Meet Ali Davies and her delightful young eight year old son. Last week, Ali arrived at my blog via a Tweet that Liz Strauss had recently sent out with a link to one of my posts. My first connection with Ali was via a comment she left on a post I had written questioning if work-life balance is even possible. She had read the post and left me some direct feedback with her thoughts on the whole work-life balance issue. You see, Ali helps Self Employed Professionals make changes in their business and life to create success on their own terms. Given this, she could truly relate to the things that I was questioning in my blog post. I loved that had stopped by and decided to engage in discussion with me about something that we are both passionate about.
Currently Ali lives in Ireland, however after some back and fourth DM’s via Twitter I soon came to learn that she was actually visiting Vancouver and that she is in the process of planning a relocation to Canada. Amazing! So today, I headed to downtown Vancouver and had lunch with Ali and her son. Right away, we hit it off and shared many stories about life, work, social media and the fact that there is no one size fits all solution to the work-life issue. We had a truly wonderful discussion which enabled us to begin building a relationship with one another.
So…here’s the thing. Millions of tweets fly by in my Twitter stream every day. Behind every one of those Tweets is a person with a life and things that are important to them. By taking the time to reach out and connect with people whose values, goals and interests align with mine; great things can happen. Sure, the tweets matter – but honestly it is the people who are writing the tweets that matter so much more. Today’s lunch with Ali reinforced that unequivocally.
Here are some tips to help you build relationships with the people behind the tweets in your Twitter stream.
- Find and follow people whose values, work and passions align with yours.
- Begin to engage with individuals who interest you by commenting, tweeting questions, thoughts and feedback. Enter into a conversations with them. Invest in those conversations over the long term. Think long term – not quick hits.
- Don’t expect people to “give or lend” you their influence – just because you ask for it. Liz Strauss wrote an excellent post on this exact issue yesterday.
- Take the time to read a person’s Twitter bio. Check out their website or blog. Read what they are writing about. Look for their comments and work across the web. Learn their style, tone and thought patterns. Get to know them. Listen.
- Where possible, meet in real life or at least via Skype. Even the most informal chats are an opportunity to begin building and investing in a relationship.
- Attend conferences, meetups, tweetups and other events that will give you a chance to meet and get to know people individually.
- Think “give” – not “get”. It is as simple as that. Don’t approach relationship building from the place of what you need, want or how quickly you can gain something. Look at what you can offer and how you can help the other person out. The old adage “it is better to give than receive” applies here – every time.
I can’t wait for Ali to move to Canada. I am so happy that we have connected and begun to invest in building our relationship.
What are you doing to invest in relationship building? Are you getting to know the people behind the Tweets that you see every day?