Why is it so important to be networked in business?
Sell a product or service?
Update your customers with new developments?
Build long-term relationships?
Recruit?
Improve employee engagement?
Build customer loyalty?
Nurture a community that you can turn to? Remember the relative solutions we talked about earlier? The louder and more committed your fanbase, the more likely they are to help you innovate. So, you know WHY you’re building an online social network. What about the HOW? Here are those five golden rules…
identify clusters Outliers Sales opps
Teambuilding Influencers
The Facebook Friend Wheel c.2007 Helped perpetuate the idea of the ‘social graph’ Social graph = your online social network. The digital map. Ultimately there’ll nou doubt be a tool that maps across FB, LinkedIn, Twitter etc to produce your definitive network.
Use Technorati to identify key bloggers in your sector
See if there’s list of relevant influencers on Peer Index Those who do a lot of training and public speaking will be highest up: eg. Maz Nadjm teaches social media to the whole of Ogilvy
Or identify the most influential people in your own personal network on Klout
Don’t just get in touch when you want something, build relationships over time.
Use hashtags to follow events and topics of interest, and join the conversation. Take care when using hashtags to talk about a product or service.
Use tags to bookmark articles you read on Delicious etc – others can search your bookmarks
Or share the links directly on Twitter – and build your profile and influence through retweets.
You can tag your friends in photos on Facebook, but you can also tag your photos on Flickr. And contribute to Flickr’s library of sharable shots. (That’s where I got mine)
Or share a personal observation. Again, if it resonates with others, you’ll get re-tweeted.
Social networks are all about being open, honest and truthful
Stephen Fry is one of the most followed people on Twitter. Because he’s very good at being himself.
So is she.
I started following Edward Borasky because I liked his bio. The quirkier, the better…
Tower Bridge has gained nearly 4.5k followers by following the same melodic story day in, day out. Find your story - and stick to it.
This the room at Pepsico where they monitor mentions of Gatorade There’s a host of monitoring services out there: Brandseye, Market Sentinel, Radian6… If you want to do something on the cheap – set up a Google alert.
These are mine.
And once you’ve found where the conversation is happening - JOIN IT! Eg: Luis Suarez’ blog: I could add my POV. But also - look how Luis responds to everyone. There’s nothing more impressive than when a figure you admire gets back to you. And when a BRAND you love does it?
…bowled over!
Why is it so important to be networked in business?
