We’ve all heard of the concept “six-degrees of separation,” otherwise known as the “human web,” whereby each of us is separated from every other human on earth by, at most, six connections. This spawned the rather humorous, yet challenging, game of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” (FYI, Kevin Bacon once used my office in NYC, so if you know me, you’re only two-degrees away from him!)
But the world of social media has changed things and has shrunk the world. I was recently reminded of this by my old friend Frank Murphy. Frank and I met back in the 90s when he was producing Kevin & Bean for KROQ in Los Angeles and I was working in New York. We went our separate ways and over the years reconnected on occasion, usually via some sort of Internet activity. Last week I used Twitter’s ability to search my email address book to see if any of my contacts were on Twitter. Frank showed up in the list, so I started following him. When I saw him tweet something about social media, I responded, and we were reconnected. Frank then checked out my blog, and mentioned me in his blog post on social media, and now I’m returning the favor. And this sort of thing happens to me all the time. I have used Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Plaxo to reconnect with former HS and college classmates, as well as coworkers and business connections from years gone by.
We now live in a digital world where our online communities allow us to shrink that six degrees very rapidly to just one degree. I can actually talk to people like Shaq or Ingrid Michaelson, and there’s a good chance they will respond back. Shaq will often tweet his location, and tell his followers that the first person to come up to him from Twitter will get free tickets to that night’s game. People who might only hope to see Shaq from afar, now have greater access to him, both online, and in real life. And I assume this is the case for many of the celebrities who have decided to use Twitter properly and engage their community.
There is a lesson to be learned here for the rest of us poor non-celebrities. If we run a business or organization, we need to take advantage of the one-degree of separation. Our clients, customers, and constituents are only a click away. We have unprecedented access to them. Via Twitter we can speak to them one on one, answer their customer service concerns, build relationships, get their input on our products and services, and so on. The possibilities are endless. This doesn’t mean you won’t necessarily have to spend some money on market surveys and research, but with social media you have immediate feedback at your fingertips. Take the pulse of your customers early and often.
On a somewhat related note…check out today’s blog from Social Media Today “Social Media will Disrupt Every Function in Your Company.” Also, if you’re on Twitter, Twittercism has a rather comfort-zone stretching exercise for you in your “Homework Assignment for the Day.“
