On December 16th, Tyler Dockery gave a presentation to Business Networking International on growing your business with Social Networking. Social networking is what BNI is really all about, and the concept of using online social networking like linkedin, twitter or Facebook was very well received. So what is the most important idea behind social networking?

By and large, the idea behind social networking is to introduce yourself to others, make meaningful connections, and raise the level of awareness people have for yourself and your company. In Tyler Dockery’s presentation, working within your social network was presented as a series of Do’s and Don’ts you need to consider to grow your circle and how to deliberate grow your social circle.

Focusing on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, Dockery Design staff explained each social networking niche, and how to expand within it while growing your business and its awareness.

LinkedIn

By far the most professional of the group, and encouraged for business networkers. LinkedIn is a great way to make connections with people you may never meet face-to-face.

Do:

Update your status with WORK RELATED notes.
Updating your status on LinkedIn is a feature which allows you to give small, twitter-like message within LinkedIn. This is a great time to let potential contacts and employers to see what you’re up to. Talk about what technology you’re using, what business goals you are working toward or achieving, what milestones you are passing, and what positive outcomes you achieved or are achieving with customers, clients, and vendors. Show people that you are working hard, moving forward, and worthy of praise in the workplace.

Ask for recommendations, give recommendations.
Within LinkedIn, there is a location for recommendations… but what’s it doing for you? Ask your friends, co-workers, vendors, and clients for recommendations. Get their real feedback on what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Tyler Dockery’s recommendation: in 2010, ask all of last year’s clients to give you their thoughts on your performance in an email. If its good, forward the email to your boss, or webmaster to get them posted in public. You should also ask the best emailers if they will send that feedback as a recommendation through LinkedIn. Similarly, you should GIVE recommendations. Give them to any connection you find worthy— be proactive, and don’t wait for them to ask.

Use it for prospecting new work and when hiring.
Need new blood? Use LinkedIn as an indicator of their business professionalism. After you receive the prospective resume, look them up on LinkedIn. Does the resume and the LinkedIn profile match? Have they changed their titles or embellished their performance? Have they downplayed or left off certain jobs? Is their status or previous status answers full of work-related items, or are they filled with *ahem* non-professional sayings or slogans? Read their recommendations, and compare it back to the resume. You may be surprised what you find, or you may find that they are more qualified than you thought!

Don’t:

Update your status with personal or social notes.
People don’t care that you are having a BBQ. LinkedIn is for business. Don’t include profanity, references to activities you wouldn’t bring up in an interview, or anything which might stereotype you.

Ask for a recommendation in exchange for one.
Nothing is more despicable than offering recommendations ONLY if one is given in return. Alternately, don’t ask for a recommendation when you choose to give one. If you earned one, congrats. If you give one, congrats. If you are trying to wheel and deal when reputation is supposed to be on the line… Shame on you. No, really.

Try to link with someone you don’t know (you’ll get banned)
Hey, I hear you’re new to the area… Why not say that we know each other from way back?  You don’t know me? Hey, don’t be like that— I’m just looking for a new job. What do you mean “denied?” I thought you wanted to increase your connections! Hey! How come you blocked my inmail? Look at that! Now I have to enter everyone’s proper email address to make a connection… This just doesn’t seem to be working out for me…Why doesn’t everybody get it, like I do? Am I the only sane person out here?

Grow your circle by:

Adding connections through your email accounts.
LinkedIn allows you to add connections based on email accounts. Go ahead, why not consider adding anyone you can, and getting started with a bang.

Ask for introductions to new people
Go ahead, get to know some people. Look at a connection that you have. They have connections too. You may be surprised to know that you can see all of their connections by name and job title. See one that would make a good connection for you or your business? Why not ask if you can get connected. Choose that person, and click the button for “get introduced through a connection.” Write a nice letter to the person you’d like to know, and then a short note to the person who can introduce you. Chances are, people are polite enough to introduce you to someone you haven’t met. Don’t believe me? Think of how many introductions you get at cocktail parties.

Creating Groups, joining groups, asking group questions, answering group questions
LinkedIn allows you to create groups and join groups. Within those groups, it allows you to ask questions and answer questions. These are perfect places to show that you are a master of your craft and area of knowledge. Go ahead, really shine. Make the extra effort, and make sure to always give a link to your profile or business website.

Facebook

Facebook is the latest iteration of the social side of social networking. Building off of Friendster, and MySpace, Facebook gained an early following by registering thousands of college students across the USA, and then encouraging them to connect and keep in contact with one another. Facebook is less interested in your business and more interested in you as a person and a personality. For your business, use Facebook as a way to show that while you are all about your business, you have a human side with personal, social, and activity-based actions that exist alongside your business.

Do:

Update your status with SOCIALLY RELATED notes.
Tell us what you’re doing. Are you getting together with friends after a long day? Tell us about the things that really interest you, and you will connect with other people. They will see similar interests, and they will immediately understand that there is more to you than just work. They can relate to you with these similar interests, and you can bolster and grow the interpersonal relationship that stands alongside your working relationship. They may let errors slide and feel small victories are larger ones if they know you personally.

Update your status with Volunteering notes.
Let people know that you really care. Tell everyone where you are giving of yourself for the greater benefit of others. Stand up and be counted, show everyone what you believe in, and give till it hurts. Of course, you can let everyone know you’re doing it, but perhaps you’re just trying to spur them into taking similar actions…

Get reconnected with people from waaaaaay back.
Facebook allows you to  note which schools you went to, and gives you the options to connect with the people who went there at the same time. You also get to see their picture as an added bonus. So go ahead, remember the time all the tough kids stuffed you into a mailbox, or the time you helped lead the team to victory, or the time you were in weekend detention. Go ahead, get connected. That’s what this is all about after all, isn’t it?

Use it for prospecting new hires.
Nobody wants to get caught looking foolish. However, you might be surprised just how many people act like a fool on Facebook, and invite other people to respond foolishly. Once you have the resume of a new hire, check to see if they are on Facebook. Why hire someone who openly talks about ethics or morals that your company disdains? Many people write about their bosses, co-workers, or work situations. This is a good time to see if you might be hiring one of these people…

Don’t:

Expect people to be open to business-related talk here.
Facebook is really for letting people know what your likes and dislikes are. Its about letting them see beyond the desk and the suit and get connected with you on a personal level. If you are trying to talk about great stocks, or why Long-Term-Care insurance is the right move for young people today, prepare to be unfriended or blocked.

Constantly send people things from games or activities if they don’t respond.
See a great activity or fun game? Why not share it with your friends. Sending dozens of these each day or week? Get prepared to be blocked. People may want to do this, and people may not want to. Do some research. Before you send a second fish/plant/weapon, to somebody… see if they are sending one back. Share and share alike, but nobody likes junkmail. Givers gain, but if you don’t get a response, give it up.

Grow your circle by:

Creating fan pages ( become a fan of your own business )
As with LinkedIn, you can create groups pages, fan pages, and games or quizes. You can spread some information, give some kudos where they are due, answer questions, and ask for expert advice.

Creating quizzes
When Tyler Dockery was in school, he looked like an unattractive version of Napolean Dynamite.  That’s not worth knowing. However, the fact that Tyler Dockery created Christmas ornaments for Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1995 might be. Knowing that Tyler Dockery has work in the Smithsonian permanent exhibit might be. Creating quizzes helps to keep you close to your friends, and heck, they just might learn something!

Adding contacts from email, old schools, and anywhere you think you can!
Facebook allows you to make connections from several email clients. It also allows you to note where you went to school, where you currently live, and what groups you have been part of in the past. Use these connections to grow your circle and reconnect with old pals, old flames, or just somebody you used to know.

Ask/answer questions in groups
Like in LinkedIn,  ask questions and answer questions. Assert your rockstar status and monstrous level of profound knowledge. Or pick somebody else’s brain. Show you are involved, even if you only check your account once a month.

Twitter

With blogging being such a mainstream activity, people have become used to having an idea, gathering more ideas and evidence, and then formulating their thoughts into concrete, personal positions. It takes a long time to come up with these stances. Twitter was made with the understanding that between these major posts, people could note what they were doing, where they were going, and what they were thinking without having to fortify their thoughts. In effect, this was supposed to fill the gaps between blogposts. Now, everyone uses twitter to micro-blog. Using it for business is a tough racket, but it can be done.

Do:

Talk about your personal life.
Let’s face it, people want to know about the small things too. A great personality has quirks, idiosynchracies, and steadfast beliefs. Go ahead, share them with the world. We love the imperfections of people. Tell us about your personal life, and we will love you for it. Unless you’re boring.

Talk about your business life.
Twitter allows you to give us the skinny on your work situation. Go ahead, promote your latest deal. Give us the link to a great website. Show us an awesome tutorial, or lead us to your latest blogpost. Use this as a great place to reach people you would never meet in your normal everyday life.

Refer to your friends and your website.
Tell us who your friends are. Tell us about the connections you have. Turn us on to a funny twitter stream, or the place that gives you the strength to make it through the week.

Personalize your twitter page.
Take the twitter page, and really make it your own. Choose a background that suits your personality, and let people get a much closer understanding of you. Free tools for this exist. If you haven’t done so already, get a great, full list from my earlier blogpost: Free Twitter Backgrounds .

Don’t:

Oversell.
Know what’s worse than receiving 15 twitters in a row from the same person with the same content? Neither do we. Three in a row is just as bad, so don’t think that if you scale it back to 10 or 5 repeats in a week we’ll let you slide. Its Soooo much easier to get hit as a spammer on twitter these days, and we thank them for it.
Do ONLY links to other sites.
Getting in 7 tweets a week? If they are links to other people’s websites, what’s the point in you even having a twitter account? Tell us about you, ask us questions, engage US. Moving us off to another person’s website is really not worth our time, especially after 5 similar tweets.

Grow your circle by:

Posting 1-3 times a day MAXIMUM.
In twitter, overachieving is great… but only if you are recognized as an icon. Everyone else will get tired of you quickly if you incessently yammer on and on. Try to keep it to once a day, or three times in a day max. Don’t overload people, they will probably have enough twitter traffic to worry about without having to worry about you.
Following people, especially new twitter users.
If you follow someone, they will probably follow you back. Again, givers gain. The fastest, easiest way to gain a monster following is to follow people of interest, and those with similar tastes. The real jackpot can be new followers. They won’t have ANY followers, and will probably follow you just to have something to do. To get in touch with those new followers, search for “hello world!” which is the default first tweet, or search for ” my first follower” which is a great way to target people with only a few followers— people deeply interested in growing their circle, who will probably follow you just to keep in the twitter philosophy.

Talk on your preferred twitter specialties.
As a twitter member, you will probably want to talk about your work. This is a great way to emphasize your specialties and your true skills in the workplace. Ask the hard-hitting questions, provide the real answers, and let people know when you are pushing the envelope of your skills. Grow your circle by outlining your mastery.

Social  networking can help you grow your business, but only if you are using it, and using it respectfully. Just like working with tools can cut you if you are working fast and loose, Social Networks can make you look foolish, clumsy, and unprofessional. Strive to work closely within the above limits, and you can be on the fast track to growing your business and its awareness.

TOP HINTS ON USING SOCIAL NETWORKING

After talking to BNI about Growing Your Business With Social Networking in Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, Tyler Dockery asked people to note the hints they felt were the most helpful. Below are the top hints for LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

TWITTER: Add your twitter address to the bottom of your emails. It will only take a second, and is a fast way to get your name out to the people you already have a connection with.

FACEBOOK: Get connected with groups in your area or old school friends who still live near you, and create a social function. Hold the function yourself as an after-hours event in an attempt to foster those connections

LINKEDIN: Get connected with everyone in your networking group (like BNI for instance). Before a meeting, look at their LinkedIn profile and find a good connection. At the next meeting, shake hands with them, and ask for a personal introduction to that connection. Chances are, they will happily make that connection for you.