As I was preparing myself to participate in the 31-Day Challenge over at Problogger, I did a personal audit, not of the content of my blog, but of my marketing and networking (which are much newer skills for me).
I realized that many of us fall into the trap of netfaking; performing networking-esque activities that serve little real purpose, but make us think we’re marketing ourselves. Actions which are the easy (but mostly useless) way to feel good about our networking.
Many successful book and product releases in the recent future can be linked back to powerful network building (The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss comes to mind, as does the very recent I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi). By earning the trust of a large group of targeted individuals (one at a time, usually) you put yourself in a powerful position; when you release product, the people most likely to talk about it (spreading your business) will see it first.
But are you really building a network?
I realized that I don’t do nearly as much as I think I do, with respect to marketing and networking. Consider the following overrated actions (many of which are highly recommended by blogging experts):
- Submitting your posts to social network sites.
Alone, this does very little; yes you may get a click or three from when your post first appears on Digg or StumbleUpon, but unless your content is extremely viral (often inversely proportional to useful), the broad social networks are less than stellar networking tools.
- Submitting your posts to blog carnivals.
These are slightly better, since the content (and thus readers) are usually focused on a particular topic (hopefully your topic). However, many blog carnivals today are all-topics, all-accepted; a recipe for a 300-link post that nobody will ever want to read through.
- Tweeting your blog posts.
Announcing your blog posts on Twitter has a few downsides; the speed of Twitter means that your “notification” is only going to be seen by people for a few minutes; often your followers will feel like these types of posts are spam (one person I follow fills my screen with batches of 6-10 posts at at time; I’m strongly considering un-following them); and tinyurl links don’t exactly inspire action or clicking.
- Commenting on other blogs.
Yes, commenting is important; leaving “great post!” is not. Further, on the most popular blogs, people rarely read beyond the first few comments, so if you’re comment number 73, you might be wasting your time.
- Sharing blogroll links.
Please hear me out as I tread further into blogging sacrilege territory. Again, the problem is devaluation; when you are a member of a 400 link blogroll, the SEO benefits don’t change, but the real benefits (read; people finding your blog) do. A blind trade of links (which are likely to be buried in a sidebar somewhere) doesn’t do as much as you might think for increasing meaningful connections.
So what should we do about this? How can you and I turn our netfaking into networking? First a few general principles, then we’ll apply them to the above “weak” marketing techniques.
Add value.
Yes, the phrase “add value” has become something of a buzzword in the Web 2.0 world, but this is one concept that rings true. People like when you’re generous. People like when you give them things/information. Social dynamics are predicated upon this; people want to be associated with and work with people of high value. Consequently, the more value you add in interactions (offline or online), the better.
Maintain a conversation.
Many social interactions are too short to demonstrate or transfer value. “Digging” a post doesn’t provide much useful feedback to a writer; spamming an unrelated link in a blog’s comment box and never returning provide no value to anyone; posting your breakfast on Twitter doesn’t help anyone.
The onus is on you to maintain and cultivate a conversation with people. If a blogger posts an interesting article; don’t just make a comment; ask questions, provide evidence, link to a similar article your wrote (or one that argues the point). But don’t stop there! Continue the discussion with other commenters, talk to the writer off-blog. If a study comes out supporting their point a few weeks down the road, send it to them.
Real conversations like this, in which value is shared over time, lead to mutual respect and trust, and thus lasting relationships that you can add to your network.
Networking is work; it takes time.
This relates closely to the above tenet, but it bears repeating. When I first started blogging, I allocated 1 hour a week for networking! Absurd. I used that hour (often less) to send off my posts to the various social networking sites and blog carnivals. Maybe I’d make a post or two on a forum.
That just doesn’t cut it. People underestimate the work that goes into social networking, and the also fail to plan to do it. As in so many other fields, automation helps here. Blocking off one hour per day to network, with specific networking tasks (we’ll get to those soon) would be more realistic. Once it becomes a routine, things will get easier (I recall struggling to think of things to do during “networking time”).
Currently, I spend about 30 minutes a day just reading other fashion and marketing blogs, and commenting on the ones I can contribute value to. I feel that this is still woefully insufficient, but I’m making progress.
Now, let’s revisit those netfaking tasks and see how we can turn them into networking (these are thinks I personally want to start doing better, so I’m in the same boat as many of you):
- Targeted Social Networks
Most of the major social networking sites (Digg, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Delicious, etc.) have tools in place that let you identify and link with “friends” or other people with similar interests. Whenever possible, you want to target who you send information to, as this makes it more likely that you’ll also be providing value. The average Digg user does not care about your post on the latest fighter jet propulsion system. There is a group of a few hundred users who really care. Find them and talk to them.
- Be picky with blog carnivals.
This largely follows the same vein as my advice for social networks; don’t concern yourself with unfocused, uninterested carnivals and users. Find carnivals that are hosted by people who care about the topic, receive contributions that are always on-topic, and promote to a devoted readership. If there aren’t any out there, build one yourself. Also, don’t be afraid to “cut” articles. This isn’t Pee-Wee Football; if you only let the best through, your carnival will gain trust among the readers, and the contributors will compete harder against themselves to get in. Win-win-win.
- Tweet with a purpose.
I do not recommend tweeting all of your blog posts. In fact, you should tweet very few of them, and those that you do tweet should not go out en masse. Instead, be patient. Wait until someone has a question, or posts a similar tweet; then add value with your work and start to build a conversation. If other people want to join in, great, but don’t assume everyone is interested from the start. (This means @replies and direct messages are your friend. If somethings useful, it will get retweeted and spread.)
- Comment and question.
Whenever you comment on another blog, use the opportunity to extend a conversation (the conversation started by the blog post you just read). Statements aren’t good conversation maintainers. Neither are cursory notions of applause or criticism.
Questions, on the other hand, are great ways to get another response. Questions (when addressed to the group) are also great for drawing people into a conversation, which allows new threads of discussion to develop. This makes the job of maintaining a conversation easier; as old threads are resolved, you can move on to new ones to keep the talking alive.
I don’t mean to say you should only ask questions; it’s hard to add value when you’re speaking entirely in interrogatives. But do follow up your insights with points of further discussion, Jeopardy style (that is, in the form of a question).
- Link as an afterthought.
Blog linking, social networking, “friending,” putting someone on your Christmas card list; these are all silly formal ways to make it appear as if you have connections. Having 800 Facebook friends puts up a nice facade (which does have its merits), but doesn’t compare to having 100 real friends that love talking to you.
In a lot of the best relationships, friendship and connection is built before one of these “official” barriers is met, and this is a good goal to aim for. It’s an interesting phenomenon when a friend you’ve gotten close with suddenly realizes “we’re not Facebook friends.” At that point, it doesn’t seem to matter very much, does it? Yeah, you’ll probably do it as soon as you get home, but it doesn’t really add anything to the friendship, does it?
Of course not. It doesn’t add anything when you’re not good friends either.
Thus, aim to build a real connection between bloggers before you even think about exchanging links. After several fruitful conversations about the intricacies of your topic, one of you will realize the lack of linkage and fix it. At that point, as an afterthought really, the link really means something.
Consider how hard you’re working on building a network as you continue to build your blog, the two often go hand-in-hand, even though some of us neglect to treat things that way.
Are you networking or netfaking?
-Barry
