The Power of Connection

This past weekend I received two very real reminders of the importance and power of connection.

Friday night my wife and I were in downtown Lancaster for First Friday. At our last stop a woman came up to me and said, “Ken?”. Turns out the woman and I are friends on Facebook. We had met once before, I believe, but now I got to meet her husband (also a FB friend) for the first time. As the four of us chatted, we discovered a number of connections from our past, but it turned really odd when we discovered that some of their best friends were people we knew…a couple we hadn’t seen, or even thought about, in probably 20 years.

(insert chorus of It’s a Small World)

Then Sunday morning I awoke to a message on my Facebook wall from an old college classmate, someone I haven’t seen in nearly 30 years, but had reconnected with on Facebook only about a year ago. She told me that her high school daughter had been making a college visit to Messiah College, where my daughter attends. Apparently their student tour guide told them that he was a student in my Social Media Marketing class that I just started teaching this past week.

Social Media truly does transcend time and space. This is why I am quick to connect with others on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This is also why I tell my students about the power of connection.

When I friend someone on Facebook, the first thing I do is look at the little box that shows our mutual connections. Very often I find one that just doesn’t even make sense. I love that, especially since it gives us something interesting to talk about.

These connections are the fuel that runs the Social Media engine. LinkedIn is built on the principal of business connections and referrals, but the same can be said of Twitter and Facebook, even though their initial purpose was more personal than professional. That’s why LinkedIn has adopted the old adage, “It’s who you know,” as its tag line. And this is how I generate business; no cold calls, no paid ads.

I don’t connect with people in hopes that they will become clients, but very often it is those connections that generate business for me. My connections bring all sorts of benefits, not just business. Building meaningful relationships can be its own reward, and I’ve met so many intriguing people and made some great friendships.

How do you choose to connect with others? Do you connect early and often? How do you build relationships with others via Social Media?

Tagged as: facebook, linkedin, Messiah College, Social Media, Social media marketing, Social network, Twitter