Monday, May 12, 2008

Expanding Your Network Horizontally

Ok, So now you have 500 Friends, What Now?...


If you have been busy collecting friends on face book and not spent the time to segregate and analyse them then you have wasted a huge opportunity. Now you will have to go back and plough through a huge unmanageable list to find the diamonds and gold nuggets that you let slip through your fingers.


Time is your most Valuable Asset

Your time is your most valuable asset on facebook and learning how to leverage it effectively is going to be something everyone who is serious about social network marketing will have to learn.

As yet no one has developed an application to do this for us and unless you want to pay a lot of money for Act or other contact management software you are going to have to do the job by hand.


I discovered a great post on Brian Campbell's fan page wall by Kim Fleming (Austin, TX) she has her privacy settings on so I couldn't thank her for this. I hope she contacts me after I publish this

here is her short article, I have edited it and added a few of my own comments


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I wanted to show everyone my easy system for organizing their Friend List:


Organize Your Friend List

The Friend List is a private feature that only YOU can see. It is different from "Top Friends" or "Circle of Friends", which are optional applications.

The Friend List is an embedded feature in Facebook. Access it by following this path:

Go to FRIENDS on the top of your screen in your Facebook account

Click the drop-down arrow

Select "All Friends"

You will see a thumbnail (small picture) of each friend

The Friends List feature is on the right of the screen

It allows you to make a "new list", which is a way of organizing your friends.


Make Sub Lists

I made several "new lists" with these titles:


Categorise by Size

1-200

200-500

500-1000

1000-2000

2000-2500

2500+


Categorise by Type

Centres Of Influence

Family

Non-Internet Marketing

Not Active

Business/professional

Brian Campbell's Friends/fans


Analyse

What do those numbers mean?

Those numbers indicate the number of friends someone has; for instance, a friend with 397 friends would go in the Friend List titled 200-500.

After you have grouped your Friends List by level of activity, you are in a better position to leverage your time. And develop a strategy each time you go onto facebook and you have finished your basic administration of accepting friends, joining groups and answering messages.

Keep in mind some very important things:


Are they Newbies?

1. Look over your list of friends in the lowest category, those with 1 to 200 friends. Are they NEW TO FACEBOOK? You could be their first impression of Facebook. Show them how to add your blog feed to their page; get them into your funnel. Tell them the best groups to join and what friending strategies to use and how not to get themselves banned


Look for the Overlap

2. When adding friends, make note of how many mutual friends you have. If the friend has 500 friends, but you only 5 friends in common, there are 495 new people who will see your comments to that person's Wall. On the other hand, if someone has 500 friends, of whom 475 are the same as yours, then only 25 new people will see anything you post to that friend's profile page.


Build Relationships

3. Build relationships once you add friends. Get to know them, this doesn't mean just slapping your profile on their wall as many people seem to be doing. I look upon this as close to spam. It means spending a few minutes looking at their profile, checking out their blogg and then writing something that grabs their interest and might initiate a reply. I often write on the wall and then send a message saying I have written on the wall, with a brief introduction of myself.


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Be Attentive

That was a great piece of advice, its is so important to know where to spend your time. I make sure that as I add new friends I don't let any slip through the net, I need to know who everyone is, what their interests are, what business they are in, and how many friends they have.


More friends isn't necessarily better

What I discovered is having lots of friends isn't the most important factor. Don't get blasé when you reach 200 friends and think people with small friends lists aren't worth bothering with. Its quality not quantity that counts and often you will find someone who only has 30 or 40 friends but every single one of them is outstanding and has something in common with you.


High Value Profiles

After a while you can see what a high value profile looks like, its well organised, doesn't' t have lots of useless apps, every bit of real estate on the first 1-2 pages is highly optimised and geared to impress. Just having a professional photo on your profile says a lot about the person who is behind it. If you are targeting high income professionals to network with this is an easy way to move fast through someone else's huge list, just scroll down quickly and choose the people who jump out, It's what they intended by making their picture striking.


Be Yourself and Have Fun

I hope this has given you something to think about and set you to work exploring and getting to know your own list, the most important thing to remember is be yourself and have fun.


Don't get Banned

If you have a huge list or you manage several groups you stand the risk of getting banned if you send out too many messages in any one day. Facebook does not tolerate anyone marketing too agressively. Also cutting and pasting is a big No No. there is no quick way to get friends you have to do it the hard way unless you can make yourself famous and then people will flock to become your friend.



Build on a Solid Foundation

Provide valuable content, help as many people as you can and your reputation will slowly build itself on a solid foundation of relationships, friends and loyalties. A list of meaningless unknown faces that don't even know who you are is not a list you can leverage effectively.

7 comments:

TheTraderCoach said...

Hello Ian,

Thanks for taking the time to write and share the Facebook guide - helps save steps and provides focus.

Curious, what were you referring to by cut and past and being "banned". While you are at it, what exactly gets anyone banned - if you know, that is.

Thanks again,

John McLaughlin, Stock Day Trader's - Consultant / Coach

TheTraderCoach said...

Ian, never used this type of blog comment before - not sure my response worked.

You can respond with email to Service@DayTradersWin.com, if you like.

John McLaughlin, Stock Day Trader's - Consultant / Coach

GSN said...

Ian,
Excellent article, this is something everyone should be doing.
I appreciate you sharing it.

- Jeff

Clare Josa said...

Hi Ian,
Thank you for sharing this post. It's SO useful.

Will be spreading it around Facebook for you!
Clare

Anonymous said...

Hi Ian,

Thanks for the highlight!

I have loads more tips on tweaking your profile and your list.

@John Mclaughlin Don't "cut and paste" the greeting that you type into the message box when requesting that someone add you as a friend. Change it up a little.
I usually mention that we have mutual friends or something in common.

@Ian lol, sorry...changing privacy settings right now...I've been toying all of the settings to figure out different things which I will share with you.

Have a great day!!

Kim Fleming

Annie said...

Hi Ian,
Found your post very helpful. I did get banned for about half a day. I guess that facebook really doesn't like you posting a link from your group on another group and considers it spam. Also guess I was inviting lots of people to join my friends list and group. Anyway would love to know any other no-no's that I should watch out for.

I have a blog here and would love to get some feedback from other FB friends.

Thanks for all your helpful tips.
Annie

25th Hour Marketing Services said...

Thank you Kim and Ian for this valuable information. I will now take the time with my mostly "quality" 139 friends and categorize them. I can really see the benefit in doing so!

Krista Stoker
25th Hour Marketing Services