Loosely following on from my Business Plan discussion last week, is a discussion on what your online profile says about you….
I’m asking this question not as a networking coach, but as someone who was trying to connect with people within her ‘field’. I have over 5000 Linked In contacts – pretty impressive really – and I decided that this week, I wanted to connect with those contacts who would most appreciate my services.
Following my own advice, I started searching my Linked In contacts for people who ‘fit my profile’… I was amazed at the descriptions people targetted themselves with. I think the saddest was ‘Looking for a job’ and the most pitiful ‘over 20K plus connections’.
So here’s my question based on this experience – WHY are you on Linked In, Twitter and Facebook — to name a few?
Sure, it might to find a job…. but is it really to brag how many connections you have?
Let’s look at my example. I wanted to connect with Target Audience and let them know about something I’m doing that may be of interest to them. Really, in the whole scheme of things, I’m going to look at their two or three line bio and make a decision as to whether they are the right connection for me. Do I really care whether they have 10,000 or so connections? Nope – absolutely not and I think that 70% of their other contacts don’t care either.
Twitter’s not much better either. I currently have 1693 followers, and I’m following slightly less than that. Until recently though, I was following nearly 2000 people. After rationalizing the people I was following, I have found that I’m actually having conversations with people (albeit conversations in 140 characters or less) and my followers are increasing more uniformly.
So… what’s the point? Does it matter if you have 20K + connections – or is it more important that you have 5000 connections who are not just good for business, but improve exponentially?
The ‘connections’ race (as I’m going to term it) is just diluting the good that ‘true’ networking can do. So here’s my advice to you:
When setting up your profile on a social networking site – think about the type of connection you want to make. Really! Think about your Target Audience and their buying profile – think about the potential partners that exist and how you can help them. Then, and only then, start drafting your social network profile.
Share your experiences – what have you found by tweaking your profile – or not…..
I so agree. Before I follow anyone I screen them. I visit their Twitter site, read their posts and have a list of items they have to pass before I click follow. I qualify them if you want to put it that way.
A friend of mine told me this was being a Twitter snob. Then I guess I am. I find it so much better to connect well with a few hundred than to having thousands of followers who I can’t keep track of. There’s absolutely no one who can track 2000 communications moving as fast as tweets do.
I don’t want to find people just to sell to. I want to find like-minded people who I can joint venture with. So many people are saying buy me but don’t bother me unless you do it’s hard to find the ones who are truly interested in building a relationship. Or maybe Twitter isn’t the right place for building relationships. So far I have a few but honestly I’m burnt out after only a few months of it.
There are so many people setting up automatic messages and they aren’t even on Twitter anymore. Isn’t this just advertising then — like a billboard on the side of the road.
I heard through the grapevile Google is coming out with a twitter-type that’s going to enable people to have more preference control. That’s going to put Twitter to sleep. It’s harder to keep the nut cases out currently.