So this morning started out as every day and then something different happened. Last night I did a Social Networking presentation to the business startup group of a local FastTrac class. After telling the class about trying different ways to use “Twitter search” in order to find new people to follow, I thought I might get back to doing this from time to time.
In the past, I have used this tool to find others to follow and it has helped me build my own following. One of the main themes though in last night presentation was the need to actually become “social” and start “networking” on all the social media sites I mentioned. I feel Brandwise has done a pretty good job at this, but than this mornings incident turned our thoughts on their ear.
Basically, I did a search for “branding”. One of the tweets that came up was “@SueFrithGrau We frequently hide behind websites, blogs, branding, etc but ultimately if people don’t like you as a person, you’re doomed.” by @debsylee. This tweet struck me as interesting so I thought I would do what we typically do, retweet our thoughts on this topic. This is what we posted – “@debsylee
this is so true. People only do business with people they know, like
and trust and it takes a lot of marketing to overcome this.”
Well, to make a long story short, I realised that Deborah had begun following me and after about 9 tweets back and forth discussing this topic Deborah tweets “Thank you @Brandwise … hasn’t this just been a shining example of how a solid connection can be formed? No blogs, no buzzy marketeering..”.
My point here is this… through this act of being social that only towards the end started becoming networking, I have a strong sense of who this person is and what she does. I have a new respect for this person that I only found a few hours ago. Now that we hit it off, there could be a good chance we use her to do invitation design for clients and/or friends. This only happened because we took the time to share interesting content, were open to talk to new people and willing to network in a new format. This is what Social Networking is all about. Thanks Deborah Lee for helping me take the next step in social media. To see samples of Deborah’s great work check it out here – Stylish Group.
To see more of the details on how this relationship progressed, follow us on Twitter and check out this mornings tweets at our Brandwise twitter account.
Happy networking!
this is a great article and I am going to share it with my twitter tweethearts! I have noticed that the larger my database gets, the less chance any of us have TO network, so just before I hit 6,000 I started weeding out my followers to just those who interact or at least send value and now can SEE the followers I want to hear from in my stream again and we can interact again!
this is a great article and I am going to share it with my twitter tweethearts! I have noticed that the larger my database gets, the less chance any of us have TO network, so just before I hit 6,000 I started weeding out my followers to just those who interact or at least send value and now can SEE the followers I want to hear from in my stream again and we can interact again!
Jan,
What a great comment to this article. This for posting this. You know the big push is everyone is trying to build huge followings and allow though this is one way to measure success, is it truly success or driving business. Honestly I only have 365 followers on Twitter and I barely am able to work this size of a list.
I think we need to refocus what we are trying to do. Are we just collectors of friends or are we looking to build our business. It takes a lot of time to service and build relationships to the masses, but only a few hours to build a solid relationship to one person/company. How much more successful could we be if we just picked a handful of businesses we would like as clients and started build a personal relationship with them. Obviously the quickest way to do this is offer something of value to them. Maybe we start posting blog articles that solve some of their problems and then ask for their thought on the article and if they would offer suggestions to improve the article based on their expertise. They might be willing to help out which starts the building process and shows them you know they are experts in their industry.
Obviously this is an on the spot idea, but if you spent some time thinking about this you could develop a whole new business development strategy! Sounds like fun, I’m going to try to get on it!
Thanks again for your comments and thanks so much for sharing this article to your tweethearts! I would be happy to follow you on twitter if we are not already doing so.
Thanks again and have a great day!
Jan,
What a great comment to this article. This for posting this. You know the big push is everyone is trying to build huge followings and allow though this is one way to measure success, is it truly success or driving business. Honestly I only have 365 followers on Twitter and I barely am able to work this size of a list.
I think we need to refocus what we are trying to do. Are we just collectors of friends or are we looking to build our business. It takes a lot of time to service and build relationships to the masses, but only a few hours to build a solid relationship to one person/company. How much more successful could we be if we just picked a handful of businesses we would like as clients and started build a personal relationship with them. Obviously the quickest way to do this is offer something of value to them. Maybe we start posting blog articles that solve some of their problems and then ask for their thought on the article and if they would offer suggestions to improve the article based on their expertise. They might be willing to help out which starts the building process and shows them you know they are experts in their industry.
Obviously this is an on the spot idea, but if you spent some time thinking about this you could develop a whole new business development strategy! Sounds like fun, I’m going to try to get on it!
Thanks again for your comments and thanks so much for sharing this article to your tweethearts! I would be happy to follow you on twitter if we are not already doing so.
Thanks again and have a great day!