Social Networking – Divide, Conquer, and Profit

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Getting the most value out of your social networking sites

We are all bombarded daily with the latest figures on the masses of people joining social networking sites. From Facebook to Twitter and all those between, the world is becoming far more connected than we have ever been. Any real attempt at quantifying the numbers of people joining these sites would be inaccurate by time the ink on this article had time to dry or the time it would take a webmaster to upload it to a server.

This is where the concept of “division” is derived from. There must be a division between those you feel comfortable sharing your life with versus those who you only want to keep contact information for a rainy day or to market to.  Social networking is not a contest of how many “friends” or “followers” you can find unless it is for purely networking or marketing reasons. If you are interested in only growing networking contacts or to market your product, LinkedIn, Twitter and group or company pages on Facebook are the places for you. These non-intrusive sites contain mostly professional or product information and are easy to add contacts and communicate to your network because you are essentially only sharing your resume or business information, not private information about your life.

When it comes to sites like Facebook and My Space, we journey past the professional value and move into a more personal sphere of communication. There is a common term nowadays called “internet voyeurism” that sounds much worse than it really is. While we think as a voyeur as the man hiding in the bushes peeking through a window, internet voyeurism is simply the ability we have to look at information or at other people’s lives via multiple social networking or internet sites without the party or company knowing. We are all guilty of internet voyeurism weather it is checking to see how much your neighbors home is listed for online or looking at pictures of a Facebook friend.

The issue begins to be where we establish that line between those who you want to know all the details you post versus those that we just don’t want to offend by ignoring their “friend request”. It is best two keep business and personal contacts separated on social networking sites. I could probably come up with a list of situations where these two worlds collide but several of them are pretty obvious. When you can’t update your status because you don’t want every one of your online friends to know, your worlds are mixed. When the fun and socialization of these sites is ruined by the thought of “what if I post that”, your worlds are mixed.  Finally, when those who are important in your life that aren’t on social networking sites don’t know about new jobs you have taken, new relationships, etc... because the only way you are communicating is through a status update, you are choosing social networking over relationships. So by now, a lot of you are wondering how to reduce the list of 300 friends without stepping on toes, hurting feelings or ruining business contacts.

The answer is easy. If you are already up to your eyes in online friends, create a separate profile and notify only those who you want to interact with on a regular basis. By doing this, you gain a higher quality of page by having only relevant friends. This helps reduce the temptation of taking friendships too far or posting something that might have a social value to your friends, but might negatively influence your job or business network.  Keep your old profile and periodically post content, pictures, or status updates to make it still look alive. You never know when you might need one of those 300 friends. By doing this, you can keep your original profile open and people that you might want to connect with can find you and you don’t have to worry about the dreaded process of deleting friends. As a novice behavioral scientist, I actually wanted to judge the impact on the average user being deleted as a friend so I periodically changed my status to “Friend list is getting too long, let the culling begin” and “Quality of friends is better than the quantity, the culling begins tonight”.

It was amazing to see postings from friends that had never commented on any status before, asking to stay on my list. For the record, I never actually deleted anyone after these status postings and it might not have been the best idea to use friends as test subjects. The most interesting response was when I changed my status to “pondering life without Facebook, considering trying it”. The hard core Facebook addicts like me came out of the woodwork with their own admissions of trying to scale back the time they devote to the site.

So let’s move on to how we make social networking sites relevant, this is the conquer section. Whether your page or profile is for business or professional, we make social networking sites relevant by posting quality content. Quality content can be product information or personal information, but not irrelevant information. Let’s cover two examples. All of us that are on these sites have friends that post the most unimportant content. I think the most useless I have ever seen was a friend that changed his status to “ordering at Sonic” I really can’t think of anyone in my life that important to care them about ordering fast food.

On the business side, there is a Realtor friend that is insistent on updating her status every time she goes on a listing appointment, signs a contract or has a closing. This is known as yelling, not selling on social networking sites. I compare this to another Realtor friend that updates his status on meetings with politicians, broad real estate information and other relevant content that brands him as an expert without “yelling” at his friends.  It poses no harm to occasionally throw in a promotion for your business but when Facebook is used to constantly sell to friends; you become irrelevant and just plain annoying really quickly.  So to conquer social networking sites and build a quality following of close friends or business network, make sure what you post is worth reading or at least entertaining. Some of the best viral marketing campaigns have been launched and succeeded out of pure creativity, not extensive product promotion.

So we will wrap up with profiting from social networking sites. From a business standpoint, the biggest attraction is the ability to reach potential customers directly of through referrals and building a following. This does not happen over night and takes some time and patience. While it takes a while to build your network, other than the cost of your time, it is usually free and in this economy, we can’t say no to free. What we do need to keep in mind is that social networking sites can be a big time zapper so there must be some time limits imposed.

In addition, while viral marketing is good, depending on the breadth of your product offering, sometimes the numbers of followers are not as important as their quality and purchasing ability.  In addition, marketing vehicles such as press releases, websites, product and company branding, and proven advertising methods should not be reduced or ignored. On a personal note, social networking site where you are free to communicate and freely post as you wish can be profitable in many ways by creating a social gathering place for friends and family.

Every Friday on my Facebook page, I post a weekend status update video that has developed quite a following. Rather than calling everyone to let them know of my plans for the weekend, my friends can watch an entertaining video. I even had a recent comment from a friend whose mother passed away that week and how watching the video was the first time she had smiled in days. Those kinds of profits from social network sites are unbeatable.

So as we end this journey, I will change my status to “just completed writing informative article”, I will Tweet a 140 character description of the article with a shortened URL, and upload it to LinkIn. The morning of a social networking addict is now complete.

We invite all of you to get a discussion going.  Please submit your comments at the end of this article, Thanks.

Paul Silverman is a Realtor and Marketing Director for a custom builder in Houston. He currently holds 8 Real Estate designations and has won local, state, and national marketing awards. To contact him, please visit www.ourfirstnest.com or email paul@ourfirstnest.com.