…that most businesses are neglecting, it would be Social Networking. Most businesses either use social media to broadcast their content (Social Influencing) or to sell their Doohickey’s (Social Selling.)

Remember, there are four distinct activities that fall under the social media marketing umbrella:

1 – Social Listening – Monitoring and responding to customer service and reputation management issues on the social web.

2 – Social Influencing – Establishing authority on the social web, often through the distribution and sharing of valuable content.

👉 3 – Social Networking – Finding and associating with authoritative and influential individuals and brands on the social web.

4 – Social Selling – Generating leads and sales from existing customers and prospects on the social web.

In this post, we’ll talk about Social Networking.

Marketing tactics like SEO, paid traffic, and most forms of social media marketing will get incremental gains. Networking and leveraging partnerships and relationships will often get you exponential gains.

To gain new partnerships, create a punch list of companies that have already acquired the customers and audience you want but have a different business model.

So, for example, if you’re a software company, look for a service company or information product company with your customers. Make sense?

Then, stalk them. Join their email list, connect with them on their social media accounts and begin distributing THEIR content to your audience. After a while, approach them to build a co-branded piece of content like this one between HubSpot and SurveyMonkey. Creating content together can lead to much more lucrative partnerships down the line.

Social Networking is a slow process. Don’t rush it. Find good companies you are proud to promote to your customers and audience and, when the time is right, ask them to dance. 🙂

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