Imagine Your Reality

I think one of the challenges with social media is learning how to turn your online network into an actual network. While it’s true that many of the people you’ll connect to online are people you might also see offline, not everyone you connect to is someone you see regularly. So the challenge that arises is how to become more than just an internet connection to someone.

Recently I’ve begun paring down my Linkedin connections. While I appreciate that a lot of people have chosen to connect with me, beyond being a number in my connections list, I don’t know most of them or how they will actually be meaningful to my life. So to determine if there is a possibility of a real relationship, I’m writing to my connections and asking them to tell me about themselves and what their needs are.

I’m not writing to them to solicit them, but I do want to know who they are, what’s important to them, and if I can help them in any way, shape, or form. Maybe I can connect them to someone I know or maybe I can answer a question, but I want to be more than a number and I also want them to be more than a number.

I also figure that if someone doesn’t write back, they probably aren’t interested in actually connecting with me in a meaningful way, so I’m willing to let them go as a connection, because I know nothing will come of a connection where I am just a number to someone else.

The challenge of turning an online network into an actual network is that the people you connect with have to be people with real needs so that you can really network with them. By writing a message to a person I’m connected to on Linkedin, my hope is that I’ll actually discover their needs and also become a person to them. My hope is that we’ll actually start networking for real instead of just accumulating numbers.

What about you? What makes a connection on any online site into a person who you are learning more and networking with?

One of the interesting realities of social media is that in some ways its easier to lose credibility on a site than it is to lose it in person. I personally think the reason for that is simple. It all boils down to the fact that you have a semi-permanent medium of text, which people can look at and reference. If you make a mistake via text it can stay with you a lot longer, if people know where to look. Regardless, losing credibility isn’t something anybody wants to experience, so if you know how you can lose credibility, it can be worth looking over your posts to help you avoid losing credibility.

Reason 1: Typos

You’d think a pesky little issue such as spelling would be forgiven in the age of texting, but its not, especially if its clear that you are trying to use an actual word and you spell it wrong. In an age of spell check, people are much less forgiving if they notice typos in your writing, whether in your social media or on your website. Make the effort to scan what you’ve written for misspelled words, and also for missing words. Don’t rely on spellcheck alone, which will miss some words.

Reason 2: It’s all about you

Nobody likes to be around a person who just talks about him/herself. Narcissism isn’t that attractive accept to the person listening to him/herself. It’s okay to post about what you are doing, but mix it up with some responses, retweets, and show interest in other people. You’d be surprise what’ll happen when people realize you actually want know about them as opposed to just pushing your own agenda.

Reason 3: Hard selling

Social media is about soft touch, not hard selling. Use social media to do research and make initial contact. Learn about the person and at some point, try to set up an appointment via phone or in person and then make your pitch. But use social media to create the social context that allows you to make that pitch, instead of trying to pitch people on social media.

Reason 4: No engagement

If you never respond to someone else, it makes a person wonder if you are really involved or if you just have everything set up on auto-pilot. Engagement is a sign that you are actually involved and interested in what people have to say and offer.

These are just a few reasons people lose credibility on social media sites. What are some reasons you would ad? What do you look for to tell you if someone is a spammer?

Typically, what I read and see in regards to social media is how it can be used for marketing, how it can be used to get in the door and catch the eyes of people. But I think social media is a lot more than just marketing or even networking. Social media needs to be examined in terms of how it can or can’t be applied to all areas of a person’s business.

One of the prevailing attitudes about customer service is that its just about damage control: Dealing with customer complaints. But customer service shouldn’t just be about damage control, and while social media is a wonderful medium for tracking what customers are saying or aren’t saying about your business, it also offers the opportunity to simply get into conversations with clients.

It seems to me that one part of customer service that’s ignored is customer retention. So while customer service will handle customer complaints, they won’t necessarily be proactive and actually talk with customers to establish a relationship with them based on trust as opposed to distrust. With social media, it’s easy to actually get involved in the conversation with a customer.

Here’s a tactic I use with my clients, that could also be used by other businesses, (even large ones) provided they are willing to assign customer service reps to specific clients. In Twitter create a specific list called clients and put all of your clients on there. On Facebook become a fan of their fan pages (if they are a business) and make it a point to visit those pages once a day. For each social media site there is a way to check up on clients, and engage them in conversation, provided you are willing to invest the time in doing so. Start conversations with your clients, or make a response to something they say that has nothing to do with your business. In short, show support for what matters to them, instead of waiting for them to contact you when they have a problem. By doing this you’ll be showing them that your interested in having a relationship with them, regardless of whether or not you’re doing business with them at the time.

Customer service should be about relationships first and damage control second. No business has an excuse for not investing in customer relationships, because each business is ultimately successful because of the customers. The product or service offered is only useful if someone wants to buy it, use it, and tell people about it. So ask yourself this: Is your customer service about damage control or actually getting to know your clients?

The other day Chris Brogan posted about the possibility of a social crash. He argues that with social media there is a lot of hyper-connectivity, which leads to ambient relationships, where we touch people via social media, but don’t necessarily have any further contact. Chris rightly wonders what will happen to all of our relationships with so much hyper connection.

I think while Chris is correct to note the ambient relationships that can be formed via social media, that it is possible to also form meaningful relationships with people on social media sites. Also social media is used to make people aware of situations in other people’s lives and in some cases those connections have pulled together to help someone out, even if they didn’t know the person well.

It’s true that social media makes it possible for even casual connections to stay more connected than they would have before, but I don’t think this will necessarily lead to a social crash. It may actually lead to people being more aware of the people they want to spend quality time with and using social media to stay up on those people’s lives and coordinating getting together with them.

At the same time, being connected to so many more people can be daunting because with many of those people we won’t really get to know them. They will provide us status updates, brief snippets of their lives, and then be gone. It is only with some effort on our part that we’ll be able to significantly make a relationship with them and usually both people will need to see a clear need for that relationship to occur.

Even with said I don’t think a social collapse will occur. Instead what I hope will occur is that people will become more thoughtful and aware of the relationships they chose to cultivate and make more effort to get to know the people who they feel are important to them, using both social media and other forms of communication. That, at least for me, is how I’ve used social media.

Return on Relationship is more than just a buzz phrase. It’s a philosophy about Relationships and how important they are for business.



Social media is more than technology, but many people get stuck on the technology. One of my clients expressed that what frustrated her the most was not being able to see how social media could contribute to relationships, because all she could see was the technology. She’s not alone, as other people have expressed similar frustration to me before. The problem is that technology can be a steep learning curve, especially if you only explain what to do. If you take the time to explain why someone needs to do something, it can help that person see past the technology to the underlying reasons that will help them grow their business.

Social media isn’t just technology. It’s a social medium, where you connect with other people. Technology is the means by which you connect with those people, but the actual activity is social activity that each person generates by commenting on their own news or commenting on other people’s news. When we look at social media in that light, we recognize that social media isn’t just a technological interface that does something that no one else can see. We recognize that social media is a conversation between people happening in a virtual space through technology.

The perception that social media is just technology is partially derived from how much people discuss the technology without considering the overall use. While it’s important to understand the technological piece of social media, focusing on it too heavily will lose people who otherwise might embrace it as part of their business. When I work with clients who feel frustrated by the technology, I spend a lot of time explaining the social piece because I recognize they need to understand how it actually connects them to other people as well as how those same people can sometimes end up contacting them offline as a result of that social media contact.

If we only frame social media as a technology we are missing out on what it can actually do for us. What do you think? Is social media just a technology for you, or is it more, and if so how is it more?

I was recently told by a new client that the reason she chose to do business with me is because I made the time to follow-up and didn’t brush her off when she had questions. It’s quite a compliment to get from a client, but it also illustrates my own philosophy. Relationships first, bottom line second.

Many businesses focus on the bottom line first. They want to know when they’ll get paid, and sometimes will refuse to answer questions because they worry they are giving away too much, but I think making the time to answer questions is important, because questions indicate interest and a desire to understand more. They also indicate the person isn’t sure if they want to do business with you and need some more information in order to make the right choice.

But I also see questions as an opportunity for building relationships. Sure, I’m providing information, but I’m also getting to know the person and by making the effort to find out more, I show that person that I see his/her needs as opposed to a check.

I also think that business is never just business, but also relationships. If I’m doing things right, I will be seeing my clients regularly at networking events and other places and I will continue to get to know them, just as they will get to know me. I’ll become a client for some of them, and I’ll want to know they’ll take care of me, just as I took care of them. If I treat them less like people and more like a check, I’ll probably get the same treatment, when I need them. But if I take care of my clients and focus on building a relationship first, they’ll treat me the same way when I need their services. I’ve seen this occur time and time again, because in the end people do care more about how you treat them than how much they’ll get paid. The bottom line will occur, but build your relationships and your bottom line will really grow.

The phrase Return on Investment (ROI) has become well associated with social media and is used as a way of measuring if social media is effective for helping the bottom line grow. But I think another phrase that social media has introduced or at least emphasized is Return on Relationship (ROR). The difference between these two terms is important to understanding how business is changing.

Return on Investment is focused on the bottom line, “What’s in it for me”. It’s mainly about determining what the benefit is from doing all the activities, and it is useful in the sense that its important to know that your effort is yielding results that you can integrate into your life. A business does need to measure ROI in order to understand what strategies and actions are effective.

Return on Relationship is focused on what’s in it for everyone involved. In other words, the measurement is on relationships and determining how everyone has benefited from the relationship, as well as how everyone can continue to benefit from it.

Social media has made the return on relationship more visible, because its a very public medium where people can and will discuss the relationships they have with businesses. As such businesses are starting to recognize that their behavior is a lot more visible and that they need to consider the relationship as well as the bottom line. Businesses can do this by adopting a perspective that examines ROR and determines how it fits into ROI, while also still developing a relationship with clients.

It’s important to acknowledge that relationships can effect the bottom line. A client’s loyalty can turn into a lot of business, both from him/herself and and also from people s/he refers, but its contingent on how much a relationship the client feels s/he has with that business. If a client feels like s/he is a number, then there is less incentive to stay in a relationship with the business. If a client feels that the business is invested in the client then s/he will be more likely to return. Businesses that recognize that also understand that ROI alone can’t fully measure the success of a business, if there is no understanding of the relationships that enable profit.

Biznik, Facebook, and Linkedin have a features called Groups. Linkedin and Biznik also have a Q and A forum. These features are very useful for becoming more visible in your social media communities and even leading to business, but there is one thing you need to do: participate.

Participation doesn’t have to take up a lot of time, provided you are focused about it. I usually will check out the Q and A forums first and skim a couple pages of them and see if there are questions I want to answer. I usually at least answer two questions. I do this every couple of days for the different sites I visit, which usually suffices for keeping me visible and engaged with the people I’m having an online discussion with.

I also check up on groups every couple days, unless I’m posting something to the group, at which point I’ll check when I post my discussion and determine if I want to contribute a comment to a discussion on the group. Again, I’m doing this to say visible and engaged in the group.

Can this activity lead to business? Sometimes it can. As people get to know you and also as they read what you’ve written, it can provide an opportunity for you to make online connections that can turn into offline conversations. Again, it’s ultimately up to you to follow-up with people you interact with online, but I’ve found that by choosing to follow-up with people has opened up opportunities I would otherwise miss out on. And participating in forums and groups has connected me to those people, so I think its worth investing a bit of time into the online groups and forums you join.

What about you? what has your experience with Q and A forums and groups been like and how has it helped your business?