What is Social Networking?

What is Social Networking?

What is it exactly? How do I do it, and if I knew how to do it would it actually benefit my business?!

"Just had a look at the super user friendly website – www.business-blog-buddy.co.uk – it’s absolutely fantastic! Truly a one stop shop for advice on social networking – what a great idea and desperately needed by business owners."

Lisa Childs

More testimonials...

Sussex & North Hampshire Enterprise

Here’s the thing. As soon as there’s anything new, you have to get your head round all those apparently common words, phrases and acronyms that everyone else understands …but you don’t. We explain everything for you saving you time and therefore money.

What are social networks generally?

Quite simply, social networking sites allow you to make connections with your connections and contacts with your contacts. In other words you build up a network of direct connections with people who were previously 2^nd or 3^rd degree contacts.

So basically, social networking provides another way to communicate with existing and potential clients. It can be time consuming to set up initially but once this is done, it can be a very quick way to stay in touch with existing customers and build new relationships. The secret is to be disciplined enough to dedicate regular time to it. eBook 1 gives you lots more detail about this.

The principles of online networking are pretty similar to the way you behave at networking events. So this is very much about adding value rather than the hard sell.

It is also about connecting with people; raising awareness of you and your brand; gaining business; giving business; making contacts; gaining business support and giving and receiving mentoring.

If you would like to see a short video that reinforces all that we have just said in simple and engaging terms we would thoroughly recommend the brilliant video from the clever people at Common Craft: http://www.commoncraft.com/video-social-networking

Tip: It Will Take Up Too Much Time

The ball is in your court on this one, how much time are you going to let it take up? Yes you need to give it some time and attention but after all you need to do that with e-mails and you would not decide to stop using that system of communication. What’s more… the initial set up may take only a couple of hours!

Gone are the days when all of our contacts lived in neighbouring streets, so the ability to efficiently keep in touch with your social network across the country and indeed the globe can actually save you time. There are also plenty of time saving tools around – you might check out www.bufferapp.com and www.tweetdeck.com both of which allow you to pre schedule your messages

Like anything this is down to personal time management (could you set aside 15 minutes per day?) and personal requirements. Is your social networking for business purposes only, for social purposes or for an escape from problems in the “real world”?

After you have been doing it for a while you will see how similar social media interaction is to ordinary conversations.