Hey! This is Laura Roeder, and this is a quick video response to a reader question. “Should I send a Facebook event invitation for my online event to everyone I know on Facebook?” Here is the answer, “No!” Now let me tell you why.

When you’re bothering people in general; there are two questions that you need to ask yourself. One is how invasive is this? And two is have they raised their hand to hear from me in some way?

So as for the first question; how invasive is this? Here is what I mean. When you invite someone to an event on Facebook, most people will receive an email on their inbox with that event invitation, I know, I do. That is what most people have on their settings. Receiving an email is way more invasive than just seeing a message on the page if that makes sense, because it’s actively coming to my inbox.

As far as the second question, I can see you saying, ok but the person has agreed to be my friend on Facebook, but I’m friends with a lot of people on Facebook that I have no interest in being a customer of their business. See what do I mean? They might be my friend. We might be able to collaborate in some way. I might be interested to create strategies with them as an entrepreneur. But if they sell horse’s that is something that I have no interest in, and will never have any interest in, then I don’t want to hear their sale pitches for buying a horse.

Maybe we’re going to talk about their marketing strategies for selling horses and trade ideas for that but I don’t really want to receive a junk from them about buying horses. So there is going to be a lot of people that you are friends with on Facebook that don’t have any interest in hearing from you from sales perspective. So as far as promoting online events on Facebook, one, I mean it’s definitely not something that is a must do; it is nice if you have a lot of people that say yes. I think that’s good for you. It shows people that are interested, other people are showing up, but I don’t think it’s something.

I would actually love to hear your opinion or your comments if you had a big success in promoting online events on Facebook. I haven’t seen it based on something that really makes or breaks online event for people. I do think they are very effective for offline events. I know that I have a lot of premium invitations and meet up and event planning and stuff, but I do via Facebook, I will check my Facebook calendar and see what kind of stuff I have signed up for, what’s coming up?

But as far as online events, you know teleseminars, webinars, and stuffs like that, not so much. It can be ok. But so if you want to invite people to your online event via Facebook, work through your form list and see who is interested. Maybe there are people that you know are on your email list for this topic or that you know that are always responsive to you about this topic.

If you want to invite those people, great; if there are people who are very targeted; if you are offering free content for florist and you have people that you know that are florists on your list it would make sense to invite them on Facebook event. But it would not make sense to invite me because I’m not a florist. And I have been on friending people lately that are sending me a ton of event invites that I have no interest in because its spam, that is what it is. So I say definitely think twice before you invite everyone to your online Facebook event, and as far as just blanketing the invitation such as everyone at your friends on Facebook, no. Don’t do it.

Hey! Laura Roeder here and as I’m gearing up for South West, I just wanted to give you a little bit of advice about how you can use social media and how you can use the web so that you aren’t approaching people cold in your offline connections.

So when you’re going into a conference, like South by South West, well there is going to be a lot of awesome people that you want to meet. I would just make a list, either on your head or on paper basically your wish list of everyone that you want to meet that is going to be at the conference. If it is on paper, you will probably like, show them your list when you meet them. I guess it kind of funny, my come across is a little weird.

Well, anyway, so you have a list of people. Instead of just approaching them totally cold when you see them at the conference; connect with them online first, so that they may have some idea who you are and this actually makes a huge difference when it comes time to say ‘hi’ to someone on the conference.

So, I just did this actually on twitter with Jonathan Fields. I don’t think he and I have… I don’t think we have ever emailed, we haven’t really spoken much. But he is someone I will definitely love to meet in person. He just wrote a Tweet like he is coming to South by South West. I wrote him a message back, I just said “Hey! I’m going; I’m looking forward to meeting you.” So now, when I do approach him and say “Hi!” I just have that little bit of connection that exists already. I can say “Hey, I don’t know if you remember. I sent you a message on Twitter, my name there is ‘lkr’. You know, he might know, you know, put two and two together and know who I am.

So the people that you want to connect with, send them a Tweet, write them an email. Send them a Facebook message, and people, this is something people get’s so nervous about. Sending someone new a message, like “What should I say?” It really doesn’t have to be much of anything. You can just say “Hey, I’m Laura. I just wanted to drop you a note. I’m going to be at South by South West and I’m looking forward to meeting you there.” And that can be it and then you just mention that to them when you meet them. And it would really differentiate you from just some random person that they have no contacts at all.

Because usually, when you’re sending someone a message, the odds are really good that they are going to check you out. They are going to look at your true profile, click on your website. Or if you website should be in your email signature, they’re going to look it up from there. So don’t even tell people, don’t say like, you know, don’t ask them to do anything, don’t even say “Look at my website”. It’s just there and they are probably going to see it. They probably are going to remember that they saw it. Remember who you are. It just creates much more of a connection with someone in person. It is sort of takes your, it sort of steps, skips over that first step in building your relationship.

So this week, you have a week before South West, make sure that your connection with all those people that you want to meet and then they are going to have some contacts for who you are, when you meet them in person.