Good social networkers have a natural tendency to understanding how the web works. They are early adopters of technology and are comfortable to figuring out how to use it to their advantage.
But that’s not a barrier to entry. Take away the early part, and you are left with the word adopter. Over time, everyone becomes an adopter. If that wasn’t the case, there would still be people refusing to use telephones or automobiles or even paper… and that would be silly, right?
For adopters of social networking for business, there’s not really a secret sauce or fancy trick to getting good at it. It comes down to a simple strategy that you and anyone else can do to master a new tool. You ready to learn it? Good. I hope this helps.
Deliberate Practice Makes Perfect
I love this article in Fortune earlier this month, where Geoffry Coven writes about What It Takes to Be Great. The excerpt below is powerful.
The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call “deliberate practice.” It’s activity that’s explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.
For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don’t get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day – that’s deliberate practice.
Here’s the point. Don’t waste time simply logging aimless hours staring at your profiles. Start with your business objectives in mind and work backwards to design a set of habits that will help you get there. Here is an example of what I mean, using LinkedIn as the example of the tool:
Objective:Â Expand your customer base and generate 10 percent of additional company revenue in 2010.
Task: Build more volume at the top of your sales funnel by forming relationships with people who could someday be potential prospects.
Deliberate Practice:
- Ask three questions per week using LinkedIn Answers that will be answered by decision makers in the industry I am targeting. Send a sincere thank you messages to each person who offers a genuine answer and request to connect with them.
- In your local market, connect with at least two new people each business. You can find lots of these people by joining your local area LinkedIn groups.
- Invite one of your existing connections to form a deeper relationship at least three times per week. Research their profile and find a relevant reason to set up a phone call or, if they are local, an in-person get together.
What do you think about this? Are you applying the idea of deliberate practice to your business networking online?
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