Connecting is not Enough....The Newsletter

The latest edition of Connecting is not Enough is available now. Click here to view the newsletter.

This fortnight's spectacular includes:

- Designing your business cards
- Predicting the conversation
- Underpromise and overdeliver



and a man flying through the air into a paddling pool!

CONNECTING IS NOT ENOUGH: Will you be my Friend?

This article originally appeared in The National Networker


Have you experienced that strange sensation recently? A feeling of importance, of celebrity, of previously unmatched popularity. It’s the feeling that the lucky kids at school all understood but that the rest of us could only dream of.

All of a sudden everyone wants to be your friend.

From Facebook to LinkedIn, from Plaxo to Fastpitch and from Xing to Friendster, people are asking to be friends. And they’re not just people we know, have met or who share mutual friends. They are people from all over the World, with varied backgrounds and different interests. Yet they all want to be our friends and share in our lives.

Do you embrace each and every one of these new-found friends? Or do you find something uncomfortable and disconcerting about all of these requests from strangers?

Once you have befriended them, your popularity knows no-bounds. They want to follow you to every party you go to, and want to invite you to the ones they’re attending. All of a sudden you are a member of countless social networks…….and your network is the same on each one!

There are many people who embrace this method of networking. They believe that the more people you connect with, the broader your network, the more successful you are. For the more extreme, they count success in terms of ‘notches on the bedpost’. Others do take a more level-headed approach, recognizing that they do need to interact with many of these new ‘friends’ but that there is value in broadcasting to everyone else they are connected to. Not so much networking as marketing.

It might not surprise you that I favour a different approach to my online networking. My approach takes three stages, each one making it far easier to manage my time on each network effectively, interact with people in the best way possible and able to connect with everyone who genuinely wants to connect with me.

Stage One –

Understand WHERE you want to be

With so many invitations coming through now, there is a danger of stretching yourself too thin. I have received two more invitations to new networks in the short period of time I have been writing this column. Unless you plan to make membership of social networks a full time occupation, it would be impossible for anyone to be an effective, active member of every network available, so be selective.

There are probably four types of online network for me. Those I will never join; those I join, upload a profile but never visit again; those I join, upload a profile and visit occasionally and those I commit to.

The networks that I commit to are the ones who draw me in, encourage me to contribute and demonstrate a value to being there. For a long time LinkedIn was a network on which I had a profile and visited infrequently as there was such little apparent activity on the site. Over the last 12-15 months two things have happened to change that. The network themselves have added more functionality, allowing you to achieve more through the site, and more people have been drawn to LinkedIn, making activity there more rewarding.

Therefore, you do need to join a few networks and try them out to find out where you are at home, where you feel most comfortable and which ones demonstrate that membership will deliver a return for you, whatever that may be.

That leads us nicely onto

Stage Two –

Understand WHY you want to be there

In my opinion, the most effective way to exploit the sheer number of networks is to use each for a different purpose. If you simply join a lot of networks and use them in the same way, you will find yourself repeating the same activity again and again. Can you really afford to spend your time doing that?

People have talked for a long time about wanting a site, or some software, that replicates your content and profile across networks. I know such software is being developed and wouldn’t be surprised to find out it already exists. You can already post a ‘tweet’ on Twitter and see it duplicated on Facebook and elsewhere.

That’s all very nice but doesn’t it take away the ‘human’ element of social networking? Have a look at the Facebook page of someone who feeds their tweets through. You will see a lot of activity, much of which doesn’t make sense in isolation and using jargon from one network (Twitter) that makes no sense to Facebook users not accustomed to it.

The redesign of Facebook into a Tweeter-style feed is going to encourage this activity more. It means that people using this technology will have fewer reasons to visit Facebook and will no longer be ‘networking’ on it. Facebook will simply be reduced to another broadcast mechanism, rather than a tool for effective engagement and interaction.

If you want to broadcast, that’s fine. My approach takes a slightly different direction though. I believe that each network can play a different purpose. For example:

Facebook is a very human network and provides the opportunity for your professional network to find out about the person, and for your personal network to find out about your profession. It is a great tool for deepening relationships and, used wisely, building trust.

LinkedIn’s primary purpose is to aid connections. You can find out how you are connected to the key people you want to meet, and secure the introductions through your existing network.

Networks such as Ecademy, Xing and FastPitch encourage you to build the breadth of your network by making new connections. These are great fora for meeting new people, finding out about them and developing the beginnings of a relationship. They also allow you to build on those relationships through various events, clubs and ongoing conversations.

By taking that type of approach to your online networking, it means that you can be more selective about

Stage Three –

Understanding WHO you want to connect with there

Following the approach above, you would only invite existing contacts to link to you on Facebook or LinkedIn, while having other networks you can direct newcomers to. Let them develop the relationship on one of the other networks before taking it to the next stage.

An additional benefit to this approach is that it is easier to find and connect contacts in your ‘deeper’ networks. One of the problems of building mass connections is finding people if you’re not looking by name. Keeping these networks smaller makes that task much easier.

The numbers of social networks is going to continue growing as niche networks become more popular. With the increase in popularity of Ning and similar sites, more of your contacts will develop, and invite you to, their own personal social network, while face to face networks you belong to and industry bodies will all invite you to theirs.

Without a strategy to approach these invitations, you run the risk of becoming overwhelmed and turning your back on social networking completely.

Now, that wouldn’t make you too popular!

How do you choose which online networks to join and who joins you on them?

Every day I receive new invitations to either join or connect on different online (social) networks. Some of them are well known, such as LinkedIn or Facebook, others less so. The fact is that the numbers of social networking opportunities are continually growing, and it would be impossible for anyone to manage a network on all of them, unless that was their full time post!

This begs the question of which do you choose and with whom do you connect, where? I met with leading figures from three of the larger networks last week, LinkedIn, Xing and BT Tradespace. Each of them is looking for their own way to stand out from the crowd, to be different.

One of the most striking things for me is the number of people who, once they're connected with you on one network, want to connect with you everywhere else. If this is the right approach to networking, what do we need all of the different networks for. How do you use them differently? Or don't you bother?

In my mind I have different uses for each network.

Remember that networking is about both breadth and depth of relationship. Some networks are well suited to growing your network. For me, Ecademy is the main 'network growth tool' but Xing and BT Tradespace can also serve a similar purpose.

Other networks are better served helping you deepen your existing network. In my case, I see Facebook as a great tool to build existing relationships by opening the doors of my private life to strong business connections, and the doors of my business life to strong personal connections.

LinkedIn, in the meantime, is a great tool to leverage existing networks, and to help your connections gain your help and support when needed. Using their three degrees of seperation principle of looking at their connections and asking for introductions is incredibly powerful, if done professionally and with focus.

The problem lies in the way these depth networks are diluted by mass connections. I can't put my hand on my heart and say that my LinkedIn or Facebook networks contain only people I know well, I have accepted too many connection requests for the want of somewhere else to connect for that to be the case. Quite how 'LinkedIn Open Networkers', who have thousands of connections can make trusted introductions I just don't understand.

I have realised that the time has come for me to rationalise my online networks and start to connect with different people in different places for different reasons. It will take me some time and I want to do so in a way that won't cause offence to people I move or spurn, but it needs to be done if these networks are going to achieve anything like their potential for me.

I know that there will be many who disagree with this approach, and others who are even more confused than I am. I'd love to hear all views, and some other strategies.

It's time to create some sense from the confusion.

Business Networking on the Social Web

Social Networking blogger An de Jonghe has just published the results of an interesting survey into the use of Social Networks worldwide. An based the results on the responses of over 850 people from 54 countries over the first seven months of this year.

There are a number of interesting results in the survey. The first thing to take note of is An's disclaimer that the survey cannot be considered as scientific. It would be interesting to know how the survey was publicised as some of the demographic results are surprising, not least Belgium being the most active country for social networking and three business sites coming above Facebook as the most popular networks.

Accepting, therefore, that this is probably a reflection of a more mature and business-focused demographic than the average Facebook user (the typical respondent is a male parent between 30 and 40 years old), we can use this survey as an indication of trends in social business networks.

What can we deduce from the survey?

- Initially the survey suggests that people don't want to pay for their social networking memberships. According to de Jongh, only 20% of respondents were prepared to pay for membership. However, this needs to be put into the context of the question. Respondents were asked whether they preferred to pay for ad-free membership or whether they would prefer a free account with advertising. This 'either/or' choice does not tell us whether they will pay a membership fee if they can see value for money. With social networking sites like Facebook offering membership for free, it will be interesting to see which cost models prove popular for social business networks.

- Most respondents join primarily for business opportunities. de Jongh suggests that the future is bleak for niche 'hobby' sites if they don't offer business opportunities, with just 16% opting to join a social network because it caters to their hobby. However, in 'Marketing to the Social Web', Larry Weber suggests that many people will join social networks because of shared interests. Is there a difference in the way different generations use the web?

- 40% of respondents feel it is important to be able to use their own language when posting. With most of the major social networks having a global reach and using English as the common language, is there scope for country-specific networks and can they possibly be as successful given the global e-community? The success of Bebo in Ireland, where founder Michael Birch recently suggested they have a huge impact in the market, suggests that this is possible. In contradiction, three-quarters of respondents to the survey consider themselves global networkers in response to the question 'would you consider joining a network outside your own country?'

Meanwhile, the majority of respondents (54%) don't participate in offline meetings. See my post on Anti-Social Networking for more thoughts on this issue.

The full survey can be found here.