Personally, I use three primary platforms for networking and personal brand development: LinkedIn, Facebook and twitter.  LinkedIn is my primary business networking platform (sorry Plaxo – you just never captured my attention).  Twitter I use sparingly on more of a micro-relationship level, although I am convinced there is value to be had on twitter, even without a huge time investment, and will most likely slowly use it more and more.  Facebook is the platform I’ve ended up using more than any of the three, but it’s also the one that has posed the biggest challenge for me.

I started out on Facebook just to see what it was all about.  Facebook makes it very easy for people to find you and you to find people, so very quickly my friends list started to grow.  The problem is that is was a hodge-podge of business associates and personal friends from all phases and times of my life.  This is a story I’ve heard over and over from others: with such a diverse mix of “friends”, do I consider Facebook a public business platform or a private personal platform?

You have to decide this one for yourself, but I can tell you where I’ve ended up after giving this a lot of thought over the last couple of weeks.  What prompted the reflection is a friend request from a couple individuals I didn’t really care to connect to.  I know that sounds harsh, but it all goes back to having a basic strategy on what your social networking platforms mean to you.  On LinkedIn, I am already linked with these two individuals and it makes perfect sense as a reinforcement of our business relationship.  However, Facebook feels different to me, and I’ve struggled a bit to reconcile the diverse mix of connections I have there.  Getting friend requests from these two really forced the issue of figuring out some sort of approach.

Where I’ve ended up that makes sense to me, is back to Seth Godin’s concept of Tribes.  I’ll put some links at the bottom of this post if you’re unfamiliar with Seth’s concept of Tribes.  While Seth’s core message with Tribes is more about leadership, with respect to my Facebook account the aspect of Tribes that made sense to me was the bit about surrounding yourself with people where the connections are particularly useful, are long-term and can help guide you through your life and create happiness.  For me, that was a perfect way to think about “friends” on Facebook – I don’t care if you are a business or personal contact, if you’re someone I know from grade school, or someone I haven’t even met in real life yet, but you have to be like-minded and add to my journey, helping me to create personal happiness and “change the world” for the better.

So finally I have a philosophy for Facebook that I’m happy with.  I’m sure there are those of you out there that will say I over-thought this; it’s certainly a tendency I wouldn’t argue with you about.  In this case however, I think some reflection is warranted when using various social networks.  Because they are so pervasive, because there are so many ways to share your thoughts (professional and personal), I think it’s important to be clear with yourself how each network you use fits in with your personal and professional goals and values as a guide to what you share on them.

What about it readers – do you have a strategy for the social networks you use?  Are they all the same to you, or do you have different goals and usage for each?

Seth Godin / Tribes

There are lots of links I could give you as an overview of Seth Godin’s Tribes, but this informal interview of Seth I think not imparts the concept of Tribes, but also portrays Seth’s passion and insight on the topic.  I do think it’s misleading to use Apple and Google as examples of how Tribes make sense (so many more reasons to their success than simply getting a couple people passionate about their product), but a good interview nonetheless (12.23 minutes).

This is a post from: DaveCrainOnline.com. If you liked this post, and haven't done so already, you can sign up to receive future posts via E-Mail. If you prefer RSS, here's my feed.

The politics of technology

So instead of stand around and say “twitter’s stupid”, I created an account a while back and gave it a spin.  I’m a pragmatist at heart, and in my mind there’s no better way to judge the value of something until you try it yourself.  Of course, there are limits to that philosophy (electric chair?), but the great thing about the state of technology these days is how easy it is to try things out.

I haven’t been a power-user of twitter, nor have I sat on the sidelines.  In this post, instead of talk about the value of the service, I thought I’d list four “truths” about twitter that I found to be misconceptions.

Misconception #1 – You have to post (yes, I know, “tweet”) a lot.

I didn’t find this to be the case.  I only log in to twitter two to three times a week, and I don’t leave a comment every time (but I may leave multiple comments).  Also, if I find something of particular interest I may log in very quickly just to leave that comment.  So on average, I’m putting up probably no more than four tweets a week.

I find this level of activity enough to get a general sense of how the service works so that I could make a determination of whether it’s a fit for my business and ways I might use it.

Misconception #2 – twitter is a huge time sink.

This is one that I always laugh at.  Neither twitter, nor facebook, nor LinkedIn are in charge of your time.  You are.  You can put as much or as little time into twitter as you’d like.  If you see/get value out of it, use it.  If you don’t, get off of it.  But it should only take as much time as you decide to put into it.

That said, there are a couple ways to use twitter without really even putting any time into it.  With the twitter search feature, you can set up a search for your company name, your brand, yourself, or whatever.  Once the search is setup the way you want, subscribe to it’s RSS feed and you can stay in the loop without ever logging in to twitter.  For example, here’s a search on my name which should show you some recent twitter mentions.

Of course, if you’re smart and you starting finding your company showing up in twitter, you’ll figure out a way to capitalize on that.  Especially if the mentions aren’t favorable…

Misconception #3 – You need a huge amount of followers to get any value.

Obviously, if your goal on twitter is to create a huge amount of traction for your website, company, events, etc. then the more followers you have the better.  However, don’t forget about the viral nature of the Internet.  Sometimes it’s the quality of your followers, not the quantity.  After a brief but valuable dinner meeting with an entrepreneur a few weeks ago, he started following me on twitter.  Turns out he’s fairly well-connected on twitter and I probably added ten new followers that saw that he had followed me.

Also, don’t forget about “re-tweeting”, where a twitter follower of yours re-posts your tweet, exposing it to their entire network.  You may have only thirty followers, but if one of them re-tweets to their one thousand followers it’s just the same as if you did it.

Misconception #4 – There is no business benefit to using twitter

We could debate this one all day long and many in the media and blogosphere have decided to do just that.

Here’s the thing – IT’S A TOOL!  No different than PCs, spreadsheets and bicycles.  If you can find a way to have it benefit your business, great.  If you think it’s stupid and the end of civilization as we know it, great.   Just decide if it works for you and get on with it.

Personally, I think there are some fantastic opportunities with twitter for companies both large and small.  Because of the intimacy of contact with your followers, and the fact that they choose to follow you – there are some very interesting approaches to using this tool.  Why not create a twitter search to find out when someone is bad-mouthing your product or service online, then have your customer service department resolve the issue online for everyone to see.  Why not offer specials of the week only made available to your online followers?   I follow @startupstudent on twitter who tweets an inspirational quote every single day.  What a great way to be memorable.

Bottom Line

I think the bottom line here is that you don’t have to be a big company to get value out of twitter, and you don’t necessarily have to put tons of time into the effort.  You do have to understand the tool and how it works, then figure out if it makes sense for your business.  Given the level of intimacy with your followers twitter offers to deliver, combined with exponential potential of your follower’s follower’s followers – I think any smart business owes twitter at least a look.

What about you?  Are you using twitter?  What businesses have you seen using twitter successfully and what have they done?

This is a post from: DaveCrainOnline.com. If you liked this post, and haven't done so already, you can sign up to receive future posts via E-Mail. If you prefer RSS, here's my feed.

4 twitter misconceptions (IMHO)