Question Stream: Social Networking Leadership Strategy, Part 1

On December 12, David Nour and I jointly presented a webinar on Social Networking Leadership Strategy. During that event we fielded many questions, far too many to answer during the session. We agreed to tackle several questions each over a period of time and eventually answer all of them.

We also decided that there were probably others out there that have the same questions. So, we decided to post them for all to read. You can access David's Relationship Economics blog here, and my blog here.

To set the context, we were focusing on networks that are deployed inside an organization, association or other enterprise, that were designed for business purposes. We also spent a lot of time talking about how to build your own network, using a mixture of methods.

Ok, let's get started.

Q: What are some good ideas for attracting people to your social network?

A: This answer turns out to be one related to the communication of intent. You need to tell people what the network is for. Seems obvious, but many don't focus on this simple thing. Is this a network for personal development, business development, personal interests - spell it out. People do what they are incentivized to do. Are you clearly communicating 'what's in it for me' to them?

If you believe that a principle reason for joining a network in the first place is to connect to people and content, then a clever strategy will be to highlight the types of people in the network you can connect to (potential mentors, study partners, peers, business contacts, etc) and the content that might be appealing (white papers, case studies, best practices, etc).

If you are clear on intent and purpose, then you really only have a communication challenge. How do you reach your target audience, how frequently, how succinct are the messages? You might want to look at how a good marketing communications person would address the problem. Even if you have built this community for an internal audience, they are, in fact, your market, and strategies for MarCom are directly applicable here.

Finally, Larry Winget at a recent Wealth Mastery conference said that business success is actually very easy, "Ask people what they want, then give it to them".

Have you asked your audience what they want?