It’s not about who you know…
Posted: November 29th, 2008 | Author: Ron Bronson | Filed under: Social Networking | Tags: facebook, LinkedIn, Social Networking | 5 Comments »You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “It’s not about who you know…”.
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Ron
I so disagree! Over the last three years, almost all the interesting and influential people I’ve met – in both my personal and professional life – I’ve met online through blogs, Twitter and other social media.
If you go into it thinking you’ll learn (rather than teach), if you join in conversations, if you engage those who reach out to you, you can develop relationships in the social media space that are real and lasting (and I can almost guarantee you they won’t try to sell you anything).
At least that has been my experience. Don’t write off the social media!
kathleen
I actually wrote this post for other folks I know, who aren’t as well connected as we are. That’s sorta the thing. I think those folks could get online and do what a lot of us do. But still, I know lots of people in my personal life who don’t use the web as we do (maybe just for email or for web surfing) and as a result, they’re failed by the web services that exist that purport to “connect” people to each other in meaningful ways.
I met my first friends online back on AOL in the 90s and still connect with people online these days too, but trying to bridge that gap for others..well, I think it could be done better.
Thanks for commenting.
Good provocative posting.
Is it possible that the phenomenon you describe is due to the fact that people don’t understand what “networking” is? Or how to do it? I’ve heard someone say he was deleting his LinkedIn profile because he’d been connecting with people like crazy, but after three months he hadn’t received a single job lead (Could just as easily have been “sales lead,” same issue, right?). And it cracks me up to see people madly connecting with everyone in their own office or company. Yeah, that will expand your network dramatically!
Facebook is similar: people connecting because they can, not because they ought to. “I knew you in 5th grade, let’s connect.” Why? We didn’t even like each other. Et cetera.
So I blame a lack of awareness on what networking is, how it works, and what it is about networks that can potentially help you solve problems. And the solution to that is probably just TIME – it will be a while before most people have a lot of experience with actually using a network to get something done. Even if the separate brands (LinkedIn, Facebook) are gone by then, the connections will still exist, and the ones that have value will persist, in nurtured. Just like in face to face relationships.
Well maybe they know what networking is, but to them, that’s scary. They’d rather do what’s familiar and so, to many of them, it’s way better to say…talk to someone they met in 5th grade and reconnect than to meet someone they met at a conference once or talked to in an elevator or a friend of a friend who has been recommended to them, because that might be “weird.” As a result, they’ll fail to get the sort of impact they’re wanting from these networks.
Another complaint are folks who graduate from college and lose their networks when they move to different parts of the country or stay home and are just surrounded by the same people they’ve always known. Do the existing tools REALLY help people who don’t have the time to the web as most of us do, to really leverage them to their benefit? I’d say no.
I think you’re right about “time” though, that it’ll take time that and that we’re still in the nascent stages of all of this stuff and it’ll continue to evolve, get refined and be more effective as a result.
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