Network Connections and Policies | Thoughts on Blogs Week of 01-29-10

Are you a turkey in your connection approach?

Crafting a connection policy may save you time delinking later.

Networking is the pillar of the NCP Model promoted and developed by the Social Media Academy.  It reflects that any sound social media engagement consists of  growing your network, contributing to the value of the social ecosystem and participation in the conversation. My personal effort to contribute and participate is with reading and commenting on blogs posts by people in my industry, profession and my clients.

Andrew Baker is one of the leading relationship builders on Xeesm.com and an active networker on LinkedIn.  In a blog post on his Website he has a stated policy for networking and his LinkedIn profile.  He puts into writing how he manages his connections on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.  He defines his social web for connection points as follows:

  • Business / Professional Networking
  • Social / Personal Networking

Taking the time to develop your personal policy on how, when and why you connect with others as well as reasons for disconnecting from people will help with your network growth in the long run.

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Here is my response to his post:

This is exactly the kind of info I have been pondering for a connection policy/guideline. We both seem to be in the B2B space so I
have a high degree of comfort level with how you talk about LinkedIn and how you connect.

Business Networking. I have worked hard at customizing my invitations to reflect my intentions.  However, the majority of people sending me invites do not.  I have tolerance for those with few connections since they are just getting started or have made a strategic decision to maintain a small network.  Because  I do training on LinkedIn, I prefer to offer help and guidance from time to time.

I am however at the point on LI that I need to craft some sort of guideline.   I figure I can’t get mad if I don’t state my terms up front.

Social/Business Networking.  Facebook is another story.  As more business are rushing to this social space to create fan pages, others are just using personal connections to do their peddling for them. I am frustrated with the sales pitch frenzy of many MLM and info marketers on Facebook that have connected with me in the guise of learning and sharing.  Little did I know what they intended to share.  I feel that I can’t be an open networker on Facebook without getting bombed with sales stuff multiple times/day.

I have given people 5 free chances.  Meaning if the first 5 posts from you are only a pitch, I will defriend, deconnect, delink.

On Twitter – it’s the pictures that get you off my list and blocked for sure at least those of the risque nature.  And Swearing.

Do you have a social media connection guideline you have posted?  Why don’t you paste a link in the comments and share?


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Thoughts on blogs|Week of October 4, 2009

Thoughts on Blogs – some selected participation in the social web following the Social Media Academy’s NCP Model

The Social Path-In regards to a wonderful list of ten ways that social media has improved lives in 2008:

I hope you are working on 2009 best of as well. This is the kind of list I should show people who look at me oddly when I say I work with social media.
I also have been trying to collect a list of social media tools that can make our lives easier. Some I have collected are

Carepages.com – helping those with illness stay connected to those who care;

Conference 2.0 – allows conference attendees to connect with others before, after and ever after communities

www.xeesm.com which is in the early beta as a social relationship management tool.
Can you think of any others for my list?

The Productivity Institute-In regards to goal setting for social media time investment:

Bruce, I can’t agree with you more about setting realistic goals.
Doing some kind of assessment first, that analyzes where and who your customers and potential customers are, helps to define issues and spaces.  With goals and spaces defined, you can select the social media tools that best accommodate your available resources (people, time and budget).
Anything that can help see and track where your contacts are and how often you contact them for an organized effort would be very helpful.  Just this week LinkedIn introduced a new feature for organizing contacts (part of the paid upgrade), so they are introducing features that allow for more management of contacts not just linking.  This all helps.

Kyle Lacy -In regards to a post on tips for using Twitter in business setting:

I found your list to be a great compilation of tips for Twitter with a lot of new ones for me to digest.I am ready for the next round of social media tools that will bring more functionality for social relationship management.  For instance, I was running out of room on cards for social media links, plus for the 35 -55 age group, the font is getting too small.. Rather than just place on my website page, which I did as well, I wanted something that might provide more functionality.  I have used the www.xeesm tool and it has helped.  I plan to attend Social Media Tools Week to learn about others. Right now I can track easily all my comments across the blogs I read and post to.  Pretty good when I want to review where I have been for the week.

Social Wayne -In regards to a post on two services that allow you to put social media links in one place:

It was interesting to learn about the two sites/services you mentioned Dandyid and Card.ly.  Do they also track and find my comments across the blogs and sites one comments and posts on?  Some new functionality for social media tools will be front and center during Social Media Tools Week 11/16-21. Ideally, the best tools would let me track who I contact and how often in any social media space would be the most helpful.  Even better if it tied into a CRM system so that I could see better the inbound marketing efforts versus the traditional marketing and where the largest impact is.

www.xeesm.com seems to be going in the right direction.  They are introducing some new functionality during SM Tools week.  I have found this tool quite useful during the preliminary beta and hope they will offer more functionality that will fit my ideal tool better.

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