How To Grow Your SOI on Facebook

The best way toGrow Your Social SOI on Facebook” is to GET OFF YOUR WALL!  –  Let me explain…

I just read an article about a new product called “Social Essentials” where Comscore and Facebook are teaming up to provide a new service that will offer unprecedented insights into the influence of brands on social media.  The article takes you on a different journey and direction than I will here, but I was inspired to write this post based on the no-brainer concept or what I like to refer to as a BFO (blinding flash of the obvious).

Preaching to Your Fan-base on Your Own Wall is Like Preaching to the Choir

This does not mean you shouldn’t continue posting great content on your own Facebook wall, but your fans are already your fans. You should consider getting off YOUR facebook wall at times and visiting others Facebook walls, that’s where all the new and potential friends and fans are waiting to meet and greet you.

How do you tap into your friends and fans SOI? (sphere of influence)

You MUST be stopping in and joining discussions and threads on THEIR wall. Engage in their interests, their content draws their friends and sphere and it’s those you want to reach and connect with right?

Here’s a few tips to help you do this successfully:

  • Don’t EVER SPAM them or their friends and fans
  • Provide value and relative content always
  • Participate in discussions that create opportunity
  • Be selective in your engagement and involvement
  • Go back a few weeks to comment on previous posts
  • Don’t try to sell, market, or advertise ever
  • Use good judgement when selecting fans of friends
  • Deliver short, concise and valuable information
  • Visit 20 friends/fans FB walls a day and comment
  • Reach out to 4-5 friends of a friend/fan per day
  • MOST IMPORTANT: Be creative, use common sense

Facebook welcomes you to trade farm animals, poke others, and use third party applications to make your page exciting.  They allow you to build fan pages, add videos, photos, links and more…  but these are time consuming tasks that are self-promoting and leave you waiting around hoping that someone comes to your wall to engage with you?  We all know what it’s like to post an awesome video or photo, and then only get 3 or 4 likes with a comment or two.  Then, when you post something simple or even stupid, you get 50+ comments and 180 likes…  go figure.  lol~

If you want to build your SOI and sphere on Facebook, you’re going to have to get out there and travel around the network and the walls of those who have friends and fans in their spheres that you don’t have but would love to add to yours.  Those that know you already, know who you are and what you do, but their friends and fans might not?!?  This isn’t rocket science by any means, but you’d be surprised how many people post up things on their Facebook wall and then just wait around for days-on-end hoping to grow traffic, build a following, and provide value to their readers.  I know this because I was one of them!  🙂

Mike Rich provides highlights from The Power of Like, a joint whitepaper from comScore and Facebook

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