SCORE Minnesota

Using Social Media To Connect with Others

June 15, 2010

Last week I posted an article describing the first step to getting involved with social media titled, “Social Media: Are You Listening?” Now that you are listening, this article will describe the next step, which is reaching out to connect and build relationships with people online.

It always surprises me when I hear from otherwise savvy business people that they want to limit their online relationships to people they know. Most people who understand marketing feel it is a good thing to expand your influence in the world which is one of the most powerful benefits of social media.  The online networks that an individual or company builds with social media tools are called social communities.

For those of you on LinkedIn, your “contacts” (however many you have) are a community. For those of you on Twitter, your “followers (however many you have) are a community. For those of you on Facebook, your “friends” (however many you have) are a community. And so on.

As you build your network or communities, you will need to decide with whom you want to connect. Keep in mind that, in general, the larger community you build around a specific social media tool the more effective that tool will become. So there is no good reason to not connect with anyone. Should you happen to connect with someone who turns out to be problematic in the case of those who send unsolicited advertising messages (spamming), you can always disconnect, unfriend or unfollow them.

Just because you accept most invitations to connect, it doesn’t mean you should invest your time seeking out just anyone with whom to connect. Time is one of the most valuable assets you have. Building social networks and producing results through these networks takes time. Therefore it is important to use your time wisely. After all, a community or network with thousands of people where none of them are your prospects is of little value to you.

So, the first place to start is by defining your prospects by age, gender, geography, education, profession, income, marital status, gender and lifestyle. Once you have defined you prospect, now you have to locate them online.

A good place to start is to learn the search function for each social networking tool. These search functions can be a bit more complex than just typing something like “leaky pipes” if you are searching for plumbers. Learn what advance search techniques are available for each tool. Let’s use LinkedIn for example. Their advance search feature allows you to find people by any or all of the following criteria:

Keywords Title Industries

Name Company Groups

Location School And more!

Each social media tool has different search features. Chances are there is a YouTube video that will explain it to you. There are other free social media tools to help you as well. If you are a local business and want to find local Twitter users, one way to accomplish this is with TwellowHood (they fancy themselves as “The Twitter Yellow Pages”).

There is also software you can purchase like TweetAdder that will search for a keyword in the user’s profile, or in the tweets within a specific geographic area. You can even search for users with a certain number of followers. Or you can even target a specific user (possibly a competitor) and TweetAdder will automatically follow their followers. Its wild, isn’t it?

Another way to find prospects with whom to connect is to join groups where your prospects hang out. As I mentioned in last week’s article, it appears that Yahoo now has 17 million groups (if that is even possible), Google has over 4 million and LinkedIn has over 600 thousand. There are groups about everything you can image. Find the groups that your prospects hang out in and you will find many people with whom you can connect.

As it relates to social media marketing, the value of a connection who is also a prospect is much higher than that of a connection who is not. But, there is a connection with an even higher value. These high value connections are called “third-party influencers” or “trust agents”. Others call them “brand ambassadors”. If you can connect with these people and build a relationship with them, they will help you meet your objectives.

When using social media, always share information that interests others first; share information about yourself or business last. A good ratio is 12 to 1 if you want to gain trust and credibility. Additionally, talk up competitors and/or competing products, which will add to your business’s credibility. Talking up competitors/products is not only a courtesy but a reality.

In a recent seminar an example was used of the CEO of a Japanese electronics company who, during a public meeting, brought out a competitor’s product and admired it in front of all in attendance. The CEO owned the competitor’s product and used it in addition to the products his own company offered. The reality is that customers in many cases have a complementary mix of products from more than one company of the same product family.

So, which social media tools will you use to build your communities? The demographics of the users of each tool are different and they may surprise you. Here are some facts about Twitter, statistics for Facebook and demographics for LinkedIn. You can find much more information on the web if you search for it. Match the demographics of your prospect with the demographics of those using the social network working tools and it will become much clearer which tools are the best for your situation.

In the weeks that follow you will learn a lot more about social media and other topics from me as well as other SCORE counselors. However, if you don’t want to wait to learn more about social media, you have a couple of options. At any time you desire, you can request face to face counseling and/or mentoring by clicking the link on the right to the office nearest you or click here.

A second option for those of you who want to know more about how to achieve results by incorporating social media into your marketing strategy is the new seminar  SCORE has developed. The seminar focuses on many aspects of social media that are typically glossed over or omitted in other seminars because their goal is to recruit attendees as clients. Because this topic is so important for small business we have gone to extraordinary lengths to select some of the top online marketing consultants in our state who also possess a high degree of expertise in social media. These presenters will share their considerable knowledge and experience in our “Social Media & Internet Marketing Boot Camp” on June 24. If you would like more details on this seminar and/or our social media and internet marketing presenters, simply visit our registration page by clicking here.

If you are a marketing professional with proficiency in the use of online marketing and social media, I would like to encourage you to consider volunteering for SCORE. We are a non-profit organization that helps millions of new or existing small businesses succeed each year by sharing our knowledge and experience. Click here or the link on the right to the office nearest you to learn more. We would be happy to have you on our team.

At the least, allow me to invite you to our new LinkedIn group, “Minnesota Small Business – Powered by SCORE”. In the group you will have the opportunity to meet many of your peers (other small biz owners) as well as many of our SCORE counselors. The group is a great forum for asking or answering questions or simply commenting on posts by others. Join us today.

Mike Clough, St. Paul SCORE
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Filed under: Marketing,Online Marketing,Social Media

Tags: LinkedIn, Marketing, Online Marketing, social communities, social media, social media networks, social media tools, Twitter, YouTube