Business Development Tips | eBiz Profit Solutions

How Much Do You Contribute to Others?

January 30th, 2010

Penny Power, author of Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me: What Online Social Networking Means for You and Your Business, explains why you need to contribute to others if you want to run a successful social marketing strategy.

“When I’m looking all over the Internet, and I’m looking for new contacts, and I’m reading content on blogs and videos and YouTube and just seeing the way people built their reputations, one of the things I’m really fascinated by is how much they’re actually contributing to others.

A lot of people are still spending time, when they join social networks, focused on what they want to achieve.

So they come in and they have a very targeted attitude to – I need to make sure that I achieve customers. OK? And they’re coming from the world of suspect prospects and customers. And they want to channel it all, funnel it all down and measure their success in that way.

This new world isn’t like that.

It comes at you in a much more random way. And it’s very serendipitous. You just don’t know where that right connection is going to come from.

So if you have a much more fluid attitude to the way that you spend time on the Internet, and you are willing to read a blog and then — even if it’s maybe not your business focus — contribute and comment on it, it speaks realms about you.

Recently, we had a blog of a lady in America who has cancer, and she needed to connect with five other people who had had similar cancer in other parts of the world. 206 people commented on that.

Now cancer wasn’t their business. But 206 people wanted to support her and re-Tweeted that blog to help her find those five.

That contribution to someone in the Internet speaks realms about you as a person, far beyond just broadcasting your business message.”