So you have 34,000 Twitter followers, over 500 FaceBook Fans, and over 100k LinkedIn?
Big Deal ! Social networking is not about “how many”, it’s about “how many listen”. Some of the best parties are small and intimate settings. That’s where the meaningful conversations happen, and that’s where it’s possible to hear and be heard by everyone there. Industrial media (like newspapers) enjoys subscribers…folks that “want to hear (read).” The problem is those folks don’t want to hear “everything.” Content runs the risk of being like the guy or gal that won’t shut up at the party. The trick is to make sure your saying only what’s meaningful to the people that want to hear it…that’s the essence of good social media, and social networking.

Why should you social network?
Let me try and put social networking into perspective for you:
At this writing there are more than 200 million active users on Facebook, and it is the fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older. Myspace enjoys 76 Million users, while Microsoft: Live, Hotmail, and Messenger enjoys more than 500 million users. The Twitter phenomenon has reached a staggering 752% growth and is appropriately tethered to mobile technology. It is in mobile technology where users utilize social media more than land based technology. I use many social media sites, but I use Linkedin because it is grounded in business. Linkedin has 36 million users and is adding 1.3 users per second.
To put it in perspective: I’m in the coffee business, and I get a lot of coffee out of Brazil. Brazil has a population of approximately 192 million. Facebook has a population of 200 million. My online Social Networking community trumps populations of countries. So why should you use Social Networking? The numbers are staggering, and they are growing. I fundamentally believe that social networking is one of the fastest and most efficient and cost effective means of communication.
Get your tweet on!
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Reach me at Forrest Graves 706-219-1819

This is the second part of my blog series about Social Networking.  My last blog breached the topic of, “how to monetize your Social Network”.  By that I mean…how to make money!  We covered a few historical fundamentals, and the importance of sociology.  You can subscribe to my blog at http://www.jumpingoat.com/blog  There you will find a delightfully inseparable mix of business and fresh roasted coffee.LinkedIn.com

You really need to consider your audience:

Look, let’s not make this any harder than it is. Your audience is everyone in your network and potentially anyone who is aware of you, or your company. You are my audience…simply because you are reading this. That does not mean every person that reads this is my “addressable market”…you are my audience.

Mixing up the definition of Market Size, the Social Network Opportunity within, and Addressable Market can be a problem.

Addressable market: is the total amount of dollars that you or your company could generate if you acquired every potential customer.  I am in the Specialty Fresh Roasted Coffee business, so in order to garner the number I would need to realize the total number of potential coffee drinkers, and then the percentage of that number that consume specialty coffee. I could further calculate growth trends, and I should also consider calculus based on local, regional, or global markets.

Market Size: is typically referred to in terms of number of potential patrons or dollar volume in a particular segment of the economy.

Social Network:  The share of some interdependency. It could be values, data, financial exchange, friendship, dislikes, vision or perhaps similar interest.

You are my audience, you are my network, (my network audience) and we are linked via some common interdependency.

With the consideration of these three components, you will begin to see how you can, or rather should communicate with your audience. There are many other considerations that I will cover in later blogs, but the fundamentals cannot be overlooked.

Summary: Know your audience/network and know the difference between Market Size and Addressable Market. Knowing these fundamentals will help you set appropriate expectations around making money via social networking. Finally consider that “financial exchange” is only one aspect of interdependency, so set reasonable expectations around Internet commerce. I have never personally met many of the people in my social network, so it takes time to get to gain trust via the Internet.

Forrest Graves
forrest@jumpingoat.com                                    Contact Me
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Have you ever socially collided with another person whom you know while visiting another state or country? 

Perhaps the first thing you say in greeting that person is, “WOW, what a small world!” Directly after the greeting, he or she agrees…it really is a small world!
Is the world we live in really small, or is social networking and human population increases making these type encounters and others more probable?  I will leave the answers to these questions to the theorist, but quantitative analysis does exist to support the likelihood of chance or forced social encounters.

Social networking has helped me monetize and optimize my business endeavors, and I want to provide some of the methodologies, perspectives and theories that I subscribe to in hopes that you can benefit as I have.  I will share my thoughts and ideas over time in this forum, and many other forums that I subscribe to. 

You can follow my views by subscribing to my blog.
Manfred Kochen, an Austrian mathematician, published a manuscript in 1962 and reasoned that it is practically certain that any two individuals can contact one another by means of at least two intermediaries. Certainly there have been quantum technological advancements since the 1960’, yet when you factor the rapid advancements within these technologies and the advanced algorithms supporting social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, it is easy to support Kochen’s ideas. The likelihood that you can use technology to increase a voluntary connection to individuals, professional bodies, associations, institutions, or groups is significantly greater,…so go’s the social phenomenon.

 
To provide you some illustration of the power of social the network algorithms at work, I referenced “one” online social network that I belong to and I am only two degrees away from 159,700 (Friends of friends connected to at least one of my connections).
I am only three degrees away from being introduced or connected to 6,654,200+ people (My connections can introduce me to their connections).
It quickly becomes conceivable to me that there is  potentially a very large mix of people within my network that share the same type interest, ideas, and initiatives.

Another popular social network idea that came from the 1960’s is “Six Degrees of Separation (SDOS).”
SDOS theory reasons that if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, and then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth.

The obvious comment that comes up when I am helping individuals understand social networks, and how they work, or how they can use them to advance their business initiatives is: “I know I need to do more of this.” That comment always sounds off key to me because it tells me that they don’t know what “this” is. 

Folks tell me they need to be more “involved”, yet they don’t know where to begin.
The place to begin, I believe,  is in the fundamental examination and understanding of Sociology. In doing so you will quickly understand that there are rules, and there are processes in any social network. 

I will argue strictly on the side of social business networking when I tell you that it is absolutely necessary to have functional objectives tied to business initiatives when launching your social network campaign…if, you want to monetize your efforts.

Kochen & SDOS Source: Wikipedia

Forrest Graves
forrest@jumpingoat.com
http://www.JumpinGoat.com/
http://www.JumpinGoat.com/blog
http://www.linkedin.com/in/forrestgraves

Please feel free to e-mail me directly with comments or questions, or leave a comment here on this blog