Using the Power of Social Networking to Make Money
ByI know you hear that all of the time. Use Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to make money. Most of the claims are just fancy scams that are trying to sell you something. But in this post, I want to give you some real tips on how people are using the reach of the vast social networks to start partnerships and help promote each other's products and services. 4 years ago, I was contacted by a young woman via Twitter who was interested in getting together for a number of projects. She found me through a keyword search of Twitter pertaining to “Relationship Advice” and wrote me a private message. After talking back and forth for a while, we started conducting paid teleclasses together, which in turn led to a radio show that we hosted together for over 2 years. We also collaborated on a book.
When you have a radio show for that long, it's important to have a steady roster of interesting guests so your listeners come back again and again. But where did we find them? My partner Gabriella would simply post on her Facebook account that we were in need of guests, and people would pass the post around (share) to their friends. As how the six pixels of separation go, we booked some pretty heavy players. They would advertise on their websites that they would be a guest, and in turn, we got tons of new listeners. Some shows had upwards of 1400 listeners a week. Because of the high listenership, when we would recommend that our audience go buy a certain author's book, that author would report back to us of huge sales that week. And of course, we promoted ourselves as well.
All this activity was due to social networking. We had no connections to the industry, had no experience up front on how to make money. We simply used Facebook, Twitter and BlogTalkRadio to build this model business, all for free. We never, ever paid a dime to make our money. I've since moved on to become the head instructor of IMTC. I'm glad to announce that my partner Gabriella is still doing the show every week and is nearing her 4th anniversary show. She has become a very successful author and very well-known in her field. Finding people to work out business partnerships with has become easier than ever due to the access of social networking. Sending a simple email could start a whole new career for yourself, and networking with the big players could be, as we say, only just a click away.
