How to Leverage Your Facebook Friends to Meet the Right People

Case Study, Interview, Networking

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Leveraging FB FriendsWhen I was a kid, we had a rosebush in the garden. I watched it grow over time and deliver nice roses that my mum would cut and take home at some point. One thing that surprised me was its resilience; I would have expected it to dry away as we only took care of it when we remembered its existence—but it endured our laziness, and I’m sure it’s still delivering roses to those who can appreciate them (or whoever lives there now).

Like our rosebush, the relationships we create don’t need our closest attention to stay alive. Friends and acquaintances can endure long periods in the dark, living their lives independently but within our garden.

These relationships, of course, are not blooming all the time. Relationships and rose bushes have ups and downs, but if you pay them a visit from time to time, chances are that you, like my mum, will take something home—be it inspiration, comfort or even relevant contacts.

Facebook and other social platforms allow us to take care of our garden in a way that was impossible before—or at least was very time-consuming. Keeping relationships alive requires only a few clicks now, despite of where our contacts live, what they do or how long you have been apart. Moreover, we can use Facebook to spread our seeds further than ever and make our garden grow. (And I’m not just talking Farmville.)

 

A Real-Life Experiment

Now that we are confronted with the question of which is more relevant, “what you know” or “who you know,” these platforms give us the possibility to have both.

The former strategy requires both studying and practicing—a bit intense, but there is no other way I know of. The latter, however, I find to be more ethereal. Some people get the right contacts just by being born, some while walking the dog…as for the rest of us, we can either rely on providence or make it happen for us. For these lost souls with no professional godfather, I decided to pursue an experiment and share my findings with you here.

A previous article published here covered getting in touch with these relevant people (those who qualify for “who you know”) using social media. For my experiment, I used Facebook to find relevant people for my mission and get introduced to them by a middleman (a.k.a. shared friend). Being referred by someone allowed me to avoid cold calls, frozen emails and all those other introductions out of the blue which we all fear.

Now, step by step:

 

The Players

First, decide who you need to know.

In my experiments, the objectives were people working in finance and editors from magazines/publications—two sectors where I could potentially leverage these contacts. I used the “Find Friends” feature on Facebook to look up people working in relevant companies/magazines who had mutual friends with me.

I found enough potential contacts in no time, even though for language issues, I was only using a fraction of my friends from Facebook. (Most of my network is comprised of Spanish fellas, and I wanted you to understand what I’m talking about.)

 

The Setup

Once you’ve marked your objectives, craft a message to send to your shared friend, asking them to introduce you to the person you’re interested in.

I have to admit that in my experiment, I reached roses that had been out of the radar for a very long period of time. Still, I managed to get a decent response from them. As I said earlier, the more often you visit your roses, the greater the chances are of getting some sort of gain. However, don’t feel bad if you haven’t been around for some time; you weren’t the only one who was busy, and relationships can be resilient enough.

Here is the template I created, personalized for each person. I left out the “thanks and goodbye” paragraphs to save space, but you should definitely include them. The success rate decays if you come across as a jerk.

(Please excuse my somewhat broken English in these messages; since they were written to a friend, it’s not quite as polished as it is in this post.)

 

The Hook

This message was crafted for friends of mine, people I had in my Facebook network. However, to be completely honest, they aren’t exactly close friends, those of the kind that would do anything for you even without you asking. Most of the people in my network are connected to me only at a superficial level—sufficient to feel safe referring me, but in some cases not close enough to feel like working and giving up time for me. The same likely holds true for your Facebook network.

So, you need to make things nice and easy for these people. Because, if it were you on the other side of the exchange, you would appreciate it.

The green square in the example above is a template I provided for my friend to send to the person I wanted to make contact with. People may not use it, but at least you’ve provided a friendly solution and made it easier for them to help you out.

 

The “Why”

If you’re asking someone to do something for you, the least you should do is tell them why you need it! Feed their curiosity at least, and if the story is compelling enough, you increase the probabilities of getting your introduction. That’s the orange square above. (Now that I look at it, I didn’t extend much—but apparently I didn’t need to. You don’t want to tell someone your life story.)

 

The Request

After a gracious introduction asking relevant questions of your friend (see the pink square) and the tale about your situation (orange), the moment is right to go for the request: what you need (i.e., an introduction) and what you are going to do with it. (That would be the blue square.)

Please note my pledge to not bother my friend more than necessary! Take into account that your behavior will reflect directly on the shared friend, and you don’t want to kill that rose.

 

The Finale

Alright. Now you got a direct line of communication with a person who works at the company you like, who is reportedly open to your questions and would appreciate your interest. And you can make all this happen on your PJs! Not bad.

If you’re one of those people who believes the screening and interviewing process runs suspiciously smooth when backed by a contact within the company (hint: it does!), you might want to try this.

 

Alberto Mera (@alberto_mera) graduated from both the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Cass Business School in London. He works as an equities broker servicing European clients with an interest in Spanish stocks. Representative of his class in college and founder of the Squash Club at Cass, he has always been involved in university events. He recently commenced an entrepreneurial career on the side and developed a network of contacts in the Association of Young Entrepreneurs in Spain. Don’t miss his newly created blog!

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