Investment portfolios.



Airline seats.



Chocolate fudge cakes.



What do these three things have in common with the size of your online network? Big is good, bigger is better, and biggest is where you want to be.



As marketers, we have stuff to do, and failing to reach our objectives is not an option. Our brands and businesses require us to make things happen. Customers, sales, revenues… it’s up to us. Having large online social networks gives us the juice we need to make things happen.



Over the past few months, I have seen a surprising number of articles attempting to convince me that whether I’m a B2B or a B2C marketer, the focus for my portfolio of friend, follower, and connection-based online networks should be “engagement.” Hogwash.



Size matters. Size gives you power. Size gives you control. Size gives you leverage.



Everyone is an expert in something, but no one is an expert in everything. One of the reasons to be active on social media is to learn how to use cutting-edge and proven marketing strategies and tactics. If you follow one marketing professor on Twitter, you learn his/her approaches. How much better if you follow all of the top marketing professors on Twitter in the areas of B2B marketing, B2C marketing, public relations, corporate branding, and marketing research? The larger your network, the smarter you can be.



In the concept of six degrees of separation, all of us are, at most, six steps away from any other person. This is the heart of LinkedIn’s business model. If I have one connection on LinkedIn, I’m two degrees away from everyone my connection knows. Whether I need to buy or sell, I have a personal introduction to everyone in my connection’s network. As a marketer whose livelihood depends on your ability to get things done, would you rather have one connection on LinkedIn or 1,000?



What if you had a large mailing list of people who want to receive your communications because they’re interested in what you have to say? Each of your messages can reach more target customers. The larger your online network, the more people you can sell, real-time, 24×7×365.



As marketers, part of our value is to persuade our target audience to take action. If you’re Ashton Kutcher and develop the largest online network, you’re not just in the media, you are the media. You can directly broadcast to your five million-plus member audience anytime. That’s marketing. You want each and every one of your communications to command a level of credibility so high that other media outlets are forced to report on them.



As my boss likes to say, “Your message can only go as far as the size of your network.” Besides, as any five year old will loudly and unashamedly tell you when you’re standing in line with him at the bakery, “Who wouldn’t want the biggest chocolate fudge cake?”



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Additional Reading



“It all starts with having the largest possible audience.”

-Dan Zarrella, Hierarchy of Contagiousness



“Marketers must connect on social networks with people they don’t know, namely their customers.”

-Charlene Li, Groundswell



“I have always admired the way successful entrepreneurs put themselves in a position to ‘get luck’ by developing relationships with relevant people and taking advantage of promising opportunities.”

-Jeff Bussgang, Mastering the VC Game



Regardless of the state of the economy in general, or your local job market in particular, “the larger your network, the faster you will find a job.”  We have all heard this truism before, but did you know that the same rule also applies to your professional online social networks?  The more people you have in your professional online social networks, the faster you will find your next job.



Whether you’re a beginner just sitting down to create your profile on http://linkedin.com for the very first time, or a seasoned veteran with a dozen profiles on different mainstream and niche sites, here are six things you should do to leverage your professional online social networks to more quickly find your next job:



1.  Ask your http://linkedin.com connections who work for each of your target companies to write a recommendation for you.  Your connections may respond to your requests more quickly, if you first write a recommendation for them.



2.  When you submit your cover letter and resume on an internet job posting, send messages to your connections within the company to help you identify the hiring manager or HR contact.  Job postings on http://simplyhired.com and http://linkedin.com have this feature built-in, but you can do this for a job ad on any website where the company is named.



3.  Write a brief note introducing yourself to the hiring manager or HR contact letting them know you submitted for the job, and ask one of your connections within the company to forward it to him/her for you.



4.  If you are not able to reach out directly to the hiring manager or HR contact through one of your connections on http://linkedin.com, check to see which groups they belong to and join that particular group.  Most group members allow other members of the group to message them directly.  Also, joining relevant professional groups on http://linkedin.com, such as http://WebExecutives.org, is one more opportunity for you to expand your professional network.  Alternately, you can send the hiring manager or HR contact a LinkedIn InMail(TM).



5.  A heads up that if a contingency recruiter or their agency has already submitted you to the company as a candidate *or* if you submitted for the job on a recruiting agency’s own website, you should NOT contact the company’s hiring manager or HR contact directly, as it creates a serious conflict of interest which could get you ejected from the candidate review process.  Don’t miss out on job opportunities, or alienate recruiters and their agencies.



6.  Finally, be sure to use the SocialGrow web and mobile phone software application when it is released, to easily grow your connections on all of your professional and personal online social networks!



The “new normal” is that most of us will have more employers in our lifetime than did our parents, which means your next employer will likely not be your last employer.  Continuing to nurture and grow your online professional social networks, even after you have found your dream job, will accelerate your career growth for years to come!



- Marsh (President)

Boston’s Largest Network of Technology Investors, named after the city’s historic public meeting grounds, CommonAngels is a group of 75 leading private investors and several dozen limited partners in two co-investment funds. They have rich expertise in over 58 specific sectors and finance the region’s most innovative high-tech ventures with a focus on capital efficiency: Series A rounds of $500K-$5M with total capital less than $20M.



- Marsh (President)

Let us know which logos you love, which logos you hate, and which logos just make you scratch your head.



99designs is a disruptive startup which connects passionate designers from around the globe with savvy clients who need design projects completed in a timely fashion without the usual risk or cost associated with professional design.



Read what the media  has to say about about them.



- Ken (CMO)

In advance of the launch of our new company’s website, and, as you can see, in advance of our even having a logo, welcome to the SocialGrow™ company blog!



SocialGrow™ helps individuals and organizations around the world realize the benefits of social networks.



SocialGrow’s flagship product, the SocialGrow™ Web and Mobile Phone Software Application, enables people of all technical levels to quickly and easily grow their professional and/or personal online social networks. The SocialGrow™ Web and Mobile Phone Software Application also enables both small and large social networks around the world to rapidly grow their memberships.



SocialGrow’s Consulting division, SocialGrow™ Consulting, researches, analyzes, and makes recommendations on social networking strategies.



SocialGrow’s Professional Services division, SocialGrow™ Professional Services, manages social networks.



SocialGrow’s vision is to realize the human side of what our technology enables — new connections between people that might not have otherwise happened. Finding a new job after a year of unemployment. Finding the love of your life after a break-up that left you thinking you’d never meet anyone. Finding a huge customer when you didn’t know whether your business would survive. Each new connection truly has the potential to be life-changing. Our application enables growth, not just the number of people one has in their multiple online networks, but the value received from the richness of having a large, diverse network.



SocialGrow™ was founded in 2009 by industry veterans Marsh Sutherland, Ken Herron, and Charbel Elkhoury.