Long Term Goals for Social Networking Part 2

Continued from “Long Term Goals for Social Networking”

So you’ve realized now that you may be wasting time in social media. You’re making some insignificant revenue, but you’re spending so much time that it amounts to only a few pennies an hour.  You spent a lot of time building your following on Google Plus, and even though you have 50,000 followers the network has slowed to a crawl and you’re not getting leads from that network anymore.

 

If you were here for Long Term Goals for Social Media you know that you should have struck while the iron was hot and connected with those 50,000 people on a deeper level. By funneling those people into a mailing list on your blog or website, your network would not be crippled by a dip in the popularity of your social networks.

 

There are hundreds of entrepreneurs and bloggers that have built substantial networks, but have never made it ‘to the table’ so to speak. So when it comes to your actual goals of making the big money, ruling your niche with an iron fist and becoming a best-selling author, this is what you need to keep in mind.

 

Specialize: Put all your Eggs in One Basket

Your goal is to be the pre-eminent expert in your niche. You don’t just want to be paid to do your job; you want to be paid to talk about doing it. Even though you can’t start out as a known master, you can guarantee that you’ll never get there if you keep changing your mind about what you want to do. This is one of the most common mistakes that deny online networkers of their long-term goals.

 

Whether you’re bored with your current niche or enthralled with a new one, you’re a lot more likely to hurt yourself in the long run by changing your niche on the fly. Since these are basic human emotions, I suggest limiting your losses by maintaining a skeleton routine in your current niche, or simply testing the waters of a new one with a small side project that doesn’t interfere with the work you’ve already done. This is a marathon and you’re building a pyramid. Don’t go and destroy you’re cornerstone every time you get it set; it’s the hardest part of the whole thing, and you’re not going to see much progress on Egypt yet.

 

The Right Connections: More on Long Term Contact

You can’t see the future, so even though you have an idea of what your long-term goals are, the whole idea of social networking is that you may meet someone who offers you a better gig. That’s why staying in contact with the followers you’ve accrued is at odds with relying on social networking websites that those users may not be active on in five years, and if they are the site may have reduced your access to them. Bring your networking under your control:

 

I suggest building a digital Rolodex with solid state contact methods. The trinity of E-mail, telephone, and a physical address will be sufficient to track a contact down in the future when their Facebook profile is long gone. The more influential contacts are ultimately the ones that will open the right doors. Of course you never know which lowly list subscriber will be the next Guy Kawasaki.

 

Long Term Winners

Robert Scoble is the keynote speaker at the Blog World Expo New York this year. It’s safe to say that he’s earned that position, and whether or not speaking at that particular conference was a long term goal or his, being at the top of his field most definitely was.

 

Robert has been blogging since the 1990s. He started out working in a camera store, and lent his expertise with gadgets to the Scobleizer blog. His readership grew, and in 2003 Robert Scoble was hired by Microsoft to be an online evangelist for their new Longhorn operating system.

 

Today Robert has a very public position with Rackspace, a company that leases server space and hosts websites. Do you think that working for Rackspace was his long-term goal in 2003 when he was one of the more public facing figures with Microsoft? Probably not, but for Robert Scoble all roads led to Rackspace. His current fame and fortune, which is monumental on a network marketing scale, has been over 20 years in the making. He never veered from his passion which was technology, and he has managed to have been in contact with the right people in the exact moment he needed them.

 

Networking is a Glass House; Put Down Those Rocks

Which brings me to my last point on Long Term Goals for Social Networking: the other players that make it to the big leagues will likely be long term with you. Do you think that Scoble would have been able to parlay his early blogging into the many opportunities he has since enjoyed if he couldn’t keep from pissing off the wrong people? Here are some things you need to consider so you don’t wind up on the wrong end of a burnt bridge in the future:

• Don’t step on other people’s toes on your way up. You never know who you’ll run in to on your way back down.
• Treat everyone with respect all the time. You cannot always repair burned bridges.
• Obey your morals and business ethics. You may make small gains by being dishonest, but you’re gambling with everything you know when you do.
• Make sure your short term goals are in line with your long term goals. It’s like filling a jug with dripping water: one small bit of rust can ruin all the clean water you’ve managed to save.
• If you wish to travel at sea, hang out with sailors.
• Long Term might not mean tomorrow, but you only have 3,650 tomorrows until 10 years from now.
• The grass on the other side of the fence is hardly ever as green as it looks, but don’t pass up your chance to move from the pasture to the palace.