Social media is a game changer in many ways. It's hard to imagine how we stayed in touch with distant friends and family before the arrival of Facebook, LinkedIn and all the other social networks.
Today, you can update your entire network on your performance with the click of a button or uploading a photo.
That's good news – as long as you're not one of those drink-and-post types. Drunk dialing seems pretty tame compared to pissing off your entire social network at once.
With social media, it is easy to maintain a relationship with distant friends and family members. But it can also be very useful, as a large personal network can be extremely valuable when it comes to job hunting, getting clients or clients, or even getting feedback from the crowd.
Personally, I know that I keep in touch via social media with a vast network of old friends, family, colleagues from former jobs, old neighbors, and college roommates that I couldn't stay with. in contact otherwise.
Many of these members of my extended network have been helpful in various ways and have even become clients.
But the truth is, whether Mark Zuckerberg likes it or not, social media isn't the magic bullet for retaining and maintaining a large personal network. In fact, there are many other free and inexpensive tools that can be just as valuable as Facebook or LinkedIn.
5 Essential Tools for Online Networking
Here are five must-have tools you can use to maintain and nurture a large personal network online, and how you can use them:
1. Skype – free long distance calls and recording of interviews
Skype is a great way to connect with existing family and friends without spending a fortune on long distance calls. But you can also use it to expand your network.
I use this free service to make a virtual "cup of coffee" with people I've met but don't live near me.
You can also use Ecamm Call Recorder for Mac ($20) or Pamela for PC ($20) – to record Skype videos or audio calls. I use it to record my interviews for my podcast. As I've written before, podcast interviews can work as a form of "informational interviews" and are a great way to meet people you look up to.
2. BufferApp – social media posting at ideal times
Buffer lets you share posts to your social media accounts at optimal times when the people you're connected with are most active. For example, if you're active late at night, you can push your tweets or Facebook posts out during the day when people will actually see them.
The Google Chrome buffer extension is installed so I can quickly add something I want to share on Twitter or Facebook to my bufferapp queue to be sent later when more people are likely to see it.
3. FreeConferenceCall.com – free phone call recording
FreeConferenceCall.com is a free service to easily record phone conversations. You can use this service to record interviews over the phone and then publish them on your blog, website or podcast.
Long before I started a podcast, I used this service to quickly and easily record interviews and post them to my blog. If this is technically too complex for you, you can simply use the service to record the interview and then use excerpts for a newsletter article or transcribe the interview and post the transcript to your blog.
4. By contact – manage follow-ups with your network
I discovered this relatively new service a few months ago and I love it. Contactually is a service that allows you to manage relationships and track communications. It syncs with your existing email accounts and social networking sites and creates unified profiles for each person. Then you can specify how often you want to “track” each of them – i.e. every 30 days, every 60 days, etc.
You can check out this video review I created where I show how I use Contactually. They have both free and paid plans.
5. Google Hangout – a web-based video calling software similar to Skype.
I've used Google Hangout to meet small groups of people and used it for interviews. A cool feature is that you can also save Google Hangouts and easily upload them to Youtube.
I'm not a big Google Plus user, but Google Hangout is a reason for anyone to be more active there.
6. Screencast-o-matic.com – simple screencast recording
I love this simple screencasting software, which lets you record simple screencasts and works right in your browser. I have used this service to record a variety of screencasts. A good idea is to record a book review for a new book from an author you want to meet, then send them a link to the video embedded in your blog. For $15/year you can upgrade to their Pro version which removes the watermark and gives you additional editing tools.
Sept. Fiverr.com – small services for $5
On Fiverr, people provide small services for $5. You can have someone design a special gift, create a graphic, sing a song, dance a dance, or even hand-draw a message into a short video recording. You can come up with creative ideas to make something memorable for everyone in your network.
If you liked this list, I've created a handy PDF with over 10 additional tools for online networking that I think you'll love. There are actually a lot more than 10 tools listed. But I still called it “Top 10 Tools” because I like to exceed your expectations. 🙂
