What a week it has been. I keep getting surprised by how cool Twitter is and how many new relationships I have made there in the last few months. You can’t achieve anything quite like this anywhere else. There are very few people that I network with on Twitter that I knew prior to joining last September. But I have so many people who now influence my life from Twitter that its hard to comprehend.
Twitter, at its best, is a great happy place where people exchange ideas and information, wit and wisdom. You give advice, ask advice, do favors, ask favors. Its a truly great exchange. And one for which I am very thankful. In fact, most of the time, everyone on Twitter is thankful. Gratitude runneth over in the Twittersphere.
I think that’s one of the things that makes Twitter so addictive. Social networking isn’t just about the Internet real estate on which one squats. It’s about what you build there. Relationships are the most valuable assets on the net. So no matter how many are people in your network, it doesn’t mean much if you don’t really know the people who make it up. And the only way to do that is to truly engage with them.
Simple courtesy dictates that you show your gratitude when someone does something nice for you. So it is on Twitter. Twitter etiquette dictates that you should thank those who “ReTweet” your posts to their network. Twitter is also the home of #followfriday, a method by which tweeps show their appreciation for one another by including them in a #followfriday post that others in their network can click on to find more good tweeps to follow. And sometimes you even get mentioned in someone’s blog post. Talk about cool!
How do you even begin to thank someone for that? Earlier this week I wrote a post about Susan Kang Nam‘s reasons for using Twitter. In a karmic turn, three unrelated Twitter friends mentioned me in their blogs later this week. Three! Big deal? It is to me. I feel as if I am in some kind of Twitter thank you groove. And I am inspired to keep it going.
It started with something Dan Schawbel (@danschawbel) posted to Twitter about not spreading yourself too thin on Social Networks. I ReTweeted Dan’s idea and James Wester (@jameswester) asked my opinion as to why not and I told him I feel that if you are spread out over too many networks you won’t be able to keep up decent relationships with your friends on some of them. Well Dan’s tweet, and my reply gave James an idea for a very poignant article he wrote on his blog at Ignorantium, entitled, “The Peanut Butter Principle? Spreading Yourself Too Thin.”
Then I posted a link to an article called, Don’t Create a Job Description Resume, in response to which my friend, Annette Holland (@dananner) asked me what my advice is for a Jack (or Jill) of all trades. Annette is about to be looking for a job but not sure which direction she wants to go. I gave her my standard advice on that question, which is to focus on what you have done best or most of. I gave her an article to read for reference, Should You be a “Jack of all Trades” or a Specialist? We later had a quick phone conversation where I gave her some ideas to work on. And wouldn’t you know, all this prompted her to write a great blog article entitled, The dilemma for a “Jill of all trades”. Annette is a great writer who will soon be getting paid to do so, in my humble opinion.
Finally, Thursday I mistyped “Come Shake Your Groove Thank” in a post I sent out to let people know about a get together happening this weekend. I meant to say, Groove Thang, which I clarified in a follow-up Tweet. But a new Twitter friend, Judy Kinney (@flourishingjudy), liked Groove Thank better and we discussed how it could be a metaphor for social networking. She smelled a blog post coming and we decided to each write something. So on Friday she posted an insightful article, Grab Your Gratitude Groove Thang.
And here I am writing this. Thank you to all those who have made this such a memorable week. You keep renewing my faith in people. That’s what social networking is all about. People, not numbers. Do you talk to your network? Just listen? Or do you truly engage? Give more than you expect to get and you will soon find yourself in a thank you groove too.
