Here's some great tips from Dr. Ivan Misner, founder of Business Networking International (BNI) on being a better networker in the social media arena:
From a business perspective, social media is ideal to build your brand and your credibility; it’s about providing value for your connections and followers. It is important to offer them useful information balanced with a dash of personal insight. Whether you’re talking about face-to-face networking or online networking, credibility and relationship building are critical to the process.
With social media, the key to success is outlining a strategy. You should consider the amount of time you can realistically dedicate each day to online marketing efforts so as to be consistent. People have a tendency to get online at random times and start clicking away. Then something mysterious happens to the space-time continuum. Suddenly, two hours go by and you have nothing to show for it!
Avoid falling victim to that trap: Write up a plan for how often and how long you will work your social media.
Map out a weekly schedule that outlines specific days and times you’ll spend developing your social media strategy. Figure out what’s realistic and what makes sense for your company. For example, you might schedule yourself to post daily updates at 9a.m., 1p.m, and 5p.m., and then dedicate ten minutes to responding to comments and direct messages at 10 a.m. and 3p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, you might dedicate ten minutes at 10a.m. and 3p.m. to retweeting people’s comments which you find valuable. You can also use this time to thank people for mentioning you or retweeting your posts.
Leverage Your Time
As you design your plan, make sure you integrate tools to leverage your time in your social media efforts. Sites like http://ping.fm, www.seesmic.com, and www.tweetdeck.com are designed to send your social media updates to multiple social networking sites, including Twitter and Facebook, with one click.
Some sites even allow you to link multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts (if you have more than one) to one desktop application where you can post updates to all sites as well as view and respond to your friends’ posts on those sites and keep a log of all your past posts. This means no more logging into multiple social networking sites . . . you can manage all your social networking accounts from one place!
Also, there are sites such as www.cotweet.com where you can schedule updates in advance so your updates will post even while you’re not online. With all the traveling I do, this is a tool that is very useful.
ROI of Social Media Networking
Once you have your strategy in place, you will no doubt be anxious to start seeing a return on your online networking investment, but it’s very important to remember one thing: Networking, whether online or face-to-face, is more about farming than it is about hunting. It’s about cultivating relationships with people. The bottom line is – it takes time. It is about building the credibility of your brand, and we know that doesn’t happen overnight.
Return on Investment (ROI) is directly correlated to either – 1. Dollars spent (online paid marketing), or 2. Time and/or effort spent – in saturating and building strong profiles on whatever social media channels are deemed effective for the brand (including blogging). Don’t forget that some businesses will benefit much more from spending more effort on “niche” networks that may have less traffic, but are more targeted to the brand’s ultimate consumer.
If your network is a mile wide and an inch deep it will not be successful. It is important to create a network that is both wide and deep. You do this by being visible and engaging in the conversation. Over time, this gives you credibility which leads to building your brand and your sales. This, ultimately, will give you the biggest ROI for your online marketing efforts.
Top 5 Common Mistakes of Social Media Networking
Most of what I’ve discussed so far has focused on what you should do in order to carry out an effective and profitable social media campaign for your business. But there are also some things you should be sure to avoid.
Below are the top five social media networking mistakes:
- Spending too much time on sites you enjoy and not fully evaluating whether or not that particular site is the most effective one for your efforts.
- Going onto a site for “work” and then running down rabbit holes getting distracted by friends who may have posted something interesting or something that requires a response.
- Not being able to properly define when it is more cost-effective to delegate certain social media responsibilities to someone else to handle.
- Setting up a blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter page and then not keeping it populated –consistency and fresh content are key.
- Forgetting that social media is about engaging in the conversation and not just about selling.