Facebook is awesome. It allows me to connect with great people from networking events, from people from high school and college and even with family. It’s connecting the world 1 person at a time. It’s simple to use and anyone can use it, including grandparents and even business owners!
Today I’m going to share with you how I’ve been using it to grow my network by developing real relationships and how you can do the same. I’ll also be including tips for friending people that you don’t currently know.
To start off with I want to introduce you to who you don’t want to be on Facebook when you are trying to grow your network.
Who you don’t want to be
You don’t want to be the person who is constantly posting links trying to sell people stuff. Think about the Facebook experience as a huge party where all of your friends are invited. Your friends are there to hang out, look at pictures, watch videos and chat about things that are interesting to them. They could care less that you have the best product in the world, in fact; no one really cares unless they are actively searching for your product.
In fact, if you are someone who is only posting links to your profile or to other people’s profile, STOP. It’s annoying and no one cares.
Relationships
Connecting with people on Facebook is just like connecting with people offline. You find things that you have in common, and typically talk about them. As someone who is using Facebook for business, you want to find people who are interested in the same type of business things as you. For example; finding people who are interested in the same book as you. In this example I’m going to use the book The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss .
The first step is to find a book that you like that you’d like to chat with people about.
You’ll notice that on my home page all I did was write the name of the book and after this, click on the little magnifying glass.
This will take you to this page:
You’ll notice there are 2,296 people who like this group. There’s some people who I might want to get to know because they share an interest in a book that I love!
I may not currently be friends with the people who have the arrows pointing to them. This means that there is an opportunity for me to become friends with them! Awesome, I’ll be able to connect with people who have similar interests!
So what’s the next step?
How do I introduce myself to someone who I do not know?
This is where it is up to you. There are a few ways to meet someone.
1) Send them a cold friend request – no message, just an invite (least effective)
2) Send them a message telling them you saw their interest in The Four Hour Work Week and you’d love to chat with them, asking if it would be alright to send them a friend request
3) Sending them a friend request with a message attached telling them you shared some interest and would like to get to know them.
The last 2 are the most effective and I would focus on doing them. NEVER just send someone a cold friend request if you do not know them already. I personally do not accept friend requests like that if I do not already know the person. If you want to connect with me on facebook, you can connect with Chris here.
Create an Introduction Video
This has been one of my most effective ways of meeting people (and another great tool to leverage)
That is one of my introduction videos, I’ll be creating a new one soon because I just moved to Orlando, Florida from NY in September of 2010!
Be yourself in this video and tell the people a little about yourself. You can leverage this to let people know who you are, what you do and how you can help them. GOLDMINE if you use it correctly.
When first connecting with someone, take the time to look at some of their pictures to see what kind of a person they are and what they like to do. Read their interests and see if you can connect on anything other than the first thing you initially wanted to talk with them about. Develop bonds with people and your network will grow rapidly. The more you participate in conversations, the more people will like you and want to talk to you.
I hope this helps and if you have any other tips to grow your facebook network leave them below!
