1) Profiles are Personal – Facebook, LinkedIn, etc… profiles are about you. Use a picture of yourself, talk about yourself, whether it’s related to work or it’s social. Your logo is not you – your business is not you. You may be there to network and promote your business, but people want to do business with people.
Image by elycefeliz via Flickr2) Stop selling me– Don’t talk about how good your “widget” is. Don’t pitch me or tell me that your service can gross me $10,000 a month. Talk to me, share with me, teach me and I’ll listen. If I like what you have to share, I will come to you for the sale.
3) I don’t NEED your product/service – I need air to breath, food & water to sustain myself, and people to love and love me back, that’s about it. I’ll decide if I WANT your product or service based on the value of the conversation we have.
4) Truth and Transparency – be honest in your opinions and insights. Own them – show me the real you and you will win my respect and earn my trust even if I do not agree with you.
5) Move out of “Spam-a-lot” – If I haven’t said yes yet, you can stop emailing me, really. I’ll ask you to stop sending me stuff once, if you don’t listen – I will remove you as a connection.
6) The Opt-In is Mine: Did I opt into your mailing list or did you add me on your own? If I didn’t opt in, there was a reason, do not ever make that decision for me.
7) Strive to make Connections not Sales: You and I may never have a direct consumer / vendor relationship. That does not mean that we don’t know other people that our products / services could benefit. It also doesn’t mean we should not talk to each other. If you are in the conversation for the benefit of the community, I will share your insights with the connections I think will benefit from them.
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Hi there,
I looked over your blog and it looks really good. Do you ever do link exchanges on your blog roll? If you do, I’d like to exchange links with you.
Let me know if you’re interested.
Thanks..
Hi,
nice, brief article — how ever i would like to add on e small note:
there are time when people may not opt-in, not necessarily because they did not want to, but simply because they overlooked or didn’t look deep enough or didn’t feel the need or the ‘opt-in’ was not visible enough…and if one makes a choice for them, they always have the option of subscribing, opting-out….
While respecting everybody’s privacy, all i’m saying is there can be instances where in one may miss some service subscription.
am certain there are services that you never knew of but once you received some mailer / promo from them, you liked it and subscribed to it…
i think i’ve just over said it!
may i add — just like this page was sent to me….
Great post Melissa, I could not agree more. I always try to be of service to all those I am connecting with, and view the relationship as one in which I ask my self, “How can I serve this person?”
Outstanding. That’s what I’ve been writing about these last few months. Build relationships, not sales. The sales will come once you build and establish trust. If a person wants what you are selling they will buy it without you even knowing it was them. Thanks for the great post.
Great Post & Its very true.
I fully agree with you.
Thanks for sharing
Nicely said Melissa.
Thanks.
Perhaps the reason we see so many people in the social network arena who do all the things you mention is because they’ve chased away all their friends in their “real life”.
These are very interesting rules. I would like to keep this in mind. I have done some mistakes with marketing for my debt leads before, and to tell you honestly, it was such a huge blow. I literally damaged my e-mail marketing strategy because of my spammy-sounding headlines. Hopefully, with these tips, I can have my redemption.
Thanks for the comments… brijesh, point taken – but I didn’t email you the post, you came across it because someone else thought enough of it to share it with you and you responded… That’s how Social Networking works 🙂
Perry – it’s all about being open to learning – very cool
I really liked your blog! You have some great content. Check out my blog, Make money Blogging: Blogging to make money
I just created a very informational post about Joint Ventures and how they can increase your profits and traffic.
You should take a minute to read it and let me know what you think:
Make Money Blogging: Joint Venture Relationships boost income and traffic
What I like most about this is the fact that both parties come from a position of strength. For too long most of us have seen the buyer as the weaker of the parties in the transaction. Truth is, if we see the energy exchange between the two parties, where both are contributing what each has to offer and coming from a place of service, both walk away feeling enriched and in a better place than when they started. You can see business transactions as a sport with winners and losers, and that’s when the “Spam-a-lot” crowd comes in. Or you can create win-win situations and be in business forever.
Right on as always, Melissa! 🙂