It’s not about exposing yourself! It’s about building relationships.

Many of us just wish social media would go away. It has become such a time sucking part of our lives. And so much needless information that is blasted out on the World Wide Web! HOW DID WE END UP HERE?!?

It’s OK. Chill! Let’s can take it down a notch.

Although social media won’t be going away anytime soon, there is lots of great opportunity in the social media space for entrepreneurs to utilize for creating, building, and growing the value of relationships. The problem is there are often powerful tools to grow our social media effectiveness that we didn’t even know existed. I will not purport to know all of these. In fact, I try to pay close attention, because everywhere I teach, coach, present and consult about this stuff, I will learn from others about ways to use tools that I never knew existed or knew they were there but not how to effectively use them.

So let me share about one that you may not know about, but can have a great effect on your social media marketing strategy and well-being. It is the process of creating lists on your personal Facebook page.

What? You think I should use my personal page for business purposes? Oh yeah! Business is about growing a network of relationships then building on those relationships. Your Facebook personal page is one more way to do that building. This is not a place to sell! Don’t do that!! That will lose friends (an family!). But it gives you a place to engage with these relationships. Now check this out -

We know that the categories of how we are connected to people are already on our Facebook page. We all have Friends and Family. But Facebook gives us the opportunity to create other lists (or groups) of the people we have become friends with on our personal pages. Some might be folks we attended college with, or fellow members of the Rotary Club, or prospects, former clients, business networking acquaintances, other real estate professionals, home services friends (are your creative juices flowing yet?). So in other words, we can create lists to share a message or a post from your business page. Remember – DON’T SELL STUFF! But, when you share something, you can use the audience selector to choose the list you want to share it with.

And if there are things you wouldn’t want a group like “Prospects” or “Clients” to see (like some temporary moment of insanity), then you can also put those folks in another list called Restricted, which will only see what you share if you post something to “Public”.

So take a little time and organize the relationships you have and then actively go find more people you can build relationships with. Social media is about the social and not about the media.

From one of the best business books I have read in recent years, The Go-Giver , “The Law of Compensation – Your Income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.” (Bob Burg and John David Mann, 2007, p.51).

So get social, make friends, go serve some people (and lots of them!!) and watch your exposure grow!

David Redabaugh, www.YourBizSocial.com