Episode 163: “Dos and Don’ts of Social Networking”

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Synopsis

Dr. Misner is recording this podcast early because he’s going on Safari in Africa this week.

Here are some suggestions on how to use social media effectively.

• If you have a social media expert in your chapter, talk to them.
• Schedule your time with social media and make it part of a strategy.
• Find the right social media for you. Facebook is not the only network.
• Respond to comments. Retweet. Social media is a dialog.
• Use non-productive time (when you don’t usually work) for online networking.
• Use tools like Ping.fm, HootSuite, and Seesmic to save time.
• Remember that V/C/P still applies. Building relationships on social media takes time.

Here are five common mistakes businesses make on social media:

1. Spending too much time on sites you enjoy without evaluating their value to you.
2. Visiting a site for work and getting distracted by interesting posts.
3. Not recognizing when it’s time to delegate certain social media responsibilities.
4. Not providing consistent fresh content on your blog.
5. Forgetting that social media is about engaging in a conversation, not about selling.

Brought to you by Ask Ivan Misner.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 163 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by AskIvanMisner.com, which is a Web site where you can ask Ivan any question you have about networking.

I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I’m joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan. How are you and where are you today?

Ivan:
Well, we’re recording this one a little bit early, Priscilla, because I’m completely out of touch with the world this week. I am in South Africa on safari, and I have no telephone this week, so we’ve recorded it a little bit early.

Priscilla:
That sounds fantastic! Will you come back and tell us what you saw?

Ivan:
I would love to do that.

Priscilla:
Okay.

Ivan:
All right.

Priscilla:
What do you have to share with us about social networking?

Ivan:
This week I want to talk about the Dos and Don’ts of Social Networking, and I really, I think, learned a lot over the last year about social media. I’ve had on as a guest, Mirna Bard, who has helped me in developing my social media. And I wanted to talk a little about it, because, for me and BNI members, it’s not a either/or thing, it’s not face to face networking or social networking or social media; it’s both/and. I think they both work well together, and so I wanted to talk a little bit about that today.

Priscilla:
Okay.

Ivan:
I think people have a tendency to get online sort of – and what I want to do is give suggestions or recommendations to members on how to use their social media effectively. The first thing is, if you have a social media expert in your chapter, talk to them, because these are experts, and run some of the ideas that I’m going to be talking about by them and get some ideas from them as well.

I think people have a tendency to get online at random times and just start clicking away, and that’s a mistake. You really have to schedule your time with social media. One of the things I discovered is that sometimes I’ll get online and I get onto my fan page, on Facebook, which leads me to some link on some other Facebook page. And then there’s a link to some other page that now I’m on LinkedIn, and then I click on that and now I’m on YouTube and I’m watching some video. And some crazy thing has happened to the space/time continuum, and two hours have gone by and I have nothing to show for it. And it’s really easy to fall victim into that trap. And so it’s very important to really, I think, have a schedule for your social media.

The key to successful social media is to outline a strategy which considers the amount of time you can realistically dedicate each day to your online marketing efforts. If you plan your activities and you use timesaving tools and you make sure your return on investment, your ROI, expectations are reasonable, now you’ll be in a good position to succeed in your social networking.

By the way, I’m not crazy about that term, “social networking.” It’s something that’s come out of the Internet and it’s an Internet phrase. When I talk about social networking, I’m not talking about networking for social purposes; I’m talking about networking online, so your online networking efforts.

The first thing is to find the social media that’s right for you. Everything that follows and what I’m going to say hinges on that point. And let me add that it’s not just about Facebook, although I dragged my feet getting into Facebook. I was really not a fan of getting into Facebook until I was at an event where somebody who I really respected – I respected his knowledge about social media – stood up and said, “You’re all idiots if you’re not on Facebook. That’s where your customers are.” When I heard him say that, I was like, “All right. I better look at Facebook.” And interestingly enough, in a fraction of the time, I have infinitely more followers now on Facebook than I do on LinkedIn and many other sites that I’ve been on. So it was a good move for me.

But it’s okay to concentrate on some other Web sites, depending on what business you’re in and who your target market is. And there are other social media outlets to focus on. You can’t do them all, but there are several that you should look at, like LinkedIn, which is really the classic business Web site; Ecademy.com, which is my personal favorite online business network, Ecademy.com; XING, which is mostly based in Europe, it’s spelled X-I-N-G, X-I-N-G.com. These are great. And of course, Twitter. Great sites to take a look at.

So plan ahead – planning ahead really makes you efficient in working these types of sites. Make out a weekly schedule that outlines the specific days and times you’ll spend on social media. Figure out what’s realistic, what makes sense for your company.

For example, here’s a sample weekly schedule. Every day post something in the morning, 9:00 a.m., maybe one at l:00 p.m., one at 5:00 p.m. Post two or three times a day. I mean, you may think, “I don’t have time to post two or three times a day.” Well, we’ll come back to that, because I have a recommendation that will help with that a lot. Schedule maybe Mondays and Wednesdays to do 10 minutes responding to comments and direct messages.

Remember, online social media is a dialogue; you can’t just be doing one-way communication, and this is a struggle for me, because I get so many comments and so many messages. But you know, it’s really important, as much as possible, to be engaged in the dialogue.

And then maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays you dedicate 10 minutes to re-Tweeting people’s comments and thanking people for mentioning them in your Tweets, if you’re on Twitter. But have a schedule and try to stick to it.

Here’s another idea. Use a non-productive time to do some of this, if you can. Have a schedule, but let’s say you’re behind and you need to do something. Don’t do it from 9:00 to 5:00 if that’s your most productive work time. If you’re at home and you’re sitting down and you’re watching American Idol or some version in your country of some entertainment show, pull out your laptop and do it while the TV is on. You can integrate that into non-productive work time and really get a fair amount done.

So these are just some examples.

Now, use some tools to save time. Remember, I said you can post at 9:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., and 5:00 p.m. Well, there are tools that will enable you to do that. For example, sites like Ping.fm, P-I-N-G.fm. You can get on there and with one message, send all your sites, send it to LinkedIn, XING, Facebook, Twitter. So you don’t have to log onto each and every one of them. There’s a new site called Hootsuite, H-O-O-T-S-U-I-T-E, that does that. Seesmic.com, S-E-E-S-M-I-C.com. These sites will enable you to literally make one message and send it out.

And schedule it. So for me, I’m in 24 different time zones. If I send out a message on Facebook or on Twitter at 12 noon my time, that’s midnight someplace else where I have BNI groups. And so I try to schedule them in the middle of the night, because middle of the night for me is the middle of the day for somebody else in BNI.

Priscilla:
Wow!

Ivan:
There are also Web sites like AtomKeep.com which will allow you to link multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts into one desktop application. Sites like CoTweet.com that will allow you to schedule updates like we’ve been talking about.

So the bottom line there is, leverage your time. There are techniques that will allow leverage your time so you don’t have to spend as much time, but yet you get better results.

Now, let’s talk about your return on investment expectations. Once you have a strategy in place, you’ll no doubt be anxious to start seeing a return on your social media investment. It’s important to remember one thing. Networking takes time. Rather than expecting to see a surge in sales, you should hope to see people interacting with your brand and with you. Building relationships with people and credibility for your brand doesn’t happen overnight. V/C/P still applies. This is about creating visibility and credibility before you start to get profitability.

Here are five, I’m going to give you five common mistakes that – I know we are running out of time. I’m going to give you five common mistakes that people in businesses make when it comes to social media.

One is spending too much time on sites you enjoy but are not fully evaluating whether or not that particular site is effective for you.

Second is visiting a site for work and then running down rabbit holes getting distracted by interesting posts.

The third is not recognizing when it’s time to delegate certain social media responsibilities to a consultant, an agency, or another person in-house possibly. For example, I use somebody who does all my Facebook requests, Friend requests. I try to respond to the specific questions myself, but the requests, I can give directions to one person and tell them the kind of people are okay or not okay and what to look for. I don’t have to do that all myself.

It’s important to set up a blog and then keep it populated, be consistent and provide fresh content. Just letting people know that you’re at Starbucks isn’t enough. Have some good content in there.

And don’t forget that social media is about engaging in the conversation. It’s not just about selling.

If you do these things, you will really be building a good social media side to your networking campaign, and I wish everybody luck in doing that.

Priscilla:
That’s some great information. I especially appreciate that you are offering the names of those sites where you can get multiple postings from one post.

Ivan:
Right. And I recommend them because we use them, my office uses them, I use them, and it’s something that’s been a value to us.

Priscilla:
Yeah. I’m going to look into that. Thank you so much.

Ivan:
Yeah, you bet. And just one last comment before we wrap up. Remember V/C/P still applies. You’ve got to establish visibility, then you’ve got to get that credibility with people. And only when you’re at credibility can you really expect to get any kind of business in your online networking. So it’s not a get rich quick scheme; it’s another venue for your networking efforts, but it’s one that can absolutely add to your efforts in BNI.

Priscilla:
Perfect. Well, thank you, Dr. Misner.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
I think that’s it for this week. I’d just like to remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by AskIvanMisner.com. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.