I was at a party yesterday telling a friend about how happy I was with my last workshop. I was explaining how much I enjoy working with students whether they are eager to understand social networking or hesitant. In his oh-so-subtle way, he said "hm, so you like working in person with your students but you are teaching them online interactions".
He thought there may be a discrepency in what I do and what I teach. Logical conclusion. BUT, I do not just teach folks how to develop relationships online. I teach them to integrate their online and offine networking. I do not teach folks to simply promote themselves online (or even to focus exclusively on establishing a strong online persona).
I teach my students and clients:
- that who they are online should be who they are offline,
- to use social networking to strengthen relationships they are building offline,
- to be genuine, and
- to get to know interesting folks (because that makes being genuine much easier!)
I have clients and business partners I met offline that I got to know fairly quickly through online communications. I also have clients and business partners I met online that I cemented through meeting offline.
I expect that in certain situations it is beneficial to have a large in person network (ie quantity). For most of us, having a strong network (ie quality) is more beneficial than a large network.
Think about your reasons for using social networks. Are you more likely to meet your organizational goals if a large number of folks has vague awareness of you or if a smaller number knows you and trusts you? I'm a big fan of "know and trust". For any of us looking to expand our client base, donor base, membership base, etc, the more folks who "know us" and "trust us", the more likely we are to meet our goals.
And how do folks get to "know and trust" us? Genuine relationship building. Offline and online. Use the tools God gave you. And use the tools the web geeks gave you ;-).
