List-Building and Social Media Marketing:
Keys to Branding Yourself Online

By: Larina Kase, PsyD., MBA

Not so long ago, the big question in the marketing world was, “How big is your mailing list?” Now, with the rapid advancement of social media marketing, the question has become, “How many Facebook friends do you have?” or “How many people are following you on Twitter?”

I’ve struggled with the temptation to get caught up in the numbers, and have chosen to go for quality over quantity. Here’s why:

• Having people in your network who are nowhere near your target audience doesn’t really benefit you.
• There’s a maximum number of connections that you can have in many social networking communities (such as Facebook) so you don’t want to “waste” valuable spots.
• In reputation management, you can become guilty by association. If you accept friend requests (on Facebook) or follow (on Twitter) everyone under the sun, you may be associated with people who give off the wrong impression.
• Your brand is not about the numbers. It’s about the perception that people have of you. If we spend more time focusing on that, we’ll attract the right people.

The argument for the flipside (casting a wide a net as possible) is the 6-degrees of separation theory—that you never know who knows someone who knows someone who’s a perfect match for your business.

I’ve taken an intermediary approach. Some rules I’ve created for myself for whose invitations (when I don’t really know the person) to accept are:

• They must have a photo.
• The photo must be professional and not racy or otherwise off-putting.
• They must appear to be looking for business connections and networking (rather than dating or friends).
• They must be or their networks must be in the countries in which I do business.

I have many friends and colleagues who quickly exceeded the number of connections they can have and now regret not being more selective. I also have friends and colleagues who found great business connections in unlikely places, so I’m trying this hybrid approach, and we’ll see what happens.

It will be interesting to see how the whole social media experiment (it is all so new and untested at this point that I call it an experiment) pans out.

BIO

Larina Kase, PsyD, MBA helps business owners use their personality and talents to create powerful marketing strategies that they will actually implement. Get her popular monthly publication Stand Out! Marketing That Grabs Attention and Gets Results at http://www.pascoaching.com/standout/

Keywords
Larina Kase, branding yourself, list-building, social media marketing, target audience, social networking communities, reputation management, business connections, social media experiment