Does Social Media Work

I know you've probably read countless articles on how if you follow 7 simple rules that you can build a social media dynasty. You know the articles, written by people who have never ever done anything other than write about how simple it is to do the impossible with Facebook or Twitter. Well I have built a pretty successful organization and it has all been done using only Facebook. Let me tell you how we did it.

About a year ago we decided to organize a group and wanted to know how to do it, so we did all of our research via Facebook. You can find almost anything you want about people who have gone before you by just typing in a search on the subject. After doing our premliminary work of finding out how to do the project, we formed a presence on Facebook and started to contact people. If you are like most of us this won't be an easy thing to do but it is a must. You must start to contact people. During the early days I would just contact the most famous person I could, friend them and then check out their friendslist. Going through their list I would friend a few of their friends. After that I would join in on their conversations and build a reputation as someone who was interesting.

During that time I started a Youtube account. I would try and post a new video article once or twice a week until people started to talk about me. Most of my thoughts surrounded my interest in business and helping other people recognize their strengths. People I didn't even know would start to talk about how optimistic I was. This set the stage for our main organization.

When we started our networking group we did everything via the internet. We tried to contact people, market and inform our members via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Slowly but surely people started to take interest what we were doing. Whenever we would have a meeting, we would post it online. Whenever we had something to say to each other, we would prominently post it on Facebook or Twitter. When I had an insight on a business related subject, you could be sure that I would video it via Youtube. I would post when and where the meetings and events via the message boards in our local area. This was utilizing Social Media like a machine.

Then I got a little crazy. I started to contact city officials via Facebook. Maybe I was just at the right place at the right time but everytime I would friend one of these folks and ask them if they would like to be a special guest speaker, they would say yes. This would set the tone for our group as one that specialized in getting big name speakers. This ability to attract these highend speakers still exists to this day. Our latest guest speaker makes an incredible amount of money for a single speaking engagement. We were able to get him... you guessed it, through Facebook.

Our group has now grown to 90 online and two local groups in our city and we are contacting people all over America, from California to Florida to join our network as charter members. All of this has been done via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. So does Social Media work? Oh yeah...just ask our members. They are the richer for the existence of the internet and the ability of our being able to communicate via, Social Media.