Google 
Facebook 
Twitter 
Linkedin 
Yahoo 
Digg 
del.icio.us 
Windows Live 
Furl 
Reddit 
Blogger 
Rain Concert 
Brands are built through experience - just as what you say and any image you portray creates in others’ minds. The brands you love and hate are much more about how they have treated you (as a person and a consumer) than their logos and corporate mission statements! Knowing this – have you spent more time branding an impersonal company you work for OR branding yourself as a living, breathing, networking, serving and servicing, friend that is also a business acquaintance from which others may purchase goods or services? Are you focusing on a global audience or a local one; seeking one company or any individual or company who will hire you or purchase your services or products? Social media can help you get visibility and help you forge connections.
Done right, social media can help you build connections which will pay off in terms of opportunities and offers. In the real world, networking with face-to-face business personalities work as a parallel to real-world social rules. What works in real-life works well in social media, but social media networking has a wider distribution, as well as an accelerated cause and effect.
It’s about treating people well and giving them a positive experience with the brand you have developed uniquely to yourself. If you like people, and people like you, you are going to consistently be a good person to know. Use the power of SOCIAL KARMA – use humor, be kind, share more than just your work (don’t be a sales machine) – including your interests – allow people to connect with you as a human, and the business and technical level will follow without a lot of hard work on your part.
Share your expertise, share interesting stories – the good stuff – from other people in the mix. These actions show generosity and that you have followers’ best interests at heart rather than self-promotion or hard-sell marketing of your product or service.
• Answer questions in LinkedIn.
• Push forward any requests from LinkedIn connections to 2nd degree connections.
• Share links, videos - anything useful found in Facebook, YouTube, or other sites.
• Post presentations to Slideshare, Box.net, or other file-sharing sites.
• Upload your own advice videos and demonstrations to YouTube.
• Write valuable content on (your) blogs and answer comments.
• Invite people to link to your Facebook fan page, Twitter and your blog (enrich your SEO).
• Make your signature ‘rich with info’ about your business and social networks.
The purpose for social networking is to: 1) meet other entrepreneurs and business people, 2) share business cards, referrals, and references, as well as kudos for services experienced from group members, and 3) – most importantly – to develop a comfortable relationship with others that might eventually turn into a business relationship. This is the true key to social networking. Social networking is not just electronically connecting with faceless names on the Internet. It’s meeting folks and getting comfortable with them enough to develop the trust to do business.
If you have read The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, you’d understand a product or service ‘takes off’ exponentially in the market the more people talk about it. Public relations and marketing specialists know a close personal friend telling you about a product or service has an extrinsically higher value than hundreds of thousands of dollars of advertising, coupons, mailers, radio, and television ads to persuade the market to buy their company’s product or service. The best marketing campaigns in the world start off with, “I want to…do you know…?” or “I need…what would you recommend…?”
This is the crux of social networking – being able to not only recommend someone you know to a friend, family member, or co-worker, but also the product or service that comes with the recommendation, based on the personal relationship built through knowledge, comfort, and trust.
AUTHOR:
Dawn Boyer is a doctoral student at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA; in the Darden College of Education, working on her PhD in Occupational Studies and Technology, focusing on Training & Development in Human Resources); as well as working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (teaching computer science and technology to undergrads). Ms. Boyer has over 20 years of management experience in human resources, of which nine years were in the defense-contracting arena. She also provides HR consulting services via D. Boyer Consulting to small businesses, including dynamically growing 8a set-aside defense companies, job and career coaching (including resume rewrites), plus social media training (she’s the SME and self-proclaimed ‘Queen’ of LinkedIn for business and personal branding) in the Hampton Roads, VA area. Her blog can be read at: www.DawnBoyer.wordpress.com. Her LinkedIn profile is: http://www.linkedin.com/in/DawnBoyer. She accepts LinkedIn invites via:
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