Pick Up The Phone And Call Your Social Media Connections

When you’re new to learning about Social Media, the tendency is to focus on huge numbers of Connections, Friends and Followers.  This is normal.  We all like things that look impressive and big numbers look impressive.  Prior to Facebook, where else could you have thousands of “friends”?  It feeds our ego.

Once the new car smell of Social Media wears off, we realize that building relationships is far more powerful than just adding more connections.  Yes, adding connections is important.  But you already have a phone book with tens of thousands of connections.  If it was just about connections, you already have more than enough in your Yellow and White Pages.

Are you “connecting” with your Social Media connections?  Really connecting?  For one week, schedule 20 minutes into your day to pick up the phone and call two of your new connections per day.  If their phone number isn’t on their LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter profile, or on their website, send them a message asking for their number stating that you’d lie to chat with them for a few minutes.

Spend ten minutes getting to know your connections.  I’ll bet you’re the only person who’s taken the time to do this.  Don’t try to sell them something.  Find out who they are, what they do and ask if there’s some way in which you can help them or refer someone to them.  After they pick themselves up off the floor thank them for the conversation.  That’s it.  Build relationships.  When was the last time one of your new Social Media connections called you and took a sincere interest in you?  It takes so little to be above average that it’s truly incredible that more people don’t do it.  Forget strategies; invest in people.  People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.