I had a social networking consultant walk into my office one day a few years ago and tell me, “If you don’t do social networking, then you don’t exist.” This is when my social networking journey began. I went out to Linked-In, Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, Plurk, and Tumbler and set up accounts.
I was mainly interested in using the social networking for business purposes, but have to admit that I did spend hours on Facebook staring at photos of people that I went to High School with and trying to remember who they were.
I frequently go out to these sites and talk about projects that I am working on. I also upload portfolio pieces as I get projects finished. I discovered an easy way to send status updates to all of the Social Networks at once, I do that through a web site called ping.fm.
Whenever I meet a new business contact, I add them into my Linked-In. I have found social networking sites to be a useful tool to connect or re-connect with people that would otherwise be difficult to connect with. The reason it is easier to connect with people is that you can just type in a person’s name and city and it will bring up photos of everyone on that site with that name in that city.
This comes in handy for spreading the word about what you do or anything for that matter. For example, one day, the daughter of a former neighbor contacted me about doing a web design for her. One day, I was helping my son look for a job and went to Facebook and typed in “helping my son look for a job in the metals industry” and minutes later a friend of a friend contacted me and said that he had a position available and to send my son over.
I also signed up for some groups that I thought might have some networking benefits. One of the groups that I joined was an alumni association for one of the universities that I attended. I recently received a post from someone whose name I recognized from college. I contacted her through the group and learned that she also has her own design business. We are having lunch on Friday to talk about possibly collaborating on some jobs.
Overall, social networking sites can be helpful. I think you just have to be careful about adding too much personal information and data out there to avoid security issues.
Tags: marketing-strategy, SEO, social media marketing, webdesign