Get the Most Out of Social Media w/ Reciprocity
Posted on 31 October 2009 by jasonverdelli
In this post I want to cover an important topic that will help you start seeing better results using social media. As I was doing research lately, I found many discussion and tweets about how to start properly using social media for business. The reason why this is seemingly difficult is because you know you don’t want to come across as annoying or as a spammer while at the same time you want to start building relationships that turn into dollars, at least from a business perspective. My key fundamental guideline behind using social media for business is to “CREATE VALUE OPPORTUNITIES”. This is a practice otherwise known as reciprocity. When you start looking at the connections that you have on LinkedIn, friends/fans on Facebook and/or followers on Twitter, start asking yourself “how can I be valuable to everyone connected to me”. This goes beyond what you think is valuable. It requires a small bit of research and conversation on your part. Remember, being successful using social media requires work, there is no getting around this.
When you create value to people that you are connected with on your social networks, you will find it much easier to ask for what you want versus trying to think of ways to persuade them. It’s really that simple. Most of the people I know that are successful using social media to grow their business have simply positioned themselves as valuable to others connected to them on their social networks. They simply ask for what they want.
So let’s break this down a bit further.
I have devised a list of the ways that you can start creating reciprocity (i.e. exchanged value) with others:
- Read their profiles and comment back to them about it. People like to know that others are taking a level of interest in them
- Comment on a status updated they posted that you can relate to
- Introduce them to someone within your network. Essentially start levering your connections to build new ones.
- Offer to write an article about them on your blog
- Invite them to join you on your internet radio show (i.e. Blog Talk Radio)
- Offer to include them in your next email newsletter
- Tweet a message out to your followers on Twitter or any other social network allowing for status updates
- Invite them to a new website that you just joined
- Give them a recommendation on LinkedIn
- Re-Tweet their blog posts and/or news articles
- Join their email newsletter and when you receive it, forward to some of your close contacts. If they review their statistics, they will be able to see that you were the one that forwarded their email to others
- Ask them to join a relevant group that you are hosting or involved in on LinkedIn or any other social network
- Give them something for free. Send them a resourceful document that you feel is valuable and pertainant to their business – for example, I usually send people my growing 15-20 page document of valuable social media websites that are free to use and effective. What a better way to start providing value and educating them about what you do at the same time.
These are just a few of many effective ways that you can start creating value for your connections. What happens here is that by implementing some of these methods you will start to find that these people will start becoming interested in you. In the beginning you took the time to focus on them in order to create value in the relationship. Once they start seeing your efforts as valuable to them you will see a relationship starting to build. Again, this doesn’t necessarily have to be backed-up by face-to-face meetings even though they are definitely effective. This requires patience in the beginning, but will pay large dividends in the end.
So now that you have been implementing some of the different ways to create value in the relationship, what’s next? Start focusing on what you want out of the relationship. Through this thought process you will want to ask questions to yourself such as “Is this person a potential end customer or are they a connector to others that may be potential customers”. You walk a fine line when always viewing your direct connections as potential end customers because you risk possibly souring the relationship through the sales process. I generally think of people that are directly connect to me as people that are connect to others that would fit nicely as a client for me. Even though my direct connections may be potential clients, I don’t go into the sales process with them. It generally happens naturally as they will start attracting themselves to your product or service. With this in mind, make a list of the things you are giving and want to get out of the relationship.
Below I have provided you with an excel sheet that you can use as a worksheet to keep track of your relationships. It is simple and works well. Your main goal in the beginning should be to concentrate on one contact per day. Think about this, if you could work on reciprocity (i.e. exchanging value) with one connection per day, that is 365 new people during a year that become avid fans and loyal connections. Think of what can come out of this for you.
Here is the worksheet:
Download Reciprocity Worksheet
To finish, I urge you to start paying attention and developing value to 1 connection per day while using the reciprocity worksheet as a tracking tool. You will start to see how powerful strengthening relationships with your connections on the social networks can really be. Ultimately you will be in a better position to ask for what you want without souring relationships. This concept goes along with the post I wrote about Quality versus Quantity in Social Media. That is another great read.
Thank you so much for reading this article and if you have any questions, please feel free to let me know. My premium membership available here on jasonverdelli.com may help you in implementing this strategy and others. I am only accepting 100 premium members so I urge to to consider. Here is a link to Learn More About the Premium Membership.
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Tags | blog, email newsletter, facebook, reciprocity, Social Media, social networks, tweets, value opportunities
