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This is how you filp Social Networking On Its Head.

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When someone says social networking what are they talking about.  It is not a technical term really.  Humans have been doing social networking for 1000’s of years.  What types of social networking do most small businesses do today? Here is a list of a few to get you started:
Business Network International (BNI), Local Chamber of Commerce, Moose Lodge, Knights of Columbus, United Way  , Rotary International and I am sure you could name many more.

Lately we have been hearing about all kinds of tools that people should be using to promote themselves in networking circles. Many of these we have talked about in the past on our site. Here is a list to name a few. LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter seem to be getting all the press these days.

I am going to use the original social network, the local bar or pub, to explain how these tools and organizations relate to one another and are very complementary. Originally people met at the local pub. This is where people got to know one another and made personal connections and all kinds of business deals. Things have not changed very much as far as getting to trust one another. You have to get to know someone to trust them.

Technology has gotten cheap enough and common enough to allow for free communication between people but we still need to get to know one another. I the days of yesteryear we never really had to venture past our local communities to do business. In today’s business world things are changing very fast and it is often beneficial to know people all over the world even when we run a small business.

Social Networks provide a  way to get to know one another without having to physically meet.  If you get to know people online that little influence will allow you to get people to try a product or service that you suggest and that means cha-ching for you.

Why do you want to know all of these people? Why do you have to care about any of this? Can’t you just do your job the way you have always done it.  Here is the problem, the marketplace is armed with these tools already. And they  will communicate with one another and have opinions about you and your competitions service whether you manage your social network or not.  Remember with social networking if you are silent then you are invisible.

Image that I have a magic wand and I can make an pub where everyone is supportive of your business and are open with you about how you are doing, how to make your product or service better.  You can get all kinds of feedback what you do well, what you do not so well and refer you new business to boot. This is the promise of social networking. It sounds pretty cool now, doesn’t it?

Lets say you meet someone in the real world. How do you know who they know? You have to ask them, right? What is the problem here?  The problem is that people do not keep a list of all there business and personal relationships on them. These connections between people are not always visible. What the social networking tools do is let you see the relationships between people so everyone can benefit from your connections. They make the relationships explicit, searching, maintainable and bankable. Two good things come from the tools. First you can find connections to people you need. Second, People in your network can ask you for help based on who you know so you become a resource to them. This does wonderful things for you from a business perspective. You are not just taking business from the network you are able to give back to it so this is a real win win deal for everyone.

I like to think of social networks as mapping software. The social networking tools that are popular today serve as a way to map connections between people. Sometimes with all the technology this basic goal is lost on us. If you think of social networking as a mapping tool you will not be as intimated by the process. You have a goal and you want to get to know X.  Now you can use tools that will make that happen for you.