The Importance of Digital Touch

I like that idea of digital touch. Keeping a connection between your clients and letting them know that they matter to you is extremely important for retention and future sales and WOM marketing. I think many modern businesses are too focused on quantity of business instead of quality of clientele. A good customer will create more business than one great customer who never returns to your product or service again.

I think this ties in directly with your "How i manage twitter (insert any other tool here)" post.

In my opinion we can only manage so many online relationships well. At least close connections where we are actually interacting. Reaching out and touching someone :) takes work. Having hundreds or thousands of followers that we're (most people) are actually touching is a very tough thing to do. Maybe impossible for most.

One thing that I've found useful to me on Twitter is Grouping people in Seesmic. When i sense i'm actually connecting with a person beyond a mutual "following" or "friending" then I'll add them to a column/group for "Connections" or "Nurture'em" ... This helps me pay attention and prompts me to reach out regularly.

Another thing I try to do with those that I really want to connect with, but find it hard to is head over to their blogs and read, interact, comment. It doesn't always work, but it's an age old tactic that helps anyone new to the scene.

http://twitter.com/franswaa

I saw the photo on this post fly by in my RSS feed reader and thought, "Wow! I haven't seen JP in a while!" It seems daily I chide myself for not keeping in touch, even digitally, with some of the awesome people I meet.

When it comes to people I see face-to-face regularly, not a problem. If I don't, through the cracks they seem to go.

Twitter is my first foray into social media + am finding this a problem as I don't want 2 play the numbers game...follow but not follow. Reading the stream all day is impractical + unworkable as the stream only highlights those that have a high output so have decided to use "friendorfollow to ID ppl that I haven't made contact with, say hi or Rt to show that I'm interested in what they r saying. Have been touched by responses as ppl do feel they r being ignored. I don't auto DM myself but do respond 2 all DMs + @replies as personally as possible. Keeping contact is difficult and have found that at any given period I tend 2 focus on different groups of ppl but try with #ff 2 ensure ppl don't think I'm losing touch. Have not filtered yet but am planning 2 create RSS feeds/group those I am or have been closest to. Finding it all exhausting even though my network isn't particularly big!

Chris,

Those who can integrate a digital touch will win in this age of new media. Plain and simple.

Thanks for the post!

Peter

I've just started experiencing digital touch (I'm relatively new to the social media game) and my opinion may change as my online social interactions progress and grow deeper. I feel it's sad to sacrifice a "real world" friend for an SM thread, or even 100 SM threads. I understand for you and many of your readers, you meet your online friends face-to-face, changing the nature of the relationship. Online threads and real world friends become one in the same.

Are SM threads really friends if you don't meet? They certainly can be for some. But will they be there when the cards are down in your personal life? Probably not. Digital touch can never replace genuine touch and we all know that.

Anyways, more power to you for maintaining so many different types of relationships! I think it's all personal preference. I know I'm okay with fleeting online friendships, because for me, information is valued over emotion. We seek people who can be helpful to us and try to reciprocate.

I may sound harsh, and my view will probably change over time. Sure got me thinking about this "social" environment though. Thanks.

Dan everyone agrees that a digital friendship does not replace a real world one - but digital tools create such proximity that I *do* have people who I've met and interacted with online that have been there for me when "the cards are down"

Of course these people are far and few between - but I'm not here talking to hundreds of people anyway - I'm here to have depth, not width

Nice Scott. I'm glad to hear that your relationships are able to translate in that way and that you know exactly what you are here for. I think it's all about defining your personal preference in that sense; I'm here for information, I'm here for friendship, or I'm here for both. Hopefully as time progresses, I'll see that it's not only transactional and that I will also be here for both. Thanks Scott.

Dan it's true that there are so many different things that you can "be here for".

Whilst I want to help a wide audience, I am more concerned with building those deeper relationships. I have about 30 people who I have built genuine relationships with online, and I treasure them all.

Many aren't like me in this respect, and prefer a wider 'audience' rather than deeper connections. That's fine - because of course they are here for other reasons to mine

Great post! I think this issue of keeping touch is also starting to become a real issue. Social network tools are awesome, but with the rapid expansion of a lot of these networks it almost feels like PEOPLE as well as information are becoming part of the noise. Right now, the ways I see to deal with it are filtering (both by network and with tools). So, for instance, the people you are more personally connected with would be your friends on Facebook, business associates on LinkedIn and then your "audience" (to your "artist" or "business" or "blog") on Twitter. Then there are some awesome tools for these networks, like Tweetdeck, that let you create groups and so filter your people into columns that are easier to prioritize and process.
All that said, filtering sort information but doesn't entirely address the issue of the fact that you still have to deal with such a massive quantity of people. I have some other ideas of where things could be moving that, I’ll admit, are tied with the philosophy behind the company I work for, but are also ideas I strongly believe in myself and have personally found useful:

1. People will need to interact more on a group-level (so that more people are taken into account at one time). A movement towards this type of interaction might mean that it is people within the group that interact with each other more as opposed to just you with members of your group, but it still makes you a part of the existing conversation which you can then jump in and out of at will and that will allow you to keep in touch with all members of the conversation.

2. There needs to be more ways to find people connected to your interests- groups is one way, but an even more exciting way would be to be able to find and connect with people through your interests as you come across them. Most of us spend a lot of time browsing or visiting regular sites/pages and so it would be useful and help us keep in touch if others interested in the site were integrated into this browsing experience.

You've done it again. Touched a real nerve with something I struggle with. I've "met" so many great people over the years in the various communities I've been involved with and sadly I haven't kept up with them. I fly by them, cheering their effort from the sidelines, dropping in on occasion, but mostly managing to fail at achieving the touch you speak of.

414 emails ... you are my hero. In fact, you might be Superman :)
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUS...

I practice digital touch by pulling out my cell phone and calling the person to whom I have connected on-line.

I enjoy taking face-to-face relationships into the online world and vice-versa, and there are those (due to distance) where I make it a habit to call and make it more personal.

I think this is a great point Chris. It's real easy to get lost in the following of others, but it's the contact and "digital touch" that truly makes a difference. And that's not necessarily as easy to keep up with.

I think the people trying to keep good connections with others in digital spaces are the ones that will succeed in those spaces.

Just curious Chris: was this topic brought on by the hundreds and hundreds of emails you had to reply to the other day?

No. Instead, it was about the hundreds of people I haven't talked with lately who think I've forgotten about them.

Hey Chris - your post made me think of a recent digital conversation I had on FB with my cousin in Montreal (I'm in London). It had been ages since we last spoke. I felt that we were losing touch and so I finally just took the time to send him a FB message. He replied that although we may not be write one another, he follows me on my digital channels and in that way, he feels like he knows how and what I'm doing. (He also wondered how many stalkers social media has spawned). This short exchange reminded me that he's there, present and listening. It was the talking part I missed.

It's true - popping by from time to time whether in the real or virtual is important to managing relationships - professional or personal. Any tools that help you do this seem to water-down the personalized effect.

I don't know why people these days are so attached to all these online tools and gadgets, in my opinion real life interaction is much more important. But you can't ignore the fact that twitter, facebook and stuff can be nice career helpers. The most important thing is how you plan your time and what your priorities are.

But they're more than that. I have a very good friend in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I can't visit there often. But I can look over his shoulder on Facebook, Twitter, and his blog, and he knows I care.

Make sense?

Chris, what I do to stay in touch depends on who the people are and who they are to me.

On Twitter, I regard it as an experiment in community and micro publishing and scatter reading. People who's threads I start following more closely, I interact with more.

On FaceBook, I use the news stream and my friends pages to jog me into interaction. Sometimes seeing someone's name and face or a new detail or photo or update will inspire a moment of spontaneous connection.

For people who are local or with whom I do business or work on creative projects, I try to mentally go down the list of people I haven't reached out to recently and reach out to them.

As an artistic type, I see that the online digital communities don't scale to one-on-one relationships like I've just mentioned, but instead scale to artist-to-audience relationships. I think that's where you are, in a sense. If 200 people comment in this thread and you also receive another 220 emails about this post, chances are that a slew of the respondants will be audience members with whom you have no little one-on-one connection.

That doesn't mean the connection isn't there or precious. But interacting with an entire audience vs. your collaborators and house mates is very different. I've seen some online artists respond and connect through their projects and their online presence. Posts such as, "a lot of you are asking," or "many people have wondered," etc.

That sort of contact can be meaningful, and can also scale better -- those three emails about a subject might actually represent 100 people in your audience and so addressing several of those topics from people with whom you don't interact with closely may reach more people and result in better connection.

Chris I would certainly say that touch is needed amidst all our following. I've connected in a very real with many people online that I haven't met face to face.

So when I start talking with someone on your comments section or on twitter, what I can't have in physical proximity to them I create in other ways:
- email
- skype
- make a phone call
- talk about them to others

A fantastic way that this has started on your comments section and created business through the discussion on this very blog is through Josh Chandler - check it out here Chris:

http://www.joshchandlerblog.com/2009/07/thought...

I know he'd love a tweet from you if you get a moment too - www.twitter.com/joshchandler

I commited to making at least 5 calls a day and sending at least one hand written note a week. One person I had been calling for months, and they never called back, I finally said, Hey, not trying to bug you, I hope all is well, I will go ahead and remove you from my list so you wont keep getting calls. The person returned the call the same day.

I think it goes a long way to make a real touch. The digital touches do not count unless we actually know each other. It's the difference between friend and friendlies

Dr. Letitia Wright
The Wright Place TV Show
http://wrightplacetv.com
www.twitter.com/drwright1

Letitia I heard from someone else recently that hand written notes are a really great way to slow down and really love on someone.

Encouraging words :-)

"It’s the equivalent of stopping by for a quick cup of coffee, or even just sending a hand-written note."

It's absolutely not. Even a little bit. Digital can't replace face-to-face. Ninety percent of Word of Mouth happens OFFline. Not digitally. As great as all the digital do-dads are, face-to-face trumps it every. Single. Time. Even the power of a hand-written note goes lightyears beyond what an email or leaving a comment on someone's FB status could do.

Don't get me wrong, digital conversations and connections are fantastic. But they are far more powerful when they facilitate face-to-face conversations. I think that's a HUGE missing element and why so many SM efforts are dead-on-arrival.

Digital touch is the easy part. And it's also just about the price of entry these days. But the companies who will win are the ones that can connect on and offline. That's where the real connections are made and the real touch happens.

Spike whilst digital cannot replace face-to-face, I have made some *incredible* connections online. I would actually say that:

digital follow = easy
digital touch = hard

Why? Because there's so much following, that to actually touch a life through the net is a powerful thing.

Agreed. But not as powerful as offline.

Chris, I'm going to call myself out on this, because it was a weak Social Media moment for me.

I got my knickers in a twist recently on twitter because I had responded to one of your tweets with a question (parroting someone else's question). Five minutes later, no response. So I said something about how having 11,000 followers means that you lose touch.

There were two things going on here:

1. I was lacking patience (now! now! now! now! - and where's my coffeee????)

2. I looked at your reach and said, "meh. Big deal. Answer me."

The big solution to the issue that I thunk up on the spot was: "respond to all or respond to none."

I'm still thinkifying that one. For my reach that's viable. I can't honestly say what might happen if I get into the tens of thousands (and maybe that's okay for me).

The best answer that I can come up with at this point is what you graciously responded with not long after: You do what you can.

When you get to a point where you're large enough that you can't answer everyone personally, I think a great solution is to hire someone to help. Naomi Dunford of itty biz does this very well. For example, she gets tons of e-mails every day from her clients, customers, and strangers who just want to say, "Hi."

She has an assistant who handles incoming emails. She sorts out the technical questions that can be answered quickly and puts aside the more personal correspondence for Naomi. Naomi then responds to each of those, which is still a large list but considerably smaller since the "How do I..." and the "You suck" e-mails (that don't need a response) have been handled.

I can say personally that this system works for me because I always hear back from Naomi when I e-mail her. It may be a week later if it's not urgent, but I get a response.

For that reason I don't feel that her assistant takes away from her personal reach; in fact, I think it's awesome. If I e-mailed her just to tell her that her blog is down, I wouldn't expect a lengthy personal response.

This begs the question, "How do you do this on Twitter? Hire someone?"

I say no. Twitter is a different animal and it's best as a personal platform. If I thought an assistant was handling someone's tweets, it would turn me off.

So maybe the solution doesn't lie with the one with the biggest reach, but those trying to communicate who maybe should exercise a little more patience and understanding.

If I was explaining this to myself, I would simply say, "Dude. Chill."

So, as a guy who has so far responded to 414 emails today (I asked my 7K newsletter list what they thought of a new format), I can tell you this: it does NOT span very well to try and be human to tens of thousands, and that's the business I'm in now.

However, like you responded above, in repeating my advice, I do what I can.

I'm grateful for this comment. More than you know.

Riffing and responding to Sparky's insights -

Problems With Opening Yourself Up To An Audience --
The main problem with social media (nay any digital medium) is that it significantly decreases people's natural inclination towards empathy for others. Sparky's question and momentary impatience is a perfect example of this in action. When we are audience members that want to interact, we sometimes forget that the people on the other end might not be sitting there waiting to respond etc.. More often than not, we make the mistake of assuming that social media should be real time and that our actions should elicit one-to-one responses, when that's not the reality at all. As we move close to real-time, we need to shed the expectation that participating means "always on and always processing". It's not realistic, it's not human, and it's not sustainable - Chris is saying it loud and clear (without explicitly admitting the effect) - people DO. NOT. SCALE. Even people like Chris -- who are pros -- are trying hard JUST to show that they are listening (or even just to give that impression that they are). We shouldn't expect them to have that kindof inhuman level of attention - It's not their fault. One-to-many relationships can never be totally personal. The best you can do is to project yourself authentically (like an entertainer would) and to interact as much as you can (without draining yourself of energy and emotion). Otherwise you run the risk of feeling thin and empty yourself - like butter spread over too much bread.

Chris, I think you're doing the best that can be done. Limiting yourself to a few important people a day and reaching out to them. Until we have a better system for presence management and signaling that is seamless and effortless, this is all you can do. We're only built to interact with small tribes of people. When we try and do otherwise, we spread ourselves too thin and sacrifice our existing (true) relationships.

Well stated Steffan!

Chris I saw you asked for feedback and thought I better leave it and let the other 7 thousand fill your inbox instead!

I'm going for quality over quantity. I touch base via FB with as many people as I can, but keep the cadre of close friends on speed dial and via email. Adding too many people to that mix and I would feel too much stress and failure.

I think this is THE issue I am facing right now, Chris. Here is one way I am dealing with it: I have started a campaign to actually CALL people out of the blue who are engaging with me. I am doing this 2-3 times a week now. It doesn't help with the thousands, but it is a way to cement a relationship with key people who are making a difference.

I think it's just a matter of being honest about your humanity. (Aka, exactly what you are doing here Chris)

Most people don't expect a single person to respond to thousands of people. If they did, they'd be naive. The key is being able to pick up the threads and conversations at the right time (and to choose where to engage). The more people you interact with? The more strategic you have to be as a result.

How am I handling it? I'm removing Facebook friends and reducing the number of people I follow on Twitter. Instead of being sorta-connected to 1,000 people, I'd rather be ultra-connected to 200. Instead of building a large community, I'm building a small community. Instead of needing to put "filters" on my community, I'm only in touch with those with whom I _really_ want to be connected to.

I agree with ultimatesteve about digital touch being easiest with people who are on the associate and business level - FB and Twitter do the job, sometimes even text messaging. With close friends and family it is much harder because a hi :) doesn't cut it and Facebook doesn't convey the emotional nuances of a person's life very well.

I find that email really is the better way to maintain a deeper level of communication.

I am handling it like everyone else: meh. Overwhelmed some days, loving it other days and still some other days it seems like the thousands of people are not even there.

It's Dunbar's Number at work. Like you said, "It’s reasonably easy to maintain digital touch with a hundred or so people." Dunbar's Number says we can handle 150 max. Social Media is proving that daily.

I haven't found a good way to say "So how ARE things?" digitally. The more I get scoop on people via FB/Twitter, etc., the more I find myself on the phone to say Happy Birthday, Tell Me About That Promotion, What's Your New House Like?, etc.

Do I find myself losing threads? I most definitely do. Most prominently with my friends who aren't online. you know, the people I've know for 20 or 30 years. Luckily, the most important of those I can just pick up a phone every 4 months or so and we pick up right where we left off. I certainly wish I would set reminders in my calendar so that I would remember to do it at least every month. It's just a shame how life gets crazy and in the way. I'm actually moving across the country to Las Vegas from Florida and have great friends herein FL for the past 5 or 10 years that I really don't want this to happen with this crowd. Any recommendations on how to not lose these threads?

Now that said, with the widespread adoption of social media products like Facebook and Twitter I have gotten to catch up with others that were maybe on the second or third circle of my relationship tier. That has been a boon as far a relationships go and brought some on the outer circles closer.

I have a very similar experience to you, Steve. I find that through facebook in particular, I have gotten a lot closer to people who used to be much more on the periphery of my circle of friends / acquaintances.

My main problem seems to be with maintaining my friendships that seem to fall in between 'really close, see each other a lot in real life anyway' and those on the outskirts. The kind of friendships where you feel some kind of regular contact is really needed to maintain them, but how do you 'fit it in'?

Most of these are indeed with people who are not 'online', that is to say, they do use e-mail (in my case anyway), but not SNSs. The more 'involved' I'm getting with facebook and the like, the more cumbersome I am finding e-mail, at least for maintaining social relationships. Don't know whether anyone else has the same experience?

Miranda, I understand what you mean about finding e-mail more cumbersome but I've decided you get in what you put in ya know? Quality relationships take investment so we have to decide what people deserve the most investment since our time is finite. Maybe you can try scheduling time once a week to touch base with the people close to you, so they always have priority in your life and you don't have to deal with that nagging anxiety in the back of your mind that comes from neglecting folks.