In many ways social networking is no different than any other networking activity. You aim to make connections and build relationships that will help you further your business goals.
You also have the same variety of goals in online networking as you do face-to-face, including:
- Meeting potential clients
- Promoting a product or service
- Developing referral partners
- Establishing your expertise, credibility and trustworthiness
- Keeping on top of developments in your profession
There are some people who take a burn the bridges approach to networking. We’ve all met networkers who come up to you, slap their business card in your hand and launch into their sales pitch. (They might for appearance’s sake ask you about your own business, but they are not listening. They measure you up as a potential sale and quickly move on.
The Twitter equivalent are people who follow you but either never tweet or only tweet about their own product. All they really want is for you to look at their profile and follow their link. I will follow almost anybody who follows me so long as their tweets seem related to topics I am interested in. Nor am I offended by people who follow me as a way of introducing their Twitter stream. Who knows, I might be interested in their topic. But if someone’s Tweets clearly indicate they are only interested in pitching to me, then they are wasting my time and I won’t follow them in return. Unsurprisingly, those Tweeters unfollow me after a short time.
Social networking does differ from face-to-face marketing in one important way. Because your interactions with Twitter followers and Facebook friends create a sense of intimacy, it is easy to forget that they are still mass media. The fact that they are mass media has pluses and minuses:
- Your idea or product has the potential to go viral, far outreaching what you could achieve face-to-face.
- Negative publicity can also go viral. Just look at the recent firestorm Amazon.com faced with the creation of the #amazonfail hashtag on Twitter. (See Anatomy of the #AmazonFail protest )
- Anyone on Twitter or Facebook (depending on your privacy settings) has access to what you say, so be careful.
- Customers have public access to you for both commendation and complaint. You know which of the two has the most impact so be prepared to handle grievances quickly.
A major focus of this blog will be how to use social media to create mutually beneficial business relationships, whether with a potential client, customer or other business. Hence the name, “It’s called Social for a Reason”.
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Tags: small business, social networking