In our line of work- namely the online communications consulting and management business- we’re often faced by a rather ubiquitous misconception amongst clients and peers: social media (and perhaps the Internet as a whole) has ultimately produced a more fractured and less intimately connected society.
But to this dear reader we cry foul!
Social Media and the entire process of social networking has indeed gone through a flux stage where people have become intensely immersed in it; but as we explore its boundaries (or lack thereof) and discover how big our new networks really are, we inevitably experience a contraction. We begin to seek more niche outlets for our interests, we find people we relate to, we follow people who share the information and opinions we individually connect with. We find groups, hubs, that unite under the causes we believe in and eventually we discover that we are not so fractured after all, rather more potentially connected than ever before.
The operative word here is “potentially.” It’s easy to look at all the choice available in social media and feel overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of it all. Where does one start? How does one find their perfect little niche in all of that rollicking madness and then somehow translate it into real world encounters?
Stop. Whittle it down. Who are you? What is your speciality? What is your passion? What kind of people do you want to meet? These are not rhetorical questions! Write them down and take some time to answer them. Know yourself and what you want to find, be it professionally or socially. Now explore what’s available via the online world and choose your groups accordingly. Here are a few key places to start:
LinkedIn Groups:
LinkedIn Groups provide a great place to join professional conversations related to your profession. Because everyone’s credentials are easily viewable via their public LinkedIn profiles it’s easy to see who you’re really talking to, what their background is and whether they’re qualified to be answering your question or participating in your conversation. Moreover, you can easily start your own professional discussion group and attract potential clients and peers into it by offering free advice and opinion, promoting your expertise to a wider audience. Check out add on applications Lunchmeet and Sonar as they are great tools for meeting up with members of your LinkedIn network in the real world.
Posterous Spaces
A share-anything-style blog service turned niche social networking platform, Posterous has been re-designed from the ground up to allow users to literally start their own mini social networks centered around specific interests and topics. It’s this re-visioning that has made Posterous truly relevant to the new age of niche social media. Imagine Facebook but with a focus exclusively on bird watching, or small engine repair or ear wax sculpture, whatever suits your fancy, there’s probably a Posterous Space for it populated by users of a certain ilk. If there isn’t you can start one and welcome you’re brethren into it. While Posterous Spaces are not meant to create real world encounters per se, the niche nature of each network makes this almost inevitable. After all, wouldn’t you want to meet that special someone who can really appreciate your ear wax Venus di Milo?
Meetup:
Now here’s the pinnacle of them all when it comes to social networking as a means of real world encounters. Meetup’s sole purpose is to arrange just that- meet-ups, actual face to face interactions, usually with complete strangers (at least initially) who share a common interest, sports, philosophy, movies, business, you name it. When you create an account, you’ll be asked to input your location and postal or zip code. Meetup will then give you an entire overview of all the meet-ups happening in your area and you can then browse through them based on topic. A calendar on the home page provides you with the upcoming dates of different meet-ups and a Facebook integration option shows you which of your Facebook friends are attending which meet-ups. When you create a meet-up, you’re even asked to check a box stating that you “pledge to create real face to face communities.”
Ultimately we are all looking for more intimate and common relations with each other; social media hasn’t detracted from that, it has only given us a staggering amount of choice to accomplish it. But if you know yourself and your personal and business goals, your online network can become a tremendously powerful referral source to achieve those valuable face-to-face experiences.
