I recently read The Stolen Address Book by Seth Goldin. It poses a great question: “If you stole Steven Spielberg’s address book, would it help you get a movie made?”
The answer is no.
Data has no value without trust and connection.
These days we all have access to data. Identifying the right people (or spamming everyone) on LinkedIn is easy and cheap.
But the question still remains the same – Will it help you get your dream job or crack your next deal or get that seed funding?
The answer is no, again!
Not until you nurture these connections and spend time fostering these relationships.
While the web provides easy access to connect with people who share similar interests and passions globally, it also acts as a barrier in connecting with people at a human level.
So how does one build genuine, meaningful connections in this virtual space?
Here’s what I suggest:-
1) Participate actively in discussions:
Make your presence felt by taking an active role in the dialog. Stand out by sharing your ideas, POVs, trends, and engage in discussions and topics that interest you. This will not only help you create visibility for yourself but will also help get diverse perspectives on various topics, which will invariably make you grow.
2) Share what you know:
When you actively engage with the community and share your POVs, people want to know where these opinions are coming from. So, invest time in building your profile. Collect ideas, write about what you know, and share them with the community so that they can learn from it. The more you share, the more it builds your credibility. This will not only help create visibility for yourself, but you’ll also end up creating a personal brand.
3) Tell your story:
Start by humanizing your online bios. Whether it’s your LinkedIn summary or your 160-character Twitter bio, it needs to tell a story that gets the reader to want to know you and to learn more about you. Include your values and point of view. Include why you do what you do. Share your passions and differentiation. Highlight an achievement or two but make it more than just details about your current role and job responsibilities—that’s boring!
Lastly, carve out time to stay connected. Online relationships have a higher chance of fizzling out, as you don’t have facetime with people, and their attention spans are much lower on digital. Make it real, virtually too. Do things you would do to nurture real-life connections - help those in need, send best wishes for promotions, pat their back for their achievements, and don’t be shy of sharing your achievements. It’s hard – that’s why most people are unable to do it. But it’s totally worth the effort, as you only gain from it.
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