My RSS Feed has a consistent personal brand on, well, personal brand and career topics. Maria Elena Duron has Just Posted the Following on her blog:

This is so hard because people come out and they go to networking events. I see them. They try. They think it’s time to be social butterfly and so they think they have to have conversation with everybody or they think they can go and collect 60 different business cards and that’s making a connection. They think they need to go to every organization, event, every mixer. That’s how they get known and there really needs to be a strategy towards that so here are the 18 people you need to know and we’ll go a little bit more into strategy.

But we’ll start first, with your Information Network, Referral Network, and Advocates. That is your IRA and just like any other IRA, even though we don’t want to talk about that right now with the economy, it’s still has to produce for you, okay? Your social capital portfolio needs to produce for you. If you invest time into it which we said at the beginning, time is more valuable than money. Like the myth that time is money. It’s more valuable than money and now that we shift our look at our people and the investment that we put into people as a time investment so therefore, it’s more valuable than money, who do we need to invest in?

Advocates

Well, this is our IRA. These are the 6 people in each group making 18 that we need to know so let’s start with your Advocates cause that’s the most important and I’m going to ask you to write ‘Advocates’ down on your paper right now and then number 1 through 6.

1. Fan Club So number one in your Advocate is someone in your fan club and so just write ‘Fan Club’ and then I’m going to ask you to think of the first name that comes to your mind. For some of my clients, it’s mom. Mom is in my fan club, the number one person. She’s always there for me. Always says, “You go…” or it’s my aunt, my best friend. Whose in your personal fan club right now, write their name next to it.

If you don’t have somebody next to that fan club, a member of your fan club for that first one, well, when you work with your database, you need to see and identify who in your close knit database group (have you done a database inventory yet?) can become a fan club member? Who’s getting close? Go for the low-hanging fruit first and then those are people you’ve already developed some sort of relationship with and they could be a part of your fan club but they’re not there yet and what you need to do is invest time.

 Relationships still take time and when a relationship ceases to be mutually beneficial to both people involved, somebody leaves so time is a great way to invest into a relationship. So number one is who’s in your fan club? A person in your fan club.Maria Elena Duron, CEO, Buzz to Bucks, broadens the network of busy people through effective social marketing strategies. Buzz to Bucks provides online profile management services, social management and reputation management - helping key employees to establish higher visibility and provide consistency in branding as well as establishing the expertise in their industry for entrepreneurs.


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