Your Social Networking Questions Answered

Social Networking is all the rage these days. And it seems everyone wants to know how to use it to grow their businesses. Or heck, how to use it at all without going batty.

More than 130 people registered for last month’s teleseminar interview on the subject “Social Networking -A REALLY Good Marketing Strategy or a Huge Waste of Time?” http://www.success-stream.com/teleseminar-12.htm! Even though we covered a ton of terrific info on the call, it left folks wanting more. So today I’m going to answer all the questions subscribers have been emailing me about how this whole Social Networking thing works.

++ Question #1 from subscriber Rose de Dan of reikishamanic.com ++

Regarding Twitter: “Currently I am only following people who I think are in some way related to what my audience might be interested in. What is the purpose of following 2000 people? Does that get you any more exposure? What is the purpose of following someone back unless you are really interested in what they are doing? How could I possibly wade through 2000 or more tweets a day? Why is that a good idea?”

**Answer – What’s it worth to you to be able to communicate regularly with 2000 people at no cost?

I think it’s worth quite a bit, because if they like you, then they’re likely to forward your info on to other people. Your list grows, connections are made, and you have a larger pool of potential customers for your business. What’s not to like about that?

If you’re following 2000 people, then it’s likely most of those people are following you back. Also, it’s considered polite and good form to follow people back who choose to follow you. You can use a program like TweetLater to automate this.

That doesn’t mean you need to read or respond to every Tweet. Find the ones you enjoy and interact with those folks. Reply to their Tweets or ReTweet them if you think others might be interested.

++ Question #2 from subscriber Richard Esmann of pvmdataservices.com ++

“What should you put on your (Social Networking) profile? Can you share a few do’s and don’ts?”

**Answer – There are no hard and fast answers here, but I can give you some helpful guidelines…

1) Don’t put anything up there that you wouldn’t want the whole world to see. Nothing ever goes away on the Internet.

2) Just like with any type of marketing, you want to first consider what information would be of interest to your prospects. If you put stuff up that no one cares about or is interested in, people aren’t going to read it or want to learn more.

3) Second you need to consider your own goals. For example, if you’re trying to land speaking gigs, you want to include info that makes you look like an amazing and experienced speaker with a wealth of knowledge to share.

4) Do write with a personality and voice. This is no place to sound like a textbook.

5) It’s absolutely fine to include some personal details in all your Social Networking profiles. That’s part of how people decide they like you. However, some sites are definitely more geared towards businesses and professionals (Biznik and LinkedIn are two of the biggies) while others are designed more for friends and family (Facebook, MySpace). But the lines are definitely blurred.

My best advice here is to spend a bit of time on sites you think might be a good fit for you before you complete your entire profile. Look at other people’s profiles and see what you like and don’t like. Find folks with lots of followers and try to figure out what they’ve done. Visit competitor’s profiles so you can find a way to be different. Then start creating your own.

Keep in mind, it doesn’t have to be perfect right out of the gate. Done is far more important and you can always change it later.

++ Question #3 from subscriber Bradley Bogue ++

“How do I get the “friends” attention?”

**Answer – This question is a little vague as he doesn’t address a specific type of Social Media, but I’ll do my best to provide a few helpful tips.

1) If you want to get a “friends” attention, first off, offer to connect with or “friend” them. Every site has a way to do this. And some even have programs that let you search for particular types of individuals. I like search.twitter.com for finding other small business owners and marketers to follow.

2) If you really want to get, and keep, friends and followers you need to actively post interesting content. Social Networking is all about building relationships. It is not about directly making sales. If all you do is constantly promote yourself or sell, sell, sell you aren’t going to be happy with the results.

Search for ways to make connections and be helpful first and the sales will come. For example, a good rule of thumb is to make just 20% of your Twitter posts (or blog posts) promotional. The rest should be personal or helpful.

## Got more questions about Social Networking (or marketing, or copywriting, or growing your small biz)? I’m happy to help! Email me at stacy@success-stream.com and I’ll put them in the cue to be answered in a future edition of Bright Ideas. ##

Thoughts, ideas or suggestions on this topic? Please do share by leaving a comment below!

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