Know Me: Creating Your Social Media Footprint - Penny Power

 We will now begin the process of building your network with a strategy that will help you create profitable relationships. The first part of this is ‘know me’. ‘Know me’ is the aspect of social media that is closest to the traditional world that you may be used to. This stage is about your marketing, it is about building your brand and creating a reputation.

Being known is critical. It is through having a trusted brand that is wide and distributed across many platforms, that you will be found by people wanting access to your mind, knowledge and connections.

‘Know me’ is about ‘one-to-many’, finding a way to publish your expertise in a way that creates followers and trust. One person, YOU, reaching out to MANY. Once your blog is read and ‘followed’ by many, in a wide geographical area, you are achieving a brand, a reputation that allows you to be known. Surely that is what we all want? This builds your reputation, which creates attraction and helps to raise your profile. You cannot focus on depth. Your aim is to contribute by sharing knowledge. Those that want to engage with you will do so, and then you may decide to move to ‘like me’ and become a friend to them.

Why people worry about building a large network

There are a number of misconceptions about creating a wide network and I want to cover them here to help you overcome any fears you may have. I have featured the two most common concerns; that width means you do not contribute to others and that you do not have time to manage a large network.

1. If you have a wide network you cannot be a giver – really?

A damaging assumption many people have is that those with a large network are ‘using’ the networks, that they are collecting names, that they are taking and not giving. Don’t be one of those people who make this judgement. Thomas has a much larger network than I do. He also loves to connect and build networks across multiple social media platforms. At the time of writing I have 5,300 in my Ecademy network, Thomas has 45,526. If we look at the depth of my network, 7 per cent of my network have written a testimonial, whereas only 1.3 per cent of Thomas’s have. But looking at this in real terms it means that I have received 372 testimonials from people who have taken the time to thank me for my help, but Thomas has received 573.

Thomas has the appreciation of 200 more people than I have. Perhaps this means that having a wide network enables Thomas to connect and share with more people and therefore contribute to more. Take this across all the networks that Thomas is on, and considering that he is currently the number one person in the world for testimonials on LinkedIn, with 700, Thomas does not lack contribution when it comes to helping his networks.

2. Managing a large network takes too much time

You will read later in my interview with William Buist, that a wide network has made him more efficient.William is someone I admire as a great collaborator and advocator. He said to me that as his network has become larger, he has more time on his hands. This is the reverse of what you would think. One of the main barriers for people creating a wide network is that they think this will take too much time to manage. William confirmed to me that through his business model and his processes the more people he has access to, the more his business has grown and the more efficient he is.

Having access to minds, knowledge and people speeds up solving problems, finding information and increases the opportunities. Graham Jones, one of the UK’s top bloggers and an internet psychologist, confirmed that he never sells, he only delivers. His customers come to him because of his blog and his wide network. He has already achieved a level of credibility and visibility that cuts down the prospecting and closing time of the sales process.

• Extract 1:  A Changing World - The Individual Capitalist

• Extract 2:  Contribution Currency

• Extract 3:  Building Attraction and Being a Magnet

• Extract 4:  Leveraging Social Networks For Your Business

• Extract 5:  Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me

• Extract 6:  Know Me: Creating Your Social Media Footprint

• Extract 7:  Like Me: Creating Your Social Networking Footprint

• Extract 8:  Follow Me: Creating Social Transactions

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites