Online Networking
This week I passed something of a milestone on Facebook: 2000 Friends. It got me to thinking about the actual meaning of such a lofty number, and a previous post about The Dunbar Number (worth reading if you missed it).
The Social Media total, as of today, looks something like this.
- 2016 Friends on Facebook
- 702 Connections on LinkedIn
- 4411 Followers on Twitter
- 4787 People & Businesses that I follow on Twitter
Among the reasons for these numbers… I’ve lived a few years (reminded of that, because today is my birthday). I’m involved in a number of trade organizations, and have been so for many years. I travel for business to speak at meetings and conventions.
The Facebook reality is that having 2000+ friends doesn’t REALLY mean one has that many active relationships. On the personal side, Facebook has reconnected me with many old friends, a number of whom I’ve truly rekindled relationships with.
At a business level, people follow my activities, and I follow others. It’s interesting to learn more about other people, personally and professionally. Sometimes, what people post is TMI (Too Much Information) or just plain drivel. The same is true for LinkedIn, Twitter, and most other social media.
It’s nice to have the possibility of mass awareness on connection, but I’m going to follow the 80/20 rule. I’m going to put 80% of my effort into 20% (or less) of my connection. If one connects and communicates in a less random fashion, the results are likely to be light years better.
What do you think?
Andy Ebon
The Wedding Marketing Authority
Nicely put! Social Media are communication tools than can serve many personal and business purposes, all at the same time. Depending on what we want to accomplish, one or two media might be well-suited, and the others leave you in a position similar to driving a nail with a screwdriver: there’s simply a better way.
As I understand it, Dunbar’s Number of 150 is a theoretical max, and not the ideal number to strive for. Just blindly accumulating “numbers” of connections amounts to a popularity contest, which is fine for insecure junior high school kids or fans of American Idol, I suppose. But grandmas wanting to stay close with family need perhaps only a few dozen Facebook connections, at most. Brides-to-be searching for wedding ideas and services might shop around for up to a hundred or so, but only stay connected with a few dozen. Wedding & event professionals might live close to several hundred colleagues, but could actually maintain steady working relationships with just a few dozen.
You, yourself, travel widely and might regard every one of your 2000+ connections as a potential source of new business. And I agree with you, that new business is much more likely to come through an active relationship, rather than a casual connection.
For all cases like these, I think your point is right on target: Narrow your active connections to just the ones most important for your purposes, and deepen those relationships. Whether we trim our active list down to 20% or fewer, we need to focus our attention or risk missing the trees for the forest.