-
Website
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ -
Original page
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/relationship-building-at-the-speed-of-batman/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
@bookerx3
I think thats where I am right now, trying to connect with people from all walks of life that share some common interest. I am mainly using Twitter for this, I find facebook and linkedin a little heavy for lite chit chat. It makes it so much cooler when they are from somewhere near you also.
Thanks!
S'funny, I read the headline of your blog post and my mind raced. It jumped out of my head flew back in time 5months, over the ocean into the US and bam landed in New York for the 2nd day of of the Web 2 NYC conference.
That conference stands out for a number of reasons, first of all because I met up with a whole bunch of my Social Media heroes as it were (yourself included), second of all because from there and well into BlogWorld the following weekend in Vegas I became known as 'That British Social Media Guy' and *finally* because I heard the most wonderful question I ever did hear.
On the second day, while in an online brand/personal relationship session with a certain Mr Solis on the panel, a guy stood up - exclaimed what he did for a living (started low at a company doing dev work, they had no web/twitter presence, took up the mantle, now does it 24/7) and then put this to the panel..
"Excuse me but, when does Batman sleep?"
A fantastic question and one that still haunts me to this day.
Your post, although nothing to do with that particular question resonates well with me. Thank you Chris, for continually shining a guiding light on moving things forward. Of late I've felt stuck in a rut and it just takes a great post like this to pick one off the floor, dust himself off and get on with things again.
Keep up the good work sir, hopefully I'll run into you soon.
Cheers,
J
This doesn't just work for personal relationships. It works beautifully for businesses that thrive on building relationships with their customers as a foundation for ongoing success.
I find that the best relationships are with those that I have actually connected with in some way via the offline world - met at an event, talked on the phone. Combining online and offline is magic!
Thanks for the post and the great examples, Chris.
Just a couple of months ago I was doing all of the contacting and asking for friends requests. I'm amazed at how fast my online relationships have been changing, and how I'll now receive many requests each day to be added as a contact.
As a rule, I'll accept all friends requests. Everyone is unique, and I'm able to learn something from everyone I meet. I didn't know that you were into batman, and at the same time you probably didn't know that I'm into HotWheels.
Neither of us would have known this if it were not for the online relationship that we can so easily establish.
Thanks for the post. It can be a lot of fun I let it ;-)
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2009/02/dc-comi...
I too was raised on comics. Eating them would have sustained me. I still have a trunk of thousands downstairs. But this post wasn't about comics. It was about networking. Fudging the lines between business and pleasure. Being social offline. And I do that too.
My design firm just started working with our favourite food retailer in the city (Fiesta Farms–a dream client for us because of their local and sustainable agenda) because my wife asked a cashier if she could talk to the owner one day while checking out.
We work with Sympatico because I met an interesting individual at an event we were running for Bell–at breakfast, over a bagel, and he reached out through Linked in the next day.
We're a small firm that gets to work for big companies by connecting with the people in those companies.
My take is that there's no substitute for connecting with individuals on a personal level whether you do it in person or through social media.
The thing is that the people I genuinely like, I feel comfortable and excited working with, and the work is always more productive.
You are certainly right that we have not given a rigorous enough look at the depth of relationships we build on the web, and the way they interconnect.
Great post...and with Batman! Always a plus.
this was a great post.
Thanks!
b.
Love the Batman connection, providing useful information with some fun. Social media enables meeting and connecting with people you otherwise probably would never meet. This shows how the Internet and social media are making an impact. At the same time, the Internet and social media are helping young entrepreneurs and businesses make an impact by getting their brand out there. Keep up the excellent work.
PS Wish I could do that. :D
Blending online social/business networking with offline networking, using online networking to boost offline sales, the full blended networking principle is definitely the future... and the past: I'm fortunate enough to have been running an online social network since 1995 that is now fully blending the real world (with social events from 5-500 people) with the online worlds of its users. It's a fascinating development and really works very well.
Props to blended networking!
It used to be that we went to work and tried to be just what our role required (ask me about my days in management consulting) and no more. More was messy, more was not seen as efficient or focused.
What I've found as I've gotten further in to my career is that the 'more' is what allows us to make deep connections with people - to create trust and to find people we like...and wouldn't you rather work with the people you like and trust? Yes - everyone would.
I have made what are seemingly random connections because of my interest in cooking, sailing, literature, music, politics...and all of those relationships are fun but more surprisingly some of them lead to opportunities, both personal and professional.
And now, with tools like Twitter & Facebook, we can connect to people who share our interests faster than ever.
Just recently, I made a comment on Twitter that interest in social media seemed to overlap with interest in food/wine and the Red Sox. Diane Hessen, the CEO of Communispace, responded that it was almost time for spring training. Now I've never met Diane but I happened to know that Communispace has a Red Sox themed conference room so I (somewhat jokingly) suggested she have a tweet up for the first spring training game. She thought that was a great idea....so tonight - Diane is hosting a tweetup to watch the first spring training game (want to attend? http://twtvite.com/mggj16). Then I found out she loves a cookbook I do...and then I found out she is on the board of the Boston Philharmonic which I went to see on Sunday. All via Twitter. Still haven't met the woman but you can be sure I'll have a lot to talk to her about tonight!
Thanks for sharing!
The Batman story is a great one because it reminds us that if we just work on being ourselves, and we pay just a teensy bit of attention, we can make things happen in ways that until now have been impossible (or at the least, improbable).
Cheers
George
One thing that I routinely do is use Twitter search to find others who have similar interests as I do. It's a nice way to expand my network to those who I'm not likely to come across through other means.
As example, I may search Summize.com for "Guitar" or "Drums" (I play both, albeit poorly :). I've come across some amazing people who I simply wouldn't have otherwise discovered. Our commonality is our love for making music (your Batman, if you will), and more often than not, a valuable relationship blossoms.
Just wanted to share one of the ways I find new people to connect with and expand my network beyond traditional means.
Couldn't agree more. The web tools we have at our disposal make it so easy to create a wide variety of relationships based on a common single passion. For you it was comic books, for me it may be cooking or just kicking around marketing ideas. None-the-less, when used and not abused, Facebook, Twitter, etc., are an opening to a world of folks you'd otherwise only imagine meeting.
@TomMartin
It is a fine example, of having your interests known to others in Web 2.0 how to benefit. Without expressing your interests on sites like FriendFeed, Twitter, SocialSpark (ie IZEA's social media site), ) and Facebook, you would have missed this cool opportunity.
I am learning about web marketing, but keeping my focus on relationships-before-sales is certain to keep me in the loop for the long term benefit. I only want to offer things that have value, that I would personally own and endorse, and leave the e-book Make-A-Million-On-The-Internet products to the mass marketers out there.
With the current economy in the USA, value trumps salesmanship every time.
Great video of 'inside DC Comics', thank you!
Respectfully,
Nicholas Chase
www.twitter.com/nachase
A very good experience to convey your point. I agree with you fully on the power of connecting and building relationships with others. My father and I were talking about this line of thought with another business owner who has a lot of investments in the Southern Illinois area. A lot of people who own businesses may not be able to say it like you do, but they know it takes building relationships to get ahead. It is the others who have not caught on that you have made your experience in blog posts like this, relatable. :)
As you noted with the folks at Stadium Comics, sometimes the giving is not about expecting anything in return. Just being the nice person around social media will reap its own rewards without expecting rewards directly.
A few targeted acts of kindness to get something don't make up for scorched earth networking and burned bridges, but if you've sewn seeds of relationships everywhere (not being selective about who can give you what, who is directly related to your field, etc.), your network becomes self-sustraining and you never know what new opportunities crop up.
Excellent post on building effective relationships. But I feel that with abundance of social media sites that help you connect with people, it becomes difficult to keep a track on our profiles on each and every site. I guess (as we use it) personal blog and twitter are the most effective ways of establishing connections.
Since we try to explain complex concepts visually at VizEdu we concentrate more on the feedback that our viewers post on our blog and most of the time, they follow us on twitter. This way of building relationships has worked for us.