Business has always been at least partly about networking. More and more, it has come to be about social networking. I wrote recently about the need to focus your efforts in social networking. I came across this piece not long ago by Christopher Rollyson on how business relationships can, in his words, be accelerated by using multiple social networks.

I am increasingly seeing cases in which people have accelerated relationships by connecting in multiple platforms, and this is growing in importance in client work.

He goes on to take about why he might use a particular social network for some things with some clients and some other social network at a different time.

I like to think of LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others as "venues" because they are places that have defined characteristics that facilitate certain kinds of interaction. Like restaurants or bars, they imbue meetings with a social context that can add or detract from the meeting. You already use dozens of (offline) places every month to meet clients. Similarly, various "social networks" are more appropriate for engaging clients, depending on' personalities, the business at hand, etc.

This means keeping up with what Rollyson refers to as "multiple presences" on the web. At the start, that can seem overwhelming. But the truth is that it is becoming the norm for many people.

Personally, I have a social network that is almost entirely dedicated to people who get served at my physical work place. Then I have another platform (Facebook) with a more eclectic crowd - some colleagues from my place of work, some other professionals in my field, personal friends, old friends from high school I haven't seen in, well, decades in many cases, and a few relatives. Then there's Twitter, where almost everyone I follow is a professional in my field whom I will likely never actually meet. But a number of my relationships show up on more than one of those platforms, and the cross over usually serves some purpose.

Rollyson's article is worth reading.


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