Form Real Relationships with Facebook Friends and Twitter Followers

I wrote this awhile back and was recently published online at Target Marketing Magazine, but I wanted to share this on my blog as well as it's relevant and perhaps insightful. Thanks to @2FirstNamesPR and @HeatherReporter for making it happen!

Direct marketers and social media adventurists, both in large companies and as individuals, are often trying to find the value in Twitter followers and Facebook friends. There is marketing outreach to extend your brand message, which requires a different type of connection with your audience. But can you replace the value of a real, personal connection digitally? If so, how far can we take a digital relationship before losing the personal connection altogether?

A handshake, business card, wave, high five, fist bump, conversation over coffee—these are all some of the truest forms of personal connection. A form of connecting that can't be duplicated. Social media tries, but it can't replicate the feeling of meeting someone face-to-face for the first time, one-on-one, mano-a-mano. You're curious and unsure of what to expect, and it's just a meeting over potential business. Do you get butterflies in your stomach when you follow someone new on Twitter or accept a friend request from Facebook? If you do, it's probably something you ate.

Most of us can agree that a personal relationship is stronger than a digital relationship. We share snapshots of our lives on Facebook and relevant links and videos on Twitter. That's pretty much the beginning of a friendship based on commonality. But most people feel very little emotion when they lose a follower on Twitter or are down a "like" on Facebook, which suggests that the real connection is missing in social media. Have we diminished the importance of the personal connection? Or have we just dragged our digital relationships in the mud for so long that they don't resonate anymore? Most likely, a little bit of both.

This is the challenge to marketers building digital relationships everywhere: Whether you are the largest brand or simply doing some personal branding, it's time to do a gut check. How well do you know the followers and friends you try to connect with every day? Get to know your social media followers beyond their Twitter profiles and Facebook information pages. Of course, this is much easier for the average person with a couple hundred followers and not as easy for a huge brand with thousands of followers and friends (now, that's a lot of coffee meet-ups!), but there are key steps that both can take toward connecting in a real way:

1. Start by taking a look at your followers as an audience. Are they from certain subsets of life? Maybe there are a number of bloggers or industry professionals? Within those groups, are there any who are key influential followers who you can build a beneficial relationship with outside of the digital world? If so, engage them!

2. Google their names. Read their Blog. Who are they? What do they do? Are they connected to an activity you share? Are they associated with an organization that you feel strongly about? Do they live nearby?

3. If they're local, ask them to meet for coffee. If they're not, ask them join you in a video chat (keep your pants on... or don't).

4. This isn't the moment for a sales pitch! Take the time to really get to know them as people, both personally and professionally. Talk about your mutual projects and interests. See where there's a cross section and potential areas for collaboration. Remember the age-old saying, "Scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours"—there's a reason it's still relevant. Is there anything you can help them with to start to build a real trust in this new relationship?

Are you starting to see what value you can get from a real-life connection? Hopefully, the answer is "yes." So the next time you find yourself a few followers or "likes" down, you'll realize the potential connections you may have lost.

DML

Followers, Friends and Fiestas

I wrote this back in March for Dmnews.com and you can read that article here. But going back through some past articles I thought this one still was really relevant to what's happening today in the social media space.

Enjoy...

Recently, I was invited to spend a Sunday at a friend's house and be part of her weekly cooking show. Like any good guest, I dined exquisitely and overindulged for the camera. The rest of the day was a roundtable of good laughs and creative thinking with like-minded people. I took a moment and stepped back to realize that I had never met any of my fellow foodie friends before—at least not inperson. They were all fellow Tweeters I follow on this social media phenomenon called Twitter.

By no means do I consider myself a social media expert. My 530 followers on Twitter are meager compared to Ashton Kutcher's four million. Even Darth Vader has 133,500 followers! Twitter has become so powerful that brands like Southwest and Best Buy have dedicated staff running their Twitter accounts. But I feel I've discovered something that very few have: I know how to reach Twitter's true ROI.

If you play in the social media space, you know that its purpose is to build relationships. But what do we gain in return? Some gain knowledge; humor; and some…well…the ability to waste time. While I use social media for all those things, I began to realize the obvious notion that I'm connecting with real people. Soon, I evolved my Tweets from self-promotional to conversational. And people responded in kind. Friendships with like-minded people formed and the sharing of knowledge in my field was helpful and satisfying.

That Sunday I realized that my new friends were coming from social media outlets like Twitter and LinkedIn. Most of you are probably thinking, “I have enough friends. Why seek out more?” I'll tell you why. There was another reason we were all gathered together that Sunday afternoon, besides the delicious food @cyuskoff made: We were all nerds in our artistic fields. From photographers and writers to creative directors and television producers, we bonded over the same funny blogs we read and argued about who's going to buy the new iPad. Some may call this networking. And you would be right in a sense. But networking is such a formal way of making connections. Social media makes it more personal, since we are connecting as peers and friends. So now when I ask my new friend @jonathan360 to link this article to Digg, it's less of a business request and more of a favor. Or if I need creative help, I can ask@mayhemstudios for a consultation. Now I have laughs, handshakes and a Sunday afternoon to go along with that Twitter name and headshot. That goes a long way, where a simple business card can't.

This isn't an instruction manual to social media. It's just a reaffirmation of something we all already know: Personal connections mean more. Is this going to help you get more followers? No. Will it help your next collaborative project and career? Definitely. So today I no longer look at my follower count but instead my friend count. I have 32 friends on Twitter.

You can follow me @drewlewis