ABC’s of Successful Social Networking

Too often people will join a social networking site such as Facebook or Myspace. They create a profile and then sit back and wait for the online world to beat a path to their profile page. Unfortunately, this approach is doomed to failure. To be successful is social networking we need to be proactive. The following ABC’s of Successful Social Networking will give you an easy to follow track to run on. Follow these guidelines and you soon learn the real power in adding social networking to your marketing toolbox.

A: Add Friends

The success of your social networking efforts depends on the number of people in your network and the quality of the relationships you have with them. It’s often been said that it’s who you know that determines your success. Not true. It’s who knows you and recognizes the value you bring to the table that will determine your success in business and in life. Here are five suggestions that you can use to maximize your effectiveness:

1. Meet people on social sites such as Facebook by searching the directory, groups and forums for people who share similar interests and match your picture of the people you are looking to meet.

2. Look for people whose pictures are warm, friendly and professional. Then send them a friend request.

3. Send out at least ten friend requests a day. That would be 50 a week. If you only have a 50% acceptance rate, you would be adding 25 online friends a week.

4. Always include a brief note with your friend requests. This will improve your acceptance rate by 50% or more.

5. When someone accepts your friend request, always send a thank you message and begin the relationship building process.

B: Be Visible

Adding friends is only the first step in being successful in the social networking world. You need to keep your name and profile in the minds of your online connections. Some ways you can do this are:

• Post status updates
• Commenting on your online friends wall or profile page
• Join groups and posting tips and ideas on their discussion boards
• Post bulletins or notes on your profile
• Answer emails
• Commenting on your friends’ status reports
• Posting on Twitter

The key is to be consistent. You don’t need to spend a lot of time doing this, but you must be consistent. Allocate 15 to 30 minutes a day to creating visibility.

Power Tip: Use sites such as ping.fm and friendfeed to post your updates quickly to all of the social networks that you belong to.

C: Create Value

Just being visible is not enough. You need to create value for the people on your network. Your goal is not just to have someone remember you, but remember you as competent, professional and friendly. Someone who they can look to for answers to questions in your field of expertise.

Use your status updates, blog postings and bulletins to establish yourself as a competent and personable person by posting tips, ideas, motivational quotes and articles that can help the people in your network achieve their personal and business goals. Be a go-giver and not a go-getter.

Looking for ways to help. Introduce friends who may add value to each other, watch your friend’s status updates, respond to their wall postings and tweets, look for items that allow you to recognize, and uplift these people.

Power Tip: I was listening to a call by Doug Firebaugh and he gave a suggestion that sums up the real secret to great relationships. He called it the Million Dollar Idea. “Make every person you meet, feel like a million dollars”. I like to carry this one step further by helping every person feel better about themselves. I want my online friends to say “I like me better, when I’m with you”.

That sums up the ABC’s of Successful Social Networking, nothing new, just practical common sense ideas that you can use right now to help you find the success that you want from your online networking. But, then again, common sense is not always common.

I hope the information presented in this article is helpful to you and that you’ll take action to apply these ideas in your life immediately.

Please add your comments, suggestions and ideas about the concepts presented, share your knowledge, together we can all prosper. As always if I can help you, feel free to contact me

If you found this article helpful, please share it.