My Social Networks Don’t Work At All
Don’t get me wrong. I love to network. I love to go do the face-to-face with clients and customers. I love beatin’ the streets, hittin’ the pavement, knockin’ on doors, etc.
But, when it comes to all these social networks, I’m hopelessly, helplessly lost. Just about every day, I have a friend… or a customer… or someone who wants to sell me iPods… ask me to be their friend on Facebook, or MySpace, or Friendster, or Delicious, or whatever weird-sounding website name is in vogue today.
And just as soon as I do, I get another invite: Are you on Second Life?
Second Life? I barely have a first one. So, I join that. (What the heck, at least everyone looks cartoonish on that site.)
Twenty-three seconds after I join Second Life, I get an IM: Do you Twitter? I reply, Is that some type of drug? Actually, it’s a microblog, they respond. And, then they go on to say you can use Twitter to write deep thoughts, like: “I’m using the can,” or “Why would Colonel Mustard use a candlestick in the Parlor? Shouldn’t he have access to firearms?”
Do you know what I need to join now? An Anti-Social network.
August 11th, 2008 at 10:58 am
They have a social network for that too! Check out http://www.hatebook.org.
Hah!
August 11th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Ha!
I am so there.
I can’t wait to graffiti Rich Sloan’s wall.
August 11th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
now, now, Stella! You probably think that when you hear of someone “writing on your wall,” that it’s time to get out the 409!
August 11th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
It isn’t?
Vandals are so lazy these days.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I really struggle with this. As an entrepreneur, I don’t want to miss out on anything that may be valuable to my business. But I’ve also learned that I can spend a lot of time chasing after activities that don’t turn out to be fruitful. In this case, I don’t want to be an early adopter - which goes a bit contrary to my entrepreneurial nature.
August 11th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Hmmm… it is amazing how many different windows or avenues there are for this sort of thing. I guess, you just have to know your market and focus on only those networks which are going to bring you the greatest traffic/profit. It is difficult though, I find that I get lost trying to stay organized with the few that I am involved with.
August 11th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
When I first discovered ‘Socail Networking’, I thought the conept was pretty cool. It was on MySpace and at the time I liked the idea because the market there seemed to be the 18-28 crowd…which I was marketing too.
Unfortuantely, I soon becasme discouraged. The people I ran into there, daily, seemed to have no more ’substance’ than your basic High School senior. “Wazzup?! Where the party at, yo?! Yo, Girl…OU812?!?!”
As I went along, I’ve discovered the following:
Facebook - a GREAT way to keep in touch with my contacts and make new ones…but do yourself a favour and ‘ignore’ every request you get to add an ‘app’. I want to network, not throw sheep, guess your age or compare Movie Trivia.
Twitter - BLEAUGHGHGH. I HATE this app, although I use it about once a week just so my fingers are in it. If you think the messages left on people’s MySpace home pages are inane, imagine how dumb some of THESE posts are!
LinkedIn - Very professional, albeit some what limited. If you want to ‘network’ here, be sure to go tot eh “Answer Questions’ segment and spread your expertise around a bit.
Plurk - Imagine Twitter…but worse.
The bottom line is this: most Social Networking apps are created so people can hear themselves speak. If you want to meet new people, they are decent tools…but if you want to ‘market’, you are better off just using Outlook and sending an e-mail.
August 11th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
I agree with Defmall…and would add that social networking is all about the concept of “discovery.” You DISCOVER people you lost touch with on Facebook, you KEEP in touch with people you’ve worked with on Linkedin, and you MAINTAIN (update) people using applications like Twitter, Tweat, etc.
Personally, I’m not up for any additional updating outside of blogging. Social Networks are hungry beasties, requiring a lot of care and feeding in order to be successful. You have to think of your blog like a living thing - without attention, it dies.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
There are three things I think everyone should know about social networking:
It’s OK to join all the sites so you can create connections or establish avenues/maintain relationships where you might not otherwise have them.
Pick one or two social networks that makes the most sense for you to invest your time in both from a professional and personal standpoint. I like Linked in for professional and Facebook for personal (even though they spill over into each other, I manage security accordingly). That is largely driven by my corporate culture and my age.
Finally, make sure you are integrating the sites where its possible. For instance, I know you can use twittervision on your facebook page to update your status VIA twitter. I don’t use this because it requires your twitter settings to be public and I don’t want mine that way, but you can find some of the beginnings of data portability.
The truth is that everyone is trying to crack this nut so that your information is ubiquitous and you only have to maintain the information in one place. Kind of like biz talk for the entire internet. I say good luck with that, it’s going to take a lot of time and it will be painful.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I am using Merchant Circle. This is for networking your business. And it is very nice. You can network with other businesses in your area. I am also on Facebook and My Space. BUT I get the MOST out of Business Networking on Merchant Circle. Social Networking is pretty much a big waste of time. Just my 2 cents on the subject.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I partially agree with the underlying premise of this article, which I take it to be “Don’t jump on the social network bandwagon to market your product/service because it’s popular”. Too many of my customers ask me to do this for the sake of grabbing eyeballs.
However, I disagree with this theme on the basis that it could be applied universally to all startups. I think it really depends on your product/idea, and what your marketing goal is.
1) Sticky Ideas: When I refer to *sticky ideas*, I mean a product or service that a consumer or business really needs and is passionate about. (And, possibly passionate enough to talk about it.)
Let’s face it — if you are trying to sell financial services to 20 somethings on MySpace that love music (MySpace is really geared towards this), you are going to hear the sound of crickets. But, if you have a cool new music product and you hit the same audience on MySpace, you are probably going to have the opposite effect. If the idea (product/service) is good and matches the audiences needs/desires, then it will resonate.
2) Marketing Goal: If your thought is to drive new sales for your product/service, then you might get lucky. Or, you might hear the sound of crickets again because your audience is not interested in buying irrelevant products *pushed* to them.
However, you might be fortunate to drive traffic from Google because Google will index sites from Facebook’s business page, a twitter account, Digg and so forth. So if you are publishing content in social networks that contain keywords that are pertainent to your SEO strategy, then this *may* be a good investment.
If you’re idea is to do brand marketing, then create an integrated marketing campaign that gets your image in front of your audience in key locations. This may involve banner advertising on Facebook, print advertising, etc…
Bottom Line: Stick to the marketing principles and apply measurement processes to your marketing programs.
For More Information, See…
Market Research 101:
Entrepreneur.com
http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/inventing/inventionscolumnisttamaramonosoff/article83810.html
Sticky Ideas:
Made to Stick. Chip and Dan Heath
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0123/p15s02-bogn.html
August 12th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I found that if you stick with one you can start getting good stuff from the leads as people get to know and trust you. Be a contribution, submit cool articles to http://www.ezinearticles.com or something and then let people know you did so. Republish parts of them that are the best on some of these places.
Otherwise most of the time I let it all fly by, I find that most of it takes too much energy and I change so much it’s hard to get out and update all of my profiles.
One that scared me was reunion.com, i got way too much in the way of seekers who connected to me without my permission. I’m sure a techie could figure out how to limit that, but it stumped me so i dumped it.
Erica
August 12th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Here’s what I do:
1. If my client’s INSIST on managing their own profiles after we create them for them, we only give them THREE (usually 1. FastPitch or Facebook, 2. Twitter and 3. LinkedIN)
2. If they are handing their daily/weekly social maintenance to US, we’ll set them up on as many as they want. Currently I have somewhere between 50-100 profiles and I let one of my VA’s run through the list in excel and update weekly.
THE IDEAL GOAL: is to not have your centers of influence and your A list in all these random sites but to have them in YOUR network/membership site.
I invite everyone I come accross to join the JENNIFER group so I can connect my friend the CTO in facebook with that technology analyst friend I have in linkedin.
Jennifer Goodwin - CEO
http://www.internetGIRLfriday.com
“Specializing in Cutting Edge Social Marketing & Services for Virtual Practices & Internet Entrepreneurs”
Our Virtual Assistants & Online Marketing Experts (administrative assistants, graphic & web designers, bookkeepers, travel/event planners, marketing & pr gurus, receptionists, computer organizers, lead generators and partners of many business vendors) Will double your free time or revenue if you give us your work.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
When I first started my business, I found my clients through a paid registry system.
Now, I get my clients solely through social networking and in-person events.
The key to success is to authentically represent yourself first and then, represent your business.
Facebook has been overrun with business people who get onto the site and abuse their friends list by sending out multitude of unsolicited emails. It’s truly annoying.
I’ve made it a point NOT to send out messages and not to focus solely on my business. It’s about attracting like-minded people to me and then they find out what I do.
If you know how to be subtle and authentic, you’ll have an easier time navigating and attracting ideal clients.
Sounds easy, right? Well, it is. Success is easy.
Join me: http://snurl.com/3fcrx
m.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I’ve been experimenting more in the virtual social networking platform, mainly for time management purposes since most of my correspondence is done in the wee hours.
I completely avoid MySpace, stay in contact with friends on Facebook & build my professional network on LinkedIn. To get the best out of Linkedin I’ve found you need to upgrade to the pro package. FastPitch was appealing to me as it seems to be more of an executive crowd, although my inbox is constantly inundated with solicitations from random businesses that I have no relationship with. Totally annoying.
I took a quick gander at Merchant Circle, but I just don’t get it. Is it a website building tool? Are they selling pay per click? Is there really any credibility in earning the “verified badge” or is it just a way for them to get contacts/leads out of you? What the hell is this thing?
August 12th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
With over 90 million active users and the fastest growing demographic being 25 and older…I think it unwise to not get involved in Facebook. I’m a huge advocate of Facebook, as both a personal and business tool. You can run an extremely targeted and cost effective Facebook advertising campaign. You can also start a Facebook group to allow potential customers and clients find you, create dialogue, and receive feedback. After teaming up with ABC News last January in the New Hampshire presidential debates, Facebook has broken the “teen club” perception of online social networks.
Myspace & Twitter are a waste of time and adds very little real value to the average business owner. I think Second Life is over-rated and it seems abandoning your first life is a requirement of have a second life.
“Defmall” hit the nail on the head concerning Facebook apps.
In short, Facebook is much more useful for the business savvy, network conscious professional…while most others are useful to those who wish to create a shrine of themselves for others to view and to subconsciously validate the significance of their lives by making it online worthy.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I been of two minds about social networking. for my business I started using LinkedIN in 2002. Back then social networking us mostly for college students. Then I when to Myspace. I discovered that more people when to my Myspace page for info than my website so I use Myspace to introduce my business and sale my services. Over the years I have been on Ryze, Xing, Ning, and many other sites. They have not done a lot for my business, that because you have to be social to make a social networking site work. Now I look at my social networking site as a place to meet others woh are looking to buy my services and sell me on service my business needs. Then we can meet in person it saves a lot of time and it’s better than just email. I think that top be successuful in social business networking is to look at it like face to face networking you will be attacted to people who you believe will help you suceed and became valued customers.
Howard Lee
CIO
Wirehead Technology
August 12th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I have two opinions about this…social media can help everyone who sees the value in it, but it’s not for everyone at any given time. There are a variety of niche networks out there which can be just what your business needs. That doesn’t mean it’s necessary to join every single one of them. In this case more than any other, it’s quality over quantity.
Our company offers Social Networking & Media Management, and one of the first things we tell our clients is to determine a specific goal for this “campaign.” Then we go through a process of evaluating each known social network or social media platform to find only the ones that will best help them reach that goal. I suggest this method to anyone. Social networking can be a great tools for your business when you know exactly what you’re trying to achieve and choose they right networks to do so. But it can be a tedious and overwhelming process when you don’t.
So the next time someone tells you that you need to be on this network or that, don’t feel obligated to join. Look at that networks features, consider if and how those features can benefit your business, and do a bit of research to determine if your target market or referral group frequents the network. I only put my time into those networks where I feel I can reach one or the other (potential customers or potential referral partners).
Twitter, Delicious and all the rest have their purpose and good points (yes, even Myspace), but those purposes have to be in line with the needs of your business in order for you to gain from them. And even then, you have to understand exactly how to reach your target audience once there. It’s not enough to have your name all over the place. It’s having your name or brand in the right place that matters!
Good luck to all, and any questions on social media and business, feel free to contact me!
August 12th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
This is in response to what Mia wrote: “When I first started my business, I found my clients through a paid registry system.”
Can someone giv me more information on finding a “paid registry system?” If so, you can e-mail me at susanhouck@hotmail.com.
Thank you.
August 12th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
I think Garrett was a little harsh. Expressing pride in something you’ve accomplished, expressing your opinion about the latest bubble gum pop, or posting photos showing what a party animal you are aren’t examples of trying to validate your existence. They are just examples of having fun (can I talk about fun in this forum?).
Online social networks, even Facebook and LinkedIn, are primarily about entertainment. There is a fascination with watching your network grow, and being asked about something you’re an expert on (LinkedIn) is good for the ego. They are a poor substitute, though, for real, in-person networking. I’m not going to risk my time or money on someone until I actually speak with them, preferably face-to-face.
Advertising on social networks is just another way of interrupting people’s entertainment long enough to get a marketing message across, just like with every other form of media.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Thanks for the tip on hatebook.org. What a hilarious site!