This post is relatively short by design. It’s focused on three things that are both easy and hard to do. I hope you can use them for your end of the year planning and for your 2013 goal setting.
These are what I’m calling the Three C’s of Social Engagement.
Content
The ability to create, consume and comment are three of the most powerful things you can do to increase your effectiveness and engagement with your colleagues, businesses, and people not in your network of contacts.
Which leads to the need to implement the Three R’s of Social.
The Three R’s of Social Engagement
- Read more
- wRite more
- Respond more
The first two are obvious. The last one, Respond More, takes the best of the first two and combines them in a way that enables and encourages engagement by giving back, sharing and collaborating.
Community
Your community is vital in many ways. Your community does not need to be huge. However, your community includes (or seeks) the people that will help you gain the skills, contacts, and the exposure you need to move your plans forward. This does not mean manipulate people. It means find like minded groups of people.
Start where you are. While this is somewhat obvious. Don’t obsess on what others may have developed. Build your platform. Build your network. See 5 Tips for Increasing Your Odds for Success
- Join organizations that help you grow.
- Join organizations that will help you gain skills.
- If you have always been wanting to join Toastmasters … do it! If you’ve been thinking of going to a Social Media event … do it!
Connections
Connections are related to community in that who you know will determine who you are able to engage with. At least on the grand scale. There is also a need to actually KNOW things. This is where The First C … Content … comes in. Connections can make it easier to help you learn more, do more and engage more.
- Connections are a two way street. You want to know what they have to offer you and they’ll want to know What Makes You Valuable.
- Everything in life does not need to be coordinating through connections. However, connections can often make things happen much faster by utilizing them to short circuit conversations by engaging the extended community.
- Cosmos – This is a bit of a bonus C. There is a huge world out there. With over 7 billion people on the planet it’s impossible to know everyone. The good news is … it’s not necessary. According to Dunbar’s Number you can really only manage 150 connections at a time. More can be found at here and here.
These are my Three C’s of Social Engagement. What are your best tips and techniques for engaging in Social Networks? Share your tips here in the comments. Let’s start a dialogue and see what we can do together.
Author:
Jeff is a veteran in the Enterprise Content Management industry. Over the past 20 years he has worked with customers and partners to design, develop and deploy solutions around the world. Jeff is currently the Director of Strategic Alliances at Winshuttle. He has worked for Microsoft, FileNet (IBM), K2, Captaris, Open Text, Kofax and Kodak. He speaks and blogs about ECM and the Intersection between Social, Mobile and Cloud Computing.
