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Sug­ges­tions on how to quickly and effec­tively con­nect with peo­ple on LinkedIn, Face­book & Twitter

Most of us have passed the exploratory stage of social media. We are all signed up for the micro-blogging sites, the net­works, the com­mu­ni­ties. We have been trad­ing con­tent and push­ing around links for months, if not years. With this has come so many suc­cesses — more traf­fic to our sites, higher con­ver­sions to our bot­tom lines,  new indus­try expe­ri­ences, and of course friend­ships. Social media has enabled all of us to expand our web com­mu­nity, and lace into it — new, cre­ative and enthu­si­as­tic minds.

For me per­son­ally, I am always a bit amazed that each and every day I am exposed to a new per­son who is say­ing some­thing or doing some­thing that I am gen­uinely inter­ested in. As a girl who was brought up in a town of 3,000 peo­ple, I am repeat­edly taken back at how large this online com­mu­nity of social media lovers is.

The prob­lem, how­ever, is the num­ber of hours in a day. Yup, that darn number…24. By the time I respond to the emails made from new con­nec­tions made weeks ago, the LinkedIn requests from those made last week, and the DMs from friends made yes­ter­day, I find myself left with lit­tle time to reach out to new names. It is easy to get set­tled in the cir­cles we have found when we first intro­duced our avatars.

Before you real­ize it, your cir­cle of web enthu­si­asts grows sta­tic and you are left won­der­ing how to go beyond the social media bub­ble you have cre­ated. With lit­tle time to go search­ing out new names, and things like #Fol­lowFri­day mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate the noise from the poten­tial, it is easy to see how some of us can grow com­pla­cent with our social media circles.

But we can’t for­get that social media is still a tool. It is a way to reach new eyes as a vis­i­bil­ity engine, and it is a way to meet new peo­ple in the hopes of some­day turn­ing that online con­nec­tion into a handshake.

So what are some ways we can all quickly find new peo­ple with sim­i­lar inter­ests? How can we all build out our social media cir­cle with strong con­tacts, but not spend an entire day bounc­ing between pro­files? I’ve put together a few ideas for the more pop­u­lar com­mu­ni­ties. The idea is to use the dif­fer­ent func­tions and ser­vices to help you meet new peo­ple but not steal your time…

LinkedIn: Drop in on a “group.” Most of us have the per­cep­tion that any “online group” can be a time sucker, mainly because so many peo­ple join them but don’t take part in the dia­logue. LinkedIn fights that stereo­type with highly active groups. Two great ones to check out are “Future Social Media” (close to 10,000 mem­bers) and “Social Media Mar­ket­ing” (over 30,000 mem­bers). By join­ing the con­ver­sa­tion for just a few min­utes a day, you can meet new mar­keters debat­ing sim­i­lar top­ics to your own, start­ing new ven­tures of inter­est and more.

Face­book: I know, I know. Although a pow­er­ful net­work, Face­book has left us super-connectors a bit jaded. We think, unless we want to send a mar­garita to our favorite blog­ger, it doesn’t have much to offer. But I have found, laced in with these less gen­uine appli­ca­tions, Face­book brought us some great ways to help grow our net­works. My favorite func­tion is the com­ment­ing exchange. It made all con­ver­sa­tions trans­par­ent and avail­able to any­one who wants to join them. Instead of tak­ing the “What Coun­try Song Are You?” quiz, take a few min­utes and check out the links posted and respond to them.  Since you are noti­fied of any follow-up com­ment, you open your­self to meet­ing new peo­ple who clearly are inter­ested in dis­cussing sim­i­lar posts, events, top­ics, etc.

Twit­ter: You would think with so many new Twit­ter mem­bers a day, it would be easy to expand your social media cir­cle, but I find the oppo­site too often hap­pens. There are so many qual­ity con­ver­sa­tions and gen­uine peo­ple to engage with, that you are eas­ily side­tracked from seek­ing out new fol­low­ers and future friends. Not to men­tion, too many con­ver­sa­tions can drive any­one crazy, so instead we tend to hit a plateau, which can be detri­men­tal to our social media ini­tia­tives. I believe one of the most under­uti­lized ways to grow your net­work on Twit­ter is the #hash­tag. We all know it more as a con­ver­sa­tion tag—a way to book­mark a string of tweets into one cat­e­gory. But it can be an exploratory tool as well, with a num­ber of uses. Every day I take a few min­utes and search hash­tags like #PPC, #job­search, and #social­me­dia. These things are all rel­e­vant to the com­mu­ni­ties I hope to build out. I reach out to the users of these hash­tags, and use them as con­ver­sa­tion starters.

OK, those are just a few ways to go beyond your social media bub­ble. Of course, none of us want to expand our net­works to the point where con­ver­sa­tions are diluted and the mes­sages exchanged are lost, but as social media mar­keters we also under­stand that any con­ver­sa­tion is usu­ally enhanced with the num­ber of voices par­tak­ing in it.

Take a few min­utes and step back from your online com­mu­ni­ties. Ask your­self what top­ics you would like to learn more on, what things con­fuse you, and then seek out voices that are speak­ing to those issues. You will be bet­ter for it. Liv­ing in a bub­ble can be com­forable, but they sure make it hard to grow.

Joanna Lord is a social mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant and founder of Your­Job­Stop, the job resources board. See her busi­ness pro­file, con­tact Joanna or leave a com­ment below.

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