Engage & Connect

So now you have all thje major Social Networks in your portfolio…Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIN, now what?

The biggest common mistake out there is when people sign up for Social Media and are not active on there or better yet develop a stasis lock and waits for something to happen.  This isn’t dating and in which dating rules apply you have to make sure the time is right before you make the first move.

There is no waiting for the perfect time to make the first move, anytime is a good time to make the first move.

Why Make The First Move?

The worst thing you can do is just have your Social Media profiles just sitting idle, collecting dust.  It will be a waste of time and conform to the myth that Social Media is a waste of time.

• Be Proactive

Don’t be afraid of rejection or feeling scared to engage people.  Quite often or not you will find most of the time that people on Social Media networks are generally receptive and engaging when you first contact them

Contacting people first opens up a Social Engagement and shows the recipient that you are providing value on your Social Media profile and validating that your not some spammer or non-active user.  What people hate the most are Spammers and users who just sign up for Social Media profiles but don’t provide value or any updates.  It’s like buying a Nintendo Wii because everyone is buying one but just showcasing it to the world without actually opening the box and playing with the system.

How To Maske The First Move?

Facebook / LinkedIN

• Join groups that fit your interests and niche – If you like surfing, then search for Surfing groups.  Find groups that can benefit you by networking and sharing the same interests.  An added bonus when joining groups, you will make new friends and it’s ok to friend request people in the same group as long as you indicate that in your message.

• Comment on your friends status updates often – Don’t wait for them to comment on yours, you make the 1st move.

• Friend new people – Proactively try to find new people to friend whether it be the ones Facebook suggest, Groups or manually searching.  More exposure the better and you can’t go wrong with a large network especially now since Facebook allows you to customize & label your feed stories so it won’t be too much noise in your streams.

• Facebook chat – Try often to just Instant Message someone on Facebook just by saying hi, this will open up conversations.

• Suggest a friend

• Wish Happy Birthdays

• Become humble and ask questions – Ask questions often, often we see self indulged narcisstic marketeers that get no respect because they are all about them them them and not enough of letting other people take charge in conversations.

• Join Q&A discussion threads – This tactic gets quite often overlooked but it’s so easy to do, especially in LinkedIN.  Find Question & Answer boards and actively answer questions or ask questions on here.  The point is to engage the community so they can either respect your authoritative responses or help you out and both ultimately providing you with meaningful relationship building.

Twitter

• Follow new people – Find Twitter directories like Twellow or Wefollow and again follow your niche and community, by reaching out to follow them first you can start building your follow empire and community.  Waiting for people to follow you will be the long and hard route so why not take the proactive approach.

• Ask open ended questions – Again often on Twitter people who don’t ask questions arent really engaging correctly and will have a hard time building quality relationships.  Try asking open ended questions and see how the responses are and more than likely great conversations will come about.

• Engage Twitter comments with full replys Just because you reply does not mean your actively engaging in quality manners.  Don’t be lazy and show some decency by replying back with full engaging replys so hopefully you can build quality relationships down the road.

• Retweet The art of retweeting is just to acknowledge the influence and authority of your friends on Twitter.  They will highly appreciate your Retweet

• Follow Fridays It may be a fad but theres a reason behind this madness, its to promote your friends and also become the influencer to your current followers,  The more quality people you recommend the more influence you gain.

• Recommend Friends Start promoting your friends and recommending ones that you admire, chances are the recipients will greatly appreciate that since you are adding value to them.

So like AT&T’s old slogan used to be “Reach out and touch someone”

Post from: Social Media Vision

This isn’t a date – Make the 1st move in Social Media

Guest Blogger Tina Merritt

Tina is a good friend of mine who is a Real Estate Agent & Internet Marketing Trainer for Long & Foster Realtors, Founder of Wolkia a consulting company for Real Estate Agents embracing Technology, Activerain Blogger, Awesome Mother & a Virginia Tech Hokies fan.

I was honored to have her guest blog on my post with this re-blog below on Social Network Friendships.  Enjoy!

It seems every site nowadays gives you the opportunity to follow “friends”.

So, what type of “friends” are there?  Let’s take a look….

1. True friends.  People you personally know.  People you talk to at least once per month.  The people who probably know way too much about you.  The people who you would have to pay to be silent if you ever decided to run for public office.

2.  Business Associates.  Colleagues you do business with on a regular basis.  Maybe you work in the same office.  Maybe they have done your loans/home inspections/closings for the past 5 years.  People who know you personally, but probably don’t REALLY know you.

3.  Clients.  Past, present, future.  You handled a business transaction for them 3 years ago, haven’t talked to them since – but that doesn’t mean they don’t like you.

4.  Former classmates.  Gary the Geek, Popular Priscilla, Doug the Druggie, Wanda the Weirdo….you know what I mean.  The old boyfriend who is now married with 3 kids or your best friend from 7th grade.

5.  Social Networking friends.  This gets tricky.  People you have never met face to face but have watched on YouTube, read their blogs, subscribed to their feed, etc.  People you feel like you know – though you have never personally met.

6.  Acquaintances.  People you have heard of, or they have heard of you – though you really do not know much about them.

7.  Circle of Sphere.  People who know people you know.  You may or may not ever get to actually know them.

8.  Strangers.  The friend request you get that you accept and the person is some guy who builds skateboards out of his garage in Brazil.  You have absolutely nothing in common….and probably never will.

When deciding who to “friend”, keep this in mind…..what is the purpose of the site you are on and who are you trying to connect with?  Very often, your “friends” will take a look at the others you have “befriended”.  Be careful here….if you are using Facebook for business, do you want Boobalicious Brenda or Boozing Bernie to show up in your friend feed? Also, periodically check out your “friends” – you may be surprised what their new profile picture looks like and how it can reflect back on you.

Tina in Virginia

Post from: Social Media Vision

Boobalicious Brenda – Who Are Your 8 Types Of Online Friends ?

Google Friend Connect

Earlier this week on December 15th 2008, Google’s Official Blog wrote a post on how Twitter was integrated with Google Friend Connect service. 

This allows Twitter users now to sign in and join in with this social networking service by using Twitter Ids now so you tweet about the sites you join or find other Twitter users in your community.

Twitter Plays Fair

Quickly word spread that Twitter slapped Facebook & Myspace in the face with this breaking news but Twitter CEO Evan Williams had this to tweet about it, saying “For the record: Twitter did not “choose Google, not Facebook.” We’re working with both. We have more to do on the FB side before launch.”

Turns out Twitter wants to debunk rumors on siding with just Google, but what about Myspace you ask?

Twitter was originally one of the launch partners for Myspace ID (similiar to Google Friend Connect and FacebookConnect) Myspace has been using Google Friend Connect currently and is awaiting integration with Twitter.

Twitter’s Biz Stone also quoted from Tech Crunch here saying

Twitter plans to integrate with the open initiatives offered by our friends at MySpace, Facebook, and Google. We officially announced our intent to work with MySpace back in May because we believe strongly in offering the exchange of public information between our complimentary services.

Integrating with MySpace as well as FacebookConnect will require some development effort on our part. Now that we have 13 software engineers working at Twitter and our reliability continues to improve we’re getting closer to integrating with your favorite social networks

 

2 cents

So it appears Twitter want’s to be friends with everyone and is playing it very safe along the lines on who to side with.  Twitter seems at this point very smart to keep a hush hush business advertising model and playing it fair on all sides. 

Keep in mind Twitter was offered a buyout from Facebook earlier and was turned down.  More and more big players are viewing Twitter as “The Hot New Toy” recently, the question is who will Twitter play with the most?

Post from: Social Media Vision

Twitter Playing Fair With Google, Facebook & Myspace