Ever had a problem you wish you could find someone to help with? You’ve asked your friends, done a Google search, but can’t seem to connect with the right person?
Well dive into your favourite online social network and you may be surprised.
What? You don’t have a Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter account? Never seen the need, or think it’s just a waste of time?
Well let me give you a different perspective.
You’ve probably heard the phrase – 6 degrees of separation... The theory is you could find a connection to any person on earth by asking someone who knows someone, who knows someone…. till you find the person. Generally you’d need to go to a maximum of six levels in depth.
And of course the more people you start out with on level one, the greater your chance of success.
Statisticians believe (and we all know about lies and damn statistics), that most of us know about 200 people in our circle.
Now if each of those people know 200 people, your combined reach is around 200 squared – which is 40,000 people! That’s pretty significant in anyone’s language.
And here comes the power of the online social network.
You put out a request to your group of friends asking if they can help you find the answer/person etc.
Some of them will send the request out to their networks and the request cascades, exponentially. So you might suddenly be contacted by complete strangers who want to help.
Let’s use a real example from our files:
Way back in 2003, we needed to find a suitable candidate for a position with one of our clients. We’d gone down all the normal channels without success. Time was ticking – we had a deadline as the new hire needed to start before our client went on maternity leave.
We had an idea! We could send an email out to our newsletter list asking for help. I will admit, I did have reservations, (which lasted for about a minute), as I didn’t want my subscribers to feel that I was misusing the list. But we thought, “what the hell…”
We sent the email. And the response was staggering. Within five minutes, the responses started coming back. PEOPLE WANTED TO HELP! Barbara and I sat glued to our monitors all afternoon as emails FLOODED back letting us know that they either knew someone, or would ask around.
Within 24 hours, we got hundreds of responses.
By the end of the day, we had two candidates who could have been suitable!
Just to clarify, the candidates weren’t on our original list – but people who was, sent it on and they responded. That’s the power of the network.
Now that was in 2003, way, way before Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and a host of other networking systems.
These days, using online social networks, you can geometrically or even exponentially multiply the effect.
So which networks should you use?
Let me answer it this way.
All of them! After all you don’t know who knows whom.
So while you may think Facebook is for chatting with your close friends and family, widen your perspective. You don’t know who they might know.
And if you’re in the corporate world, Linkedin.com is an obvious choice. Extremely powerful, it helps you connect with other professionals in just about any industry.
And even more importantly, if you’re selling your services, Linkedin.com helps people find you should they search.
One of our clients, an accountant who specialises in “Property Tax” picked up a client a day after we rewrote his profile in Linkedin. Not bad!
So go out there and create your profile and start networking!
Rashid.
P.S. If you’re a professional in business, a linkedin.com profile is a must. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. Give me a call if you’d like us to do it for you so you get found for keywords you want to rank for.
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