The following is a list of common mistakes I see people make while networking online. If you see yourself or business in ANY of the mistakes below, make an immediate effort to rectify the issue. Your business and social marketing efforts depend on it.

5 Common Mistakes People Make Networking Online

1. Missing Gravatar Picture: More often than not, I see missing gravatar pictures next to insightful blog comments. If you take the time to write insightful comments and engage in conversations with other people, you are wasting valuable opportunities to connect yourself and/or company with a network of people. It takes less than a minute to establish your gravatar picture, and in doing so, you show the world that their potential relationship with you is worth 60 seconds of your time.
2. Non-Human Gravatar Picture: While on the Gravatar subject, let me suggest that you use a photograph of yourself. A professional, personal, up-close, creative, HUMAN, recent photograph of YOU. Yeah, your hilarious high school photo might be funny to you, but guess what? Social networking isn’t about you. It’s about all the thousands of people you want to engage in conversation. So unless you have a very niche business where a goofy picture of you or your dog is appropriate, don’t make the mistake of missing a great opportunity with your Gravatar picture.
3. Missing Twitter Bio: Why bother joining Twitter if you don’t want people to follow you? If you don’t take a few minutes to write something in your bio that tells people who you are, what’s important to you, or why you are on Twitter, don’t expect them to follow you. If you think this isn’t hurting you, guess again. I make it a policy not to follow anyone with a missing bio, and I’m not the only one. It’s fast becoming an online example of being socially inept.
4. Contact Info: When I visit blogs and Facebook fan pages, I like to know where the person or business is. It is how I personally connect with people. I remember many of my social network contacts by their city or state. If the information is missing, I have a hard time remembering and connecting with them on a personal level. Why? Concrete information makes it REAL for me. Last week I was tweeting with someone from California, who was on her way to Minnesota with a college friend in MY CITY. Do you think I remember this contact on Twitter? You Bet! So add your business information or at least city/state location to your various sites. (plus, it’ll help with Google results)
5. Missing Persons Report: The biggest mistake I see is when people go missing. I tend to gravitate toward the people I’ve gotten to know online, so when it occurs to me that I haven’t seen or heard from them in a long time, it makes the whole process disjointed and inconsistent. Make sure that you make a plan make your social networking “rounds” wherever you get involved. If you have a fan page on Facebook, update it. If you are on Twitter, consistently tweet and follow-up with people. If you join communities such as Ning or industry specific site, go back on a regular basis. If you need to make a plan or write it on the calendar or set aside a specific day/time, do it. It is a mistake to go missing from your social networking contacts.

Ever visit a blog or forum and wonder how the other people have their picture showing up along side their post?  Today’s suggestion is one of the fastest social networking tools you can use, called Gravatars, and it’s FREE. This is a simple tool designed to automatically combine your picture with your email on any site, world-wide, that has Gravatar enabled. It is becoming common practice on blogs, forums, or any place that you use your email to post comments. Yahoo groups have been using Avatar for a long time, and Gravatar is a Globally Recognized version!

Why is this important? Anyone in business knows it’s important to put a face with a name. For any people representing your company in online discussions, Gravatars are a great way of putting a face (or faces) to your company. Pictures help with recognition and facilitate relationship building, which is the cornerstone of every business process. For really active posters (people who frequently post) online, Gravatars help build a following and establish the person as an expert.  This will put a face on your comments on this website also!

ONE ACTION ITEM: Go to http://en.gravatar.com/site/signup.  Enter the email you’re most likely to use online, and you’ll be guided to set a password and upload a photo. That’s it! Savvy business people using Gravitars “to the max” may use a photo of them with a product, wearing a company logo /hat, Photoshop altered, etc. Be creative!  Once you have your Gravatar, come back here and post a comment.

Want to know more?

There is more to this lesson, so if you want to know more, continue reading. 

There are two other technologies that are become popular.  Facebook connect allows blog owners to use a visitor’s Facebook account before they comment.  When a visitor does this, they have the added ability to invite their Facebook friends to your blog and post comments about your blog in their Facebook page.   Facebook users now have the opportunity to take their Facebook profile information, friends and privacy preferences to your sites. 

This also adds a few benefits to you, the blog owner.  First is the verification of the user.  One problem blog owners have is that commenter’s can be very anonymous.  Facebook connect is a way of verifying who your commenters are, thus reducing the amount of comment spam and vulgarity that anonymous users may bring to your blog.  The other added benefit is that it is easy for your users to invite their friends – thus increase traffic to your website!

The other technology is Google Friend Connect.  With Google Friend Connect, your website visitors can sign in with their Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID account.  They can then interact with other visitors by making friends, sharing media, posting comments, and more.   Like Facebook connect, your visitors can also invite friends from other social networks and contact lists to join your site or blog.

Right now, these are competing technologies.  Many sites are using Gravatars, Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, and others.  You can expect that by the end of 2009 (or at least hope) that there is one standard.  No matter which one wins, putting a face on social sites is something that is needed.  Along with that, these technologies will simplify all of the usernames and passwords you will collect on your social sites (remember yesterday’s lesson?  I hope you downloaded the “Social Media Information files.)  These technologies will give you one password to remember for most of your social media sites – from video and graphics to social networks and blogs.