://www.personal-business-protection.org

Comments



Successful Social Networking

Absolutely! Great points to bring across. It can be that we all tend to jump in and try to do our own thing with the full belief it's what the other person needs. Your post is exactly right!

You go Networker!

Brady Burba

Good Bye — Tue, 11/25/2008 - 2:30pm

Affiliate Marketing

I would like to get all the information that I can get so I can be successful,I been doing this for four years now.Please help me if you can.

           Thank You

              John

John Eld — Tue, 11/25/2008 - 2:50pm
Carl Marshall — Tue, 11/25/2008 - 3:12pm

A Heartfelt Thank You!

Thank you so very much for posting these comments!  Your leadership is very much appreciated!

Lahai Sogbandi — Tue, 11/25/2008 - 3:14pm
Carl Marshall — Tue, 11/25/2008 - 3:15pm

Successful Social Networking

Thank you for the post.  I believe this makes a lot more sense than some of the advice I have seen from other marketing 'experts' who suggest allocating relatively small increments of your day to your social networking efforts.  I understand the necessity of allocating and managing your time each day to different actions necessary to keep your network business on track; however, I think the relevant point here is that it is no longer enough to make social networking just a small portion of your marketing effort. 

Although I am relatively new at this, it sounds as though the current wisdom is that you must spend a much larger portion of your time nurturing your social networking relationships if your objective is to use social networking as an effective marketing tool.  Otherwise, it is quite literally a 'social network' and your time would be better spent on other aspects of your business. 

As I cannot yet speak from experience, I would appreciate advice or clarification from anyone that may have chosen one path or another.  Am I missing something here?

Best of success to all my friends,

Steve

Steve Larson — Tue, 11/25/2008 - 5:21pm

For "Social Networking" to be Successful It Needs Cultivated

I agree with you Steve. I am new to "social networking" myself. I have been cultivating social network relationships for less than two months. I have joined many social networking sites and my main focus every day is to stay active on thoes sites. It does take a large amount of time. If you don't have the time for many sites then I suggest only joining a couple to start with. I primairly have focused these past two months on social networking for my business but I also know that it will take some time. What I am doing now may takes months to reap the rewards. People need to understand that when doing social networking.

If you're currently building your business by other means then continue to do so. You may be purchasing leads, advertising on and off line or handing out business cards continue doing this but maybe not as much. But you can't take off from building your business to social network. So you do have to allocate and mange you time with each aspect with the primary focus and time in building relationships on line.

Once you have your social profile set up , you might say "ok now what". You have to find others who are like minded, join groups contribute to thoes groups. Keep looking for people your interested in. When requesting someone's friendship always write them a note. There are various ways to build your contacts. On the social network sites you need to have an online presence adding content, commenting on other people's videos. comments, pictures etc. Let other people know your around and your there to build relationships and you will start having others request friendships from you. You need to also keep in contact with your contacts as much as possible. So like I have added around 270 people on one site. I have to stay active with thoes people.  There are various ways to do that and it varies from site to site.

People will do business with people they know and trust.

To Your Success

Karla

Karla Mohr — Tue, 11/25/2008 - 7:38pm

Thanks for your comments

I am sensitive to the issues of self-promoting here on Better Networker, but I am currently getting ready to market my own reference manual on marketing to the social web. The problem with most advice on this subject is that you only get a snippet of the information that you need to know. And if you don’t have the whole picture, your efforts may not produce the results you desire.

I’ve written three blogs about my reference book. You can even see excerpts of the “unfinished” version and decide for yourself, Steve, if this would be helpful to you.

Essentially, the whole process of social and organic marketing begins with research. You can employ “best practices” on say, LinkedIn, but if your customer base isn’t there, well, you can see it would be a waste of time. The marketing process ends with analytics. There is cut-and-paste code that you can add to your landing page, blog, etc. that will reveal where your traffic is coming from. That way you will know where to spend more time and perhaps cut back on efforts elsewhere.

I was precisely where you are now on April 24 when I launched my information hub. My site traffic went from 1 visitor that month to just under 4000 visitors in six months. And the best part is that about 1200 of my readers in October are repeat visitors. So I am establishing a customer base—which is the goal of any marketing.

Elaine Garrett — Wed, 11/26/2008 - 10:43am

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