No, it’s not what you think.
I wanted to address really quickly one of the Social Media Pet Peeves I have, which is that somehow, some way, ‘The Money is in the List’. And the ‘larger’ the list, the more income that can be generated.
If ONLY I had such list.
What I’m finding though is that having the largest list is somewhat irrelevant. I’m quite sure that I could friend enough people and talk enough to get TONS of friends (and max my personal profile to 5,000 people), but then what? What exactly do you do with that? More importantly, I’m finding that 90% the larger list people don’t correspond to intelligence, integrity, or even basic respect.
Keep in mind, while I’m ranting about this, I got sucked into the numbers game as well. I realized all too much that my ego was tied to my number of Facebook friends. As soon as I realized how much stress was involved in doing so, I’ve changed my strategy. I’ve even removed some of the people I’m following on twitter because just about half of the people on are irrelevant to me. People would appeal to my ego checking out my Facebook and Twitter counts. I got sucked in because I wanted the attention that it drew for me (and of course the potential money involved.)
But where I always stopped short was when I was asked to essentially ‘sell out’ my list to interested parties. One person even expressed to me a strategy of creating a second Facebook Profile (which is against the TOS), adding friends from various networking groups under false pretenses (in groups / circles that I’m known, thank you very much!), and then do a bait and switch into an offer!
THe main reason I never do it is that I don’t want to ruin the relationships I have already with said list. If I ‘suddenly’ start pitching for products or people, regardless of the ‘premise’ of said pitch, people get skeptical. I’m starting to realize that I automatically tune out when anyone starts telling me ‘they’ve been featured in so many outlets’ because that just shows me they have a problem reaching ‘real’ people.
So, if the money is in the list, I don’t think so. I think the money is in the ‘relationship’ you have with said list. And how much value are you giving said list!
Even more so, there is still a human element involved. While I have a big list, and people / friends tend to get lost in the shuffle, I try to make it a point to reach out personally to my friends and try to meet them in real life, as that does more for my ‘list’ than anything else I could do online. Which is one of the main things that I preach in any strategy online, bringing the the relationship offline somehow (phone, event, etc. .)
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