Schmoozers – love ’em or hate ’em – are often the people who have the best, most-engaged business networks and broadest connections. And now with the explosion of social media – especially Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – schmoozers have a vast, new sandbox to play in.
David Garland, who hosts a popular Web show for entrepreneurs called The Rise to the Top, was curious about the characteristics of successful digital schmoozers. So he interviewed hundreds of them to glean what the top 1 percent are doing that the other 99 percent of digital citizens aren’t. Here are traits that stand out:
• Be choosey. The best online schmoozers don’t attend every party. They pick the right ones and go all out. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are three of the most popular choices. Sure it’s great to be everywhere, but why not put full effort into a few sites you enjoy and see what happens?
• Show your face. Many business owners and entrepreneurs try to gain a marketing edge of some kind by using their business logo as the image that personifies their online presence instead of their personal picture. That’s a mistake. Faces beat logos, hands down. How do you form a relationship with a logo? People wonder who’s really behind it.
• Share valuable, relevant content. Get over the urge to guard what you know. When you share entertaining, educational, inspiring and useful content, you become the go-to resource for something. So identify your “something” and get to it. Try to be helpful whenever you can. Helpfulness builds relationships.
• Promote others first. When you promote others more than yourself, you will not come off as a product-pushing jerk. And that is a good thing. What does promoting others actually mean? It means helping other people out. Sharing with your network something they created (a valuable blog post for example), a product, cause, whatever it might be.
• Be a regular. Try to be consistent rather than striving for rare moments of greatness. Does this mean you need to be glued to your computer or smart phone and be “in real time” constantly? Certainly not. But you can’t disappear for days, weeks or (shudder!) months at a time without a heads up. You have to be there talking to people; sharing valuable information; hanging out. Slow and steady wins this race.
• Promote tastefully. First recognize that it’s okay to promote, as long as you do it right. Good schmoozers do promote – at some point. But they use finesse, and subtlety – not hard sells or tight marketing messages. Instead, be conversational and fun. •
Daniel Kehrer can be reached at editor@business.com.
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