Back in my Neptune Beach days I invited some friends over for a bar-b-que. The problem was, I didn't own a grill. One trip to the home store later I was the proud owner of shiny new outdoor cooker. At least I thought it was going to be shiny from the picture on the box. It looked so good in the photo that I guess I missed what would soon become an ominous warning, "Some Assembly Required".
What does it take to put together a grill? It takes exactly 104 pieces, 5 well-meaning friends, a case of beer and about 4 hours. I'm sure we could have accomplished it much sooner, but we had to stop and get more beer. We accomplished the task with only a few parts left over. Everybody had a good time and we have some great memories. I know because even though it's been 15 years, my friend Larry reminded me of the incident just a few weeks ago.
Your Social Networking strategy is a lot like that grill. The ability to connect with the right people online is certainly a bright shiny concept. The problem is not all the parts are in the box. There's no assembly instructions and there is no user manual. Without the step by step instructions for that grill, we would have starved to death. For lack of instructions to assemble and implement an effective social networking strategy, you and other business professionals are starving for leads and prospects.
At a live event this Summer, some of my clients had fun with one of my early marketing taglines, "I've read the manual so you don't have to." With most cloud-based software platforms, it's a challenge to find those manuals.
Until now. My Summer reading consisted of following my social followers. Not exactly stalking, after all the profiles are public. I hung out on LinkedIn, including profiles and discussion groups, Facebook Profiles and Pages, Twitter and News-jacking.
My research lead to identifying 12 critical ideas about what works and what doesn't when it comes to creating and implementing an effective Social Networking Strategy. I think the topic is so important that next week, I'm presenting the last of only four audio conferences I've held this year.