Five Ways to Connect and Add Value

September 13, 2008 · Comments

Zena Weist and Susan Getgood Julien and I are discovering that one of the most important parts of becoming a trust agent is to be Connector X, the person who’s always at the heart of connecting other people. Whether online or off, if you can make a practice of connecting people in a useful way, there’s a value there that will prove helpful to your goals in life.

Here are some ways to add value and be helpful, online and off:

Five Ways to Connect and Add Value

  1. Be a bridge- Before attending a face to face event, see if you can tell who’s going to be there (some sites show an attendee list, or check Upcoming.org, etc). If you’ve never met the person, search Flickr for their name and see if you can match the name to the face. Now, at the event itself, make your introduction early. Even if you’re shy, getting your connection to the people you want to meet early means they’ll have at least one person they’ve met before everyone else crowds them, etc. Now, should you find opportunity, introduce this new person to people you know in the group. That way, you’re helping bridge people together at the event.
  2. Share photos – If you’re ever unsure other ways to add value to an event, snap a few good candid photos of people there. Then, post them on Flickr such that others can share them (see Creative Commons for details), and with all kinds of useful tags for people to be able to find them. This is a great trick for shy folks, but it works great for trust agents like Brian Solis, who is almost always snapping quality photos of the big names in tech at various events.
  3. Pass Through Business – In a recent post on sharing, I mentioned how important it is to share business. This is a great chance to connect and add value. Giving someone else business that they can execute means that you’ve been able to help them. Let me ask you: if someone handed you the chance to make a few thousand dollars, would you think better or worse about that person? I try to share as much business as I can, and will work on doing that even more in the coming years.
  4. Connect Other People – here’s where it’s really useful. Keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities for others. If you hear of a small business training opportunity, think of Becky McCray and send the business her way. If you think of corporate storytelling, think of Larry Lawfer. And think about this with the bloggers and speakers you know, too. Heck, any line of business. Be willing and ready to connect others, and do it often, not just once in a blue moon. Again, consider the potential return on having a veritable army of people who feel like you’ve helped them out.
  5. Link Link Link – In your blog posts, and on your various web-based projects, be liberal with your links. Every link is a chance for someone to discover something new. Don’t be downright nutty about it, but when you can share great work, do it. And not just on your website. Use social bookmarking like Delicious, share items in Google Reader, post things to FriendFeed, and don’t forget StumbleUpon, which seems to be my #2 traffic source all the time.

Your mileage may vary, and there are times when connecting isn’t always the thing to do. Be sure you can vouch for the people you’re connecting others to, by the way. It’s not a “buyer beware” system, where you connect someone, they have a bad experience, and that’s nothing to do with you. If you’re the person who made the introduction, you’re definitely the person who comes top of mind to the person who had the bad experience.

What do you think? Can you see the value in improving your Connector X capabilities? Are you the connector in your group?

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  • What's the old saying about people doing business with people not with other businesses.....think this is so true.

    Many examples of this--we like being in the compnay of and doing biz with people we like!

    Michael Slawin
    http://www.HitsThatClick.com
  • Nothing personal Chris, but this is OLD news in the offline world. I work for a local business organization, and people put the first 4 principles into work every day. Every successful business person takes advantage of networking. This isn't a new discovery.

    What is new is that a large number of very successful business people are using social networking to expand and leverage their contact base. And I'm not just talking about LinkedIn, but also Facebook as well.

    Best,

    Sachin Shah
  • A great list. I've been thinking this morning about links - and the gold standard of relevance. Shared lists are great, although I'm finding more and more I'm using them for intelligence sharing within my organization.

    Re: linking - I found with your link the other day I had a huge bump in traffic. That's good news. The great news is that it wasn't the typical digg/slashdot drive by traffic (read one article and never come back), but it instead put me in touch with the core audience I needed after my move from Vario.

    You were my Connector X and I thank you for it!
  • Perhaps the people principles are old news, but Chris's angle on them from a web2.0 perch are still on-the-vine fresh (e.g. searching someone on Flickr before an event). That point one is great suggestion and I wish I had tried it out before a convention I recently attended.

    Pushing virtues like generosity and thoughtfulness are always worth a million iterations or more.

    bob
  • Timeless principles which always are worth mention and freshening with today's new tools.

    I was introduced to Crowdvine a few months ago; it's a nifty little free resource you can add to any event to help people connect before, during and after an event.
  • Some people work so hard at being connectors that they tell you to contact people who are not a good match. Unless I asked to be connected to a person, I rarely follow up directives from people saying you should call so and so.

    If they call me fine. I wish people would take the time to really find out what I was looking for. Most of the referrals are to make THEM look good, however , it does not help me.

    Dr. Wright
    The Wright Place tv Show
    www.wrightplacetv.com
  • Sage advice again Chris. Very Hugh MacLeod, who's principle about giving stuff away is one of my favourite principals of business. It seems counter-intuitive, but it always works in the long run.

    http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archive...
  • Welcome to social arbitrage. This, by the way, is so old that it's taught to high school students in elite private schools. I had a chat with a girl at a private elite academy in Massachusetts who has formal lessons in power brokering. It's why her family remains in the elite class.
  • Chris, Great list and some of this boils down to basic social dynamics(In the real world For example, you cannot allways be taking/extracting value from a relationship. Giving value in a relationship is always good and creates trust and a meaningful one. However sometimes people do not understand this implicit rules of social dynamics. I.e they always extract value(always wanting something) or they do not understand that if someone 'bridges' a connection for you, they dont offer thanks. I think some social media folks need a bootcamp on Social Dynamics in real life. :)
  • Dawn Carter
    Great post, as usual, Chris. As a fellow Connector X (can I get a supersuit and cape?)I absolutely appreciate these tips.

    Of course it is not a new idea; we just have funner toys to facilitate what we've been doing all along.

    Up, up and away!
  • Thanks for the succinct connecting points, Chris.

    Great reminders to all of us as we work on connecting with value in mind, not volume. On point 1: When you show people that you have done your homework about them specifically (not just their business), you catch their attention and you may break through their "got ya on mute, even though I appear to be listening" filter.

    Taking the time to appropriately connect others as you discuss in point 4, is a delicate art. Appropriate connecting equates to trust. If you are connecting folks for right fit sake vs YOU "know all these folks, see how big I am" sake, it's good ju-ju vibe greatness. And that greatness vibe is always good when it comes back at 'cha.


    PS - Dude, the photo rocks!
  • Chris,

    I agree with your post and have also considered myself a "connector". In fact I used to list "connecting the dots, whether they are people, projects or initiatives" on my resume.

    I know you're focused on the online world and therefore the social aspect of things tends to be your focus, but don't forget there are lots of things you can connect that add tremendous value to others and to organizations.

    I once attended a luncheon seminar that turned out to be a disguised product demo. Long story short, I almost left, but decided to stay and see what the product was. It was an outsourced member-management system. Not three days after the event, our Director of Marketing mentioned we were looking for a member management system. I hooked her up with the account exec I met at the luncheon and everyone won.

    There are lots of connections we can make. The trick as you pointed out, is to take responsibility for making them add value to all parties involved.
  • It's a great conversation to have ... I don't read these tips a 'new' to the world, but as lessons learned from real life relationships that NEED to be applied in the online social networking world.

    The online world of relationships is not as advanced as the real world ... and the dynamics have subtle differences.

    The techniques for 'connecting' & 'sharing' are also different so it's great to get real practical examples or 'how-tos' ...

    Guaranteed there are a lot of people that either learned a new thing or 2 from this post ... or a large number of people who just got a refresher.


    --
    http://twitter.com/franswaa
  • I agree with Michael, too, and think you hit the nail on the head Chris - people do business with people they know, like and trust - period.
  • I don't think of myself as a "connector" really, but I certainly think that the value of reciprocity in social networking is not well realized by a lot of people. so posts like this are a great reminder to some that there is value in giving as well as receiving. Just because something has been around a long time doesn't mean enough people truly know how to benefit from it!!
  • This is timely and pertinent reminder. I take a lot of pleasure in connecting people, online and off. I have to say though, that the trust and relationship element is very crucial for me.

    I tend to connect people where I either know them very well or have interacted with them for some time. So when I identify a need it's easier for me to match that need to someone who may be able to meet it. Which means I would be unlikely to connect people to someone I might have read about but haven't really experienced on a one to one basis, online or off. And when I do connect people I always email both, tell them why and ask them to let me know how it goes. Follow up is important. And if the "connectee" fails to connect with the other person after I've made an intro and they said they would, I am unlikely ever to try and connect that person again.

    I think that in the Web 2.0 dynamic there are people who like the idea of social networking for what it can give them, without really understanding the reciprocity aspect of networking or relationships. Or for that matter without fully understanding networking itself, which is more about how you can give and less about what you can take.

    That's why the points you make in this post are evergreen and always pertinent. Thanks for the tips... and the reminder.
    Nicky
    http://twitter.com/nickyjameson
  • Great post! I do not have my own hosted blog yet, but am planning to create one in the next two months. These are great tips and I have saved this post in my blogs worth saving folder. I already have the name for my blog. Thank you so much for always sharing. Somewhere along my path I lost my way and fell behind. I am now paying catch-up and you may not know this but you are helping me to get up to speed quickly. Thank you so much. www.twitter.com/avilbeckford
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