Fishbowling - The Art of Internet Marketing

Can you believe it?  Three posts in a week!  I must really be slacking off on the other things I’m supposed to be doing.

The title gives you the setup for tonight’s post.

Let’s get to it.

The other day I mentioned to make sure you thank everyone for adding you as a friend after they have approved your friend request (I’m talking about Facebook - FB for short). 

I neglected to tell you to also introduce yourself when making the friend request.

In the race to add as many names as possible on FB, many people find it easy enough to just hit the friend request button without taking the time to send a nice message to introduce themselves.

I did it at first, being the total ignorant charging bull I can be at times : ). 

But I realized I wasn’t following my own rules of developing relationships to develop business.  So I decided to test if it was worth spending the time to send along a nice message with my friend request.

To test, I send out friend requests without introductions and friend request with introductions. 

Results are in and, I’m sure you all know the answer, it is worth it.

I sent out a couple hundred requests without introduction messages and while I received many friend confirmations back, I received very few messages back to me.

However, when I sent the friend requests out with introductions, not only did I receive the friend confirmations back, I also received a flood of messages back with them.

It should be obvious why this is important.  FB is “supposed” to be a “social networking” website not a platform for Internet Marketers to add a bunch of “friends” just to make money off them, however, that’s exactly where FB is headed.

Back to my point — if you treat everyone in a manner that lets them know you don’t see them as just another name on FB when you do a friend request, you’re bound to get the same treatment back.  They know you took time to send them an introduction message and this singled you out from the hundred of other requests they have received that did not.

You treated them as “special”.  Everyone want to be treated as special.  At some point, you are going to want to market to your FB friends list and you want them to remember you as a “good” person.

I have received about a hundred or so friend requests from people and of that number I can only recall getting about 4 or so messages.  And of the four, none of them were personalized with my name.  OK, maybe I’m being picky, but hey, how long does it take to type “Chuck”, I don’t know, 3 seconds or so = ) 

Here is an example of the introduction I use, it’s not going to win any writing awards but it works –

** start example **

Hi <name>

I’m looking for new people to network with for friendship and for business.

Please accept my friend invite,

Thank you,

Chuck Yockey

** end example **

You can see it is short and to the point, but it totally works and does what it is supposed to do and that is to create some trust and friendship, two cornerstones of a business relationship.

Here are some of the replies I have received back from my “new friends” (names have been changed to initials for identity protection):

********** 

Me to Chuck. Thanks for asking and I look forward to the connection.

Peace
J. 

********** 

Hi Chuck,
Thank you for adding me to your Facebook circle of friends. I look forward to connecting with you.

To your fabulous success,
D.

********** 

Hello Chuck,
I am looking forward to working with you on a project. So don’t be a stranger and let’s start making some money together.

j. 

********** 

Hi Chuck,
Nice to hear from you as well. I only get on here about once a week, but not everyone always sends a “hello”, so I figured I would return the courtesy.
Cheers!
T. 

********** 

Hi Chuck,

Thanks for the message. I get lots of friend requests but most people don’t even take the time to write a message when they request it, let alone send a message after I approve it.

Even if it is a simple “Thanks!” it speaks volumes. Social networking is all about personal relationships with people. If someone can’t take the time to be polite they have no business being on social sites. <grin>

Best wishes in all your ventures!

- R.

**********

As you can see by these messages, they are far from the required, “Thanks” type of message.

Anyway, I’ve gone on too long on this post so I will finish this off by reminding you to make sure you send along an introduction with your friend request and it will definitely be worth it to you in the long run when it comes to marketing all the people you have made friends with on Facebook.

To living your dreams,

Chuck Yockey

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