In Social Media, Build Your Network Before You Need It
January 18, 2010 – 11:52 pm | by Daryl Tay
This isn’t new advice. I learned this just over a year ago from Keith Ferrazzi in his awesome book “Never Eat Alone“. And this doesn’t just apply to you as an individual when you need help with a problem, some advice, or in my case a job search – this applies to your organisation if you’re even thinking of engaging in social media.
Something that happens all too often is a company realises it has a new product launch coming up, doesn’t have bloggers to seed to (what a dirty word) and begins the “relationship” process at that point.
That’s too late.
If you do that, don’t be surprised that no “advocates” leap to the defense of your brand when a crisis happens and blame social media.
If you start a blog before you built relationships with other blogs and then get no traffic when you post something, don’t blame the blog.
If you want to push a press release and follow the “best practices” and tweet it at the magical hour on Friday afternoon but no one in your network retweets it because you never engaged with them, don’t blame Twitter.
You need to build that network and goodwill way in advance, so that when you need it, it’s there for you. If you’re thinking about building it because you need it – you’re already too late.
I’d love to hear from either side of the coin: great stories where you invested in a network/community and reaped the benefits or stories as a blogger/influencer where you knew the other party had its back against the wall and was grasping at straws to just get anyone possible for their press event/product launch. The comments are yours!
Tags: advice, advocates, best practices, blame social media, blog traffic, bloggers, build your network, community, engaging in social media, goodwill, grasping at straws, help with a problem, influencers, job search, keith ferrazzi, network, never eat alone, press event, press release, product launch, retweet, seeding bloggers, social media, tweet, twitter
2 Responses to “In Social Media, Build Your Network Before You Need It”
By Walter on Jan 19, 2010 | Reply
Good advice for anybody who wants to be anybody in the new game of relationship economics.
Professionally, most of my networks are amongst members of the media, fellow industry practitioners (leisure attractions, museums), bloggers, and fellow PR/Marketing Directors/VPs.
Personally, when it comes to fostering relationships and networks, I tend to take a rather serendipitous approach. While there are people whom I will seek out with the purpose of connecting – or reconnecting – with them, there are many others whom I just find interesting or fun to be with and choose to network with them.
What’s interesting is when both professional and personal networks converge, ie when your associates become friends. I suppose that’s when the true power of networks come in.
Nice post!
By Daryl Tay on Jan 19, 2010 | Reply
@Walter: Oh yes the best case in when they converge (and that’s happening more and more. I guess too many people have the “I’ll only connect if I think I can get something out of it” mentality but that doesn’t work because they’d never know where opportunities might arise!