Decreasing Connections While Increasing Our Networks

While lounging on my couch this morning I decided to go through all 200 Twitter and FriendFeed requests that I’ve procrastinated on getting to this week. Lately I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed with requests that I’ve created a filter in Gmail to label and archive these requests. When I clicked on the label and took a cursory glance at my inbox, I wondered why I’d been feeling so overwhelmed with going through these requests. After about 10 minutes it hit me: as my network grows social networks don’t allow me to connect to my followers the way I used to.

It Was All A Dream

Let me take you back for a second. When I first began to gain notoriety, I only had a handful of Twitter followers. Definitely no more than 400. At that time I would tweet good morning and get several responses back. I would reply to each response and hold about 4 conversations at once on Twitter. This was the reason why I tweeted so much. It was much easier to hold a conversation and keep up with individual people. I knew who the majority of my followers were, thereby enabling me to utilize Twitter to its maximum potential. I was able to connect, refer, analyze, and reflect on what I was getting from my followers. Things just aren’t the same anymore.

Back To Reality

Now, I couldn’t tell you who half of my followers are. I really don’t know who I’m following and who I’m not following. I don’t even know why certain people are following me. In turn, my conversation on Twitter has deteriorated along with the amount of time I used to spend on Twitter.

Maybe growth on some of these networks isn’t the best thing in the world. Should there be self-imposed limits on how many people you befriend? No because in the end, while your network growth may increase, your connection with your network still increases. However, the rate at which the connection can increase actually decreases. Did that make sense? Unless your friends are constantly questioning you or keeping tabs on you, it’s going to take a lot longer to make deeper connections the more your network grows.

More Features or Better Tools?

Though there are plenty of social networks to go around, I’m beginning to wonder if they incorporate the right tools to be able to keep up with our growing networks. We don’t have a clue on where to begin to make deeper connections as our networks continue to grow. In turn, things may just get out of hand. You start adding people just because they added you with no desire to establish a real relationship with anyone that you haven’t already befriended beforehand. Here are my questions for the developers and users of social networks:

• How do you maintain connections with your network of friends?
• What features or tools help you to maintain these connections?
• What features or tools are missing that you feel could help you to grow your connections even more?

What do you think?

Corvida writes at SheGeeks.net

With Sales, it’s a No-Brainer

Sales is a relationships game. The more folks you know, the deeper your Rolodex, the better your chances of finding the right hinge to close the sale. Building networks of value, where you can be helpful is made far simpler with these tools. They don’t do the work for you, but they give you new ways to reach out and establish connections, and stay just a little more in touch with other people’s environments. A salesperson who’s not exploring tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and yes, even Twitter, is missing some potential opportunities.

How does your organization stack up in this regard?

For Other Departments, It’s Still Pretty Good

Imagine the difference of employing seven software engineers versus having access to thousands of engineers. How powerful is your internal marketing team when they are aligned with social networking tools and the ability to listen to your customers via these tools? What does your HR team miss by not having their listening powers tuned into the robust stream of human capital that roams Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn?

Customer Service is Trickier

In this time of economic downturn, customer service is often viewed as a cost center. Reducing average handling time, and reducing representative headcount are the realities, and no matter what the mission statement says, except for the amazing companies, you’ll find that customer service is more of a “must have” requirement than an empowering strategy. And yet, there’s gold in these hills. It’s just harder to do. For thoughts on how to advance customer service, see Lionel Menchaca and Frank from Comcast for a few simple examples. My take? There can be MUCH more going on here.

And YOUR Personal Network?

When I look at the networks people have built around them, there’s value there. Tangible value. Consider someone like Liz Strauss. She reaches out deeply into her community to build events like her popular and successful SOBCon. She gives and gives, and then when she needs something back, Liz has a strong network of multi-layered contacts to reach into for her needs.

It’s amazing, really. Liz alone is a powerhouse to hire, but if you really did give credit for her extended network, which reaches into the largest companies in the US, UK, and for all I know, the rest of the world.

How do you place a value on that? What does it mean when you can reach deeply into your network for nonprofit fundraisers, or job placement, or contact to land business deals? If you are an employer, or someone involved in the hiring of talent, how much is this influencing your thoughts?

I think this is something that goes into the consideration and metrics of hiring practices in the next handful of years (at least for some sectors). What do you think?

Photo credit, Jurvetson

Your Network: The Old Days

In the way old days, your network was your family, your neighbors, your coworkers, and a few scattered others. You lived reasonably close to some number of these people, and they knew your comings and goings as intimately as a Facebook news stream. These people knew you when you were a foolish kid, and knew that you weren’t very good at math, but that you were a hard worker. If you needed help with something, you could reach out by mail, by phone, by “asking around.” It took a while, but usually someone could find something.

Your Network: The New Days

Several of your “friends” aren’t that. They’re more “friendlies.” They agree to be part of your network. You can reach more people than ever before. They’re all over the world. They have different roles, different networks of their own. It’s exponential the difference in the combined sum of what these people know. They might not know you the way a cousin or Junior High School teacher would say they know you, but they are willing to do some level of information sharing with you.

What Do I Mean By Network?

The idea of a network is just that it’s a connection of things that form something larger in sum. Networked computers mean that you can access some resources back and forth and communicate. Social networks (in the software sense) mean that the software makes a connectivity between users. Networks in the human sense mean that we have chosen to align ourselves in some form or fashion around common beliefs, goals, values, etc.

Organized religion works on the power of networks. So do labor unions. So do governments. Business is ultimately about networks of one kind or another.

What Can A Network Do?

Networks are about sharing resources. It’s the same for computers, social networks, human networks, and pretty much all kinds. Thus, if you’re looking to build a good network of people, sharing has to be the common link. Networks can help someone raise money quickly. They can direct lots of attention at the same point. They can help someone find a job. They can elect government officials. They can shift power and resources seamlessly.

Not a Numbers Game, Or Is It?

I think some of the value of a network comes from its numbers.

In social networks, I’m fortunate to have a reasonably good number of “friends.” Partly, this is because I’ve been fortunate to attend a lot of conferences, and I’ve been diligent in meeting lots of people. Partly, it’s because I publish a blog. Partly, it’s because I do a lot of work to link things together to FORM networks by inviting people to certain social networks, to accept requests from people, to build out the digital structure of such things.

Some quick tidbits:

• I’m not in any way a “collector” of friends in social networks. At this point, I say yes to most anyone trying to connect, but I don’t gather.
• I don’t believe in the “rule” that some use that one must “really in real life” know someone before accepting them as a “friend.”
• I don’t build networks to market. I’m not a marketer. I build networks to be helpful, and to deliver value in both directions.
• I think the key to it all is: “more hands lighten the load.”

Tips on Building Valuable Networks

Quick definition of “value:” I don’t mean money. I mean the ability to deliver and receive information, help, and further development (of networks, information, capabilities).

I can only tell you what I believe has worked best for me. I imagine your mileage may vary. I hope others add their own ideas on building networks in the comments.

• Be friendly and inclusive. When I go to conferences, I look for the fringe players, the people who aren’t well known, but who are interesting. Sometimes, these turn into amazingly wonderful connections.
• Treat “big names” like real people, and oddly, they treat YOU like a real person. This comes in handy later, when you can be helpful.
• Seek to be helpful. Always. The more you can do for others, the more that wheel comes round, should you find yourself in need.
• Connect. Connect. Connect. Help others find each other. Connect people with other people as often as humanly possible. This keeps flow moving, and it shows that you’re into sharing.
• **BEWARE** network leeches. Occasionally, in trying to form communities of useful and sharing people, someone comes along who needs, needs, needs. Learn how to cut that sort away from your network. It’s not rude. It’s not elitist.
• Diversity and opportunity are great ways to build something more interesting. Homogenous networks are only useful in a narrow scope. Meaning: meet lots of good people from lots of walks of life. You never know.
• Say thank you. Often.
• Do as much as you can, and then offer to help connect them to even more help, if you can.
• Be as timely as possible. Help isn’t much help if it’s too late.
• Never take credit. Always assume responsibility. Be as humble as you can muster.
• Give often and long before you ever have to ask for something for you.

Social Networks and YOUR Network of Value

One last point before I ask you for your ideas: the power of all these social software applications is that they empower us to communicate rapidly, in a one-to-many format, and along the lines of our networks of value. To that end, be sure to use this to accomplish your goals. Make sure you know the size and depth of your personal database. Make sure your contacts and connections are well connected through these digital tools. Try to build them all such that you can respond quickly to people’s needs, and that you can reach the edges of your network, and help others extend out to theirs, so that everyone may take full effect of that work.

And don’t be evil. (Easy, right?)

I consider your participation here a value of my network. The fact that you come and share your ideas and insights is wonderful to me. I’m not always nearby a computer to respond back to every comment, but I read everything you say, and I LOVE when someone in comments communicates to someone else, and when you go off and blog your own take on the original idea that takes it in another direction. Thank you for this. I’m forever grateful.

And now, what do you think? What have I missed? What are other ways to keep a network strong?

The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

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Photo credit, Jared