A mul­ti­ple plat­form per­spec­tive to increase engagement

Special­iz­ing in Web 2.0 and social net­work­ing since early 2006, I’ve for­mu­lated strat­egy and pro­grams for hun­dreds of busi­ness and gov­ern­ment lead­ers. The main goal of these ini­tia­tives has been engag­ing peo­ple in the most appro­pri­ate and effec­tive way. Since many of my clients are B2B (busi­ness to busi­ness, com­mer­cial) exec­u­tives, I have worked exten­sively with LinkedIn because it has been most rel­e­vant for most sit­u­a­tions (it still is).

How­ever, I am increas­ingly see­ing cases in which peo­ple have accel­er­ated rela­tion­ships by con­nect­ing in mul­ti­ple plat­forms, and this is grow­ing in impor­tance in client work. Here I will offer a cur­sory intro­duc­tion of this con­cept and how it can work.

I am also pleased to announce that the Executive’s Guide to Face­book will be fea­tured at the Insti­tute of Man­age­ment Con­sul­tants spe­cial sem­i­nar on June 27. If you are in L.A., check it out.

What is a venue or platform?

I like to think of LinkedIn, Twit­ter, Face­book, YouTube and oth­ers as “venues” because they are places that have defined char­ac­ter­is­tics that facil­i­tate cer­tain kinds of inter­ac­tion. Like restau­rants or bars, they imbue meet­ings with a social con­text that can add or detract from the meet­ing. You already use dozens of (offline) places every month to meet clients. Sim­i­larly, var­i­ous “social net­works” are more appro­pri­ate for engag­ing clients, depend­ing on’ per­son­al­i­ties, the busi­ness at hand, etc. Let’s take a quick look at some major venues (“plat­form” would be more of a soft­ware term):

• LinkedIn has done a great job at cre­at­ing a social con­text that’s all busi­ness, and this is con­gru­ent through­out the site. When you join LinkedIn, you are try­ing to improve your business—and that of the “Con­nec­tions” in your net­work. It facil­i­tates busi­ness rela­tion­ships and con­duct­ing business.
• Face­book is more like “the por­tal of life”; many peo­ple think of it as more “per­sonal,” and that’s accu­rate at a high level. The social con­text is play­ful and experimental—not as con­ser­v­a­tive. Here you have “Friends.”
• Twit­ter is a net­work, and it’s very social, but it is not a “social net­work” venue in the same way as the first two: it is not based on a pro­file, but on terse com­mu­ni­ca­tions with net­works of “Fol­low­ers” whom you often fol­low as well. It can be very per­sonal and businesslike.
• YouTube and Flickr are also social net­works, but in a dif­fer­ent cat­e­gory, because their pur­pose is shar­ing photo and video con­tent. How­ever, like all Web 2.0 appli­ca­tions, much of their value is the con­ver­sa­tions that unfold around the con­tent. Mem­bers are con­nected though sub­scrib­ing to each other’s (video) lists and photostreams.

Using social net­works to connect

Return­ing to our goal—to dis­cover prospects and develop busi­ness relationships—each of these venues could enable you to develop or deepen a rela­tion­ship. Consider:

• You meet a prospect for lunch and end up talk­ing golf hor­ror sto­ries. As a follow-up, you could send her a link to you fight­ing out of the brush.
• You con­nect with a prospect on LinkedIn by hav­ing an intense exchange about trans­fer pric­ing and Asian sub­sidiaries in one of the Answers forums. You send him a link to a video on the subject.
• You have had a cou­ple of email exchanges and calls with a prospect, and you are going to lunch at the end of the week. Dial in to Face­book to see if he’s a mem­ber; who are his friends? What is his Face­book pres­ence like? By glean­ing per­sonal nuggets, you dra­mat­i­cally increase the chance that you will develop a stronger connection.
• Return­ing to the bar metaphor, hav­ing a drink with some­one in three dif­fer­ent bars on three dif­fer­ent days will enable you to know each other more quickly (espe­cially if the bars are very dif­fer­ent) because you can both watch how you respond to the dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments. The same is true with social net­works. Fol­low­ing some­one on Twit­ter or friend­ing her on Face­book will give you a far dif­fer­ent pic­ture of the person—and enable him or her to know you better.

Mak­ing It practical

Most peo­ple feel over­whelmed when they think about mul­ti­ple pres­ences; how­ever, once they under­stand what they can do, and what their pur­pose is, this is quite fea­si­ble. Most sites offer pri­vacy fea­tures that most peo­ple don’t know about. LinkedIn’s pri­vacy con­trols are very robust. Facebook’s Friend Lists enables mem­bers to restrict cer­tain con­tent to spe­cific Friend Lists, so you have hive off the baby pic­tures and fra­ter­nity albums. Very powerful.

Since most of my clients have a pro­fes­sional or busi­ness social con­text around their careers, it will be most appro­pri­ate for them to focus on LinkedIn and to sup­ple­ment it with the others.

To develop a rela­tion­ship, you need to con­sider the other per­son and share infor­ma­tion or thoughts with him/her in the most appro­pri­ate way, but using sur­prise and per­sonal touches can speed up the process. sing the net­works in com­bi­na­tion will end up being most prac­ti­cal. Also think, “In which venue is the other per­son most com­fort­able or approachable?”

For exam­ple, what if you dis­cover that hard-to-reach CIO’s pho­to­stream of wild­flow­ers? Think of what a great way to con­nect, once you know how. The key is being authen­tic; don’t try to come across as being inter­ested in the pho­tos if you really are not. You will be found out at some point—and thor­oughly dis­cred­ited. Find true con­nec­tion points—they usu­ally exist—so you don’t have to fake it. These net­works help you to find them more quickly.

This is what the Executive’s Guide to Face­book is about as well as the Executive’s Guide to Twit­ter. In each case, we define ele­ments of the site and key processes, so you can use the sites’ capa­bil­i­ties to achieve busi­ness goals. We explic­itly exam­ine cul­ture as well as how the sites fit into the ecosys­tem (the over­all context).

If you want to be one of the first out of the gate with using LinkedIn and Face­book together, here is more infor­ma­tion about the May 4 event.

What are your experiences?

How have you used dif­fer­ent venues in com­bi­na­tion, and what have you learned?

Christo­pher S. Rollyson is man­ag­ing direc­tor of CSRA, a man­age­ment con­sul­tancy that advises enter­prises and star­tups on Web 2.0 strat­egy. He is also edi­tor of the Global Human Cap­i­tal Jour­nal and Founder of the Executive’s Guide to Web 2.0. See his pro­file, con­tact Chris or leave a com­ment below.