There was a time when the reputation of your business was made or destroyed right there in the town where you lived and worked. The townspeople and you’re customers knew you better than some of your relatives did.
Their kids went to school with your kids, you belonged to the same clubs as they did, they knew who your friends were and they knew just as much about your friends as they did about you. You were assessed and judged not only on what you did and how you behaved socially and in business but also on how your friends behaved socially and in business too.
Then along came the Net and you could take your business to the world. New friendships were made and people didn’t know so much about you anymore … they couldn’t see how you behaved socially or in business because your business had grown way beyond the boundaries of any town.
But then the Net began to mature and change and social networking became important and gradually people began to see who your friends were once more … and once again people began to judge you and your business abilities based on who your friends were. These days, instead of being judged on your abilities you’re more than likely to be judged on those friends you have accumulated.
So who do people see as being your online friends and how do those friends stack up in the eyes of the people who might want to do business with you? What sort of people are on your friends’ list on the social networking sites that you’re a member of?
Are all those people on your friends’ list fine upstanding business people or are they perhaps a little shady … a little dangerous … maybe a little dumb? Of course it’s hard for you to know and when you look at social networks it all seems to be about being the person with the most friends doesn’t it?
And if you think that success is all about having the most friends on Twitter or FaceBook or MySpace then you’re not really going to be all that worried about just who friends you or joins your Twitter stream are you?
Well maybe you should be very concerned about who your online friends are because they may well be the sort of person you would never want to be associated with. Behind that smiling avatar may be a criminal … someone who wants to rip you and others off … someone who has a totally different agenda to you.
If that does bother you, if you really are concerned about who follows you and what message your list of friends sends to others then you’re going to have to take responsibility for your list of friends. You’re might have to stop amassing all those friends and start looking for quality more than quantity mightn’t you?
When I joined Twitter I decided that I was there to represent my business and I wanted to present myself in a way that people would trust. That meant that I wasn’t going to chase the mirage of popularity … after all the popularity of the Internet is about as real as the King’s new clothes. No, I didn’t want to be popular … I wanted to interact with my peers and I wanted to learn and I didn’t want to bring disrepute on myself or my business.
With those goals in mind it didn’t take me long to work out how to manage my list of friends. The list of people that I interact with on Twitter now is tiny in comparison to some others. I make sure that when people ask to follow me we have something in common … we have some mutual contacts … people that I trust because they’re like me … and I make sure that I’m not letting a spammer in to harvest my list of contacts by looking at what they have said and done on Twitter in the past.
No matter what social networking site you hang out on … even if it’s just a message board … you can go back and see how people have behaved and you definitely should.
By keeping my list of friends under control I make sure that people can look at me and judge me by that list. They can see that the people I follow are all people who are well-known and trusted in the field that we work in. There won’t be any ‘rotten apples’ among my ‘friends’ who can cast a shadow over my online reputation if someone does a search for the names of my friends.
And that means that people will trust me and when you’re doing business online there’s nothing more important than being seen as trustworthy. So let me ask again, who is on your list of friends and what will that list tell others about you?
There’s no doubt that in today’s social networking world it really is a case of not what you know that can affect your success or failure but who you know. If you’ve got a friend’s list that’s free of bad influences and those who like to play fast and loose with the truth then people will notice that and see that you are someone who can be trusted.
On the other hand, if all you’re interested in is building a list made up of everyone who comes along then you can expect people to be reluctant to deal with you and that’s definitely not what you would want to happen if you’re serious about your business.
