Points of Contact

Oh boy can I relate to that! It is really hard to do it all and if you try, it's impossible to get any work done. I love Twitter and blogging but only have time to blog thoughtfully once every 1-2 weeks, while twitter is a great way to share links and quick thoughts with a tight group of followers. I'm still married to the conventions of checking email constantly as the most direct and 1-to-1 form of interaction. Almost never check LinkedIn except when I want to see the bio of someone I've just met. Facebook feels increasingly like a waste of time and just a jumble of people's idle thoughts.

Wow, I really appreciate this post, which I stumbled upon via Twellow! ( a twitter adjunct, I guess is what you'd call it.) As an independent writer & consultant, I'm always networking. Until recently, Email and my website/blog were my primary sources of online networking. Lately, twitter and LinkedIn are my choice modes of communication.

Chris,

This post reminded me exactly of what Tim Ferris talks about in his 4 hour work week book. Tim describes how he used Perato's Principle to eliminate the unproductive. I bet 80 percent of your top relationship building comes from 20 percent of your “social connecting platforms.” Get ride of all the rest. Is it worth wasting your time on all of those devices,sites, etc to pull in just a few more people? I say no!

I think there's a big opportunity here for someone to make an application that aggregates these points of contact effectively. A similar revolution happened a decade or so ago with instant messaging when someone realized that supporting several different IM clients (AIM, Yahoo, MSN Messenger, etc) all in the same interface would save people the trouble of managing 3 stand-alone applications. If someone found a clean way to do this with things like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google Reader/Wave/etc they could go a long way.

I'm with some of the others in wishing I had your problem. But at the same time, I do have a different take on the issue. I work in the service industry and in promotions. If I tried to connect with reporters in the manner that is easiest for me (e-mail), I might never get a story placed. As David Meerman Scott showed in his great book, a lot of them use their blogs to generate ideas, so that's where I have to go. Or if I tried to rout all customer connections through an online form, I highly doubt I'd hear half of what my customers have to say. Many don't like or trust online forms and want a phone call or an e-mail.

I think the key is to use the media that the people you want to connect to use, even if its not your personal preference. Another example might be a musician who hates MySpace. He has to use it because that's where a lot of the music fans go. So yes, I do think that cutting back on your methods of contact is good, but I'd apply a different criteria than you seem to suggest.

I just noticed today that Linkedin has stopped you from seeing other peoples connections. They make it very difficult to connect. I am also starting to agree with Chris, what is the point of this, they just keep putting up barriers. What is really needed is a business/professional version of Facebook. Make it easy and people will use it.

It's been tough for me to find any real success communicating directly on Linkedin. I think it's a good place to find the contacts that you're looking for, but communicating directly through Linkedin is kind of spotty. My strategy with Linkedin has always been: Find the right contact and then figure out how to contact them through a different medium. I just don't think that Linkedin users are active enough.

For me I guess I would break it down like this: Email, Twitter, Facebook, and then Linkedin.

Thank you for discussing this topic. I am a small business owner who sees the value of using social media, but I am not sure how much time I can devote to that and conduct my business at the same time. Is an hour a day enough?

I guess it all comes down to picking the social media sites that will be the most useful. Currently I am using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I just started a blog, so I am hoping to add comments to the mix.

I have not been able to figure it out yet either, Chris. I actually posted a similar point to your Open Forum article.

To make matters worse, I maintain multiple personalities online (Personal, Health Care & Consulting).. and each of those profiles has it's own array of “touch points.” Sure.. some are more appropriate than others.. after all, no one platform will have 100% penetration.

LinkedIn has always been last on my list because of their restrictive nature. But, it's first on many folks' list. And, many of them are “decision makers” within their business.

Can't walk away from THAT. (Dang it.)

Prioritize. What more can we do?

Nice to see someone of your stature in social media consider the issue of having too many points of contact. I've always wondered how someone like yourself can interact with so many people on a number of mediums. I guess you're human too.

Twitter is my favorite because I can quickly see what is going one with a number of people and as you mentioned, you easily meet people with similar interests who want to help one another.

I find LinkedIn useful because there are a number of people I know who have similar business interests but have not jumped into Twitter and other social media outlets. LinkedIn appears to be a first step for many professionals who want to get their toes wet but not jump into the fray. Tweetdeck's integration of LinkedIn activity has made it much easier to follow my contacts who are on LinkedIn but not Twitter.

So, I continue to see both as important.

THANK YOU for admitting that you may have too many points of contact! I've been admiring your work for awhile and yet often feel discouraged because I cannot imagine the strain of being as immersed in contacts as you seem to be. Your honesty and forthrightness in addressing this is enormously helpful in making me look honestly at my own connection points and priorities. I always told my daughter (now 31 and very successful) that a woman can do anything in this life that she wants to do…but not necessarily all at the same time. Now I just need to take my own advice.

Hi Chris,

I've been thinking on your words for a few days now and it makes sense that our networks (the networks we set up), will grow organically or not. For me, I've opened everything I could get my hands on. My Linkedin account is dormant, I've tried twitter and though it's easy to follow and be followed, it's WAY harder to connect.

Facebook on the other hand is growing for me, personally and also 2 fan pages I run. I'm building a BAND/NICHE website (with a blog) and I'm too busy to try and make EVERYTHING work. So, go with the flow of your network and where it organically grows seems to really make sense now.

I won't feel so bad about, deleting or neglecting networks that just don't work for ME.

Cheers

Chris, this seems like a system dynamics problem. My wife would love to model this.

If you cut back on the ways people can get hold of you – let's say you delete your LinkedIn and Facebook accounts – how much business would you lose? An important question. Probably not much. Both of these sites are like the Yellow Pages. If you are running a business, especially as an online marketing expert, you have to be there.

How many friends would you lose? To me, this is a more important question. Relationships are everything. However, your friends will understand if you had to close these accounts. They know they can find you elsewhere and if you explain that not having those accounts helps you focus better, they would likely encourage it.

How much time would you gain to spend on other avenues? I can't measure this for anyone else but myself, but if I didn't have those two sites to deal with, I could get a lot more done. That's for darned skippy.

How many cool, new ideas would you miss out on? This here is the kicker. You seem to thrive on cool, new ideas and exchange of information. This has real value for lots of us, although we cannot define a specific monetary value for it.

Here's my thinking. Keep those accounts and budget some time to deal with them. One hour per week for each, maybe. I bet you could figure out how to filter and act on tasks better if you gave yourself a short time in which to do it. Of course, I say this with a whole lot less in my inbox.

And sometimes a bottleneck is a good thing. That's a whole different set of opportunities and challenges stopping up the work flow.

Just one man's two cents.