« "The Conversation" Continues: | Main | Looking forward to VON Israel 2007 »
October 13, 2007
How to Win Friends and Influence People with Social Media:
I wonder how Dale Carnegie would have approached social media.
These days there are thousands of people who are “winning friends and influencing people” by implementing their own personal social media strategy. These are the people who have recognized the value of investing the personal energy needed in the building out their personal social media networks. These are people are by doing what it takes to build a substantial list of followers on platforms like twitter while at the same growing their friends network on places like Facebook. People like Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan.
These are people who have discovered by posting a URL on a twitter update or updating their Facebook status message, it is possible to get the people who are part of their respective social media networks who happen to be online at the same moment to take a specific action. In many cases they are able to turn a passive friend into an active one. Sometimes this leads to incremental comments posted in their respective blog posts; sometimes this is how they share a new website with their friends; other times they use their networks to check the pulse of a specific topic. There is really no shortage of the ways resourceful people are leveraging their own social media networks.
The last time I checked, Robert Scoble had 6,355 following him on twitter and was managing to deal with about 4,937 friends on facebook. In my book this makes Robert Scoble a social media “King.”
Just as a point of comparison, my friend Chris Brogan who is also very active in Social Media at last check had 1,978 following him on twitter and is dealing with 1,288 friends on facebook is more of a social media “Prince.”
How are YOU leveraging YOUR Social Media Network?
--
Readers of my blog are invited to join me on both twitter and Facebook.
Tags: Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan, facebook, twitter, Social Media, Jeff Pulver
Share this post:
Digg |
del.icio.us |
Reddit |
Newsvine |
Google Bookmark |
Yahoo MyWeb |
StumbleUpon
Posted by jeff on October 13, 2007 04:06 PM | Permalink
Additional resources: Watch PrimeTime TV Shows | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos
Comments
Some people have gathered thousands of friends on Facebook and thousands of followers on Twitter, but do they know what to do with them? I think the rise of celebrity commenters on blogs is more interesting. These are people who are building out their personal social networks by contributing to / enhancing others efforts and personally I think this is a lot more rewarding than just clicking the 'Add Friend' button.
I think we are now heading for an era of ‘Citizen Criticism’ where the comment field becomes more important than the main post - I wrote more about this today on my blog, for reference you can find the post here: http://www.nickburcher.com/2007/11/citizen-criticism-rise-of-celebrity.html - I would be happy to hear your comments!
Posted by: Nick Burcher at November 6, 2007 07:25 PM
I believe with social media a lot of people have figured out that's it's just a popularity contest. It's not actually about actually having friends, rather just saying things that people like to hear. No one, can keep up with thousands of friends, even if they did it as a full time job.
Posted by: Influence Others at October 18, 2007 05:06 PM
When you look at your FB friends, I think you need to ask yourself, how do you define friends? Do you know them, or at least something about them? Otherwise in what way are they friends? How do you interact with them? I don't think that many people can have thousands of friends.... Unless you are a professional networker like my friend Moshe Weiss who has over 10,000 contacts on Linkedin!
Posted by: Moshe Maeir at October 14, 2007 05:56 PM
I have 9 friends on facebook and use no other instant messaging stuff. I suppose I am not "leveraging" to my potential. I do not want to become too addicted to the stuff as is not my real job or related to it. But it does allow me to keep in contact with friends I had while living in Vietnam. I am keeping friends and influencing them.
Posted by: jonathan_edwards at October 14, 2007 01:13 AM