Building Relationships through Social Media

The life of a computer enthusiast is not complete without engaging in social media. With over 20 million Filipinos going online every day, sharing and learning is never ending via Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and more. Whatever our reasons are for signing up to these different channels, we need to remember that building relationship is the cornerstone of social media.

We’ve invested time, money, and effort going online to connect to different people and find interesting things that will enrich our knowledge. But how do we exactly distinguish ourselves from the vast majority of online users who think that social networking is “just for fun” (though of course it’s fun too)? Allow me to list down some of my learning throughout the years.

Know your purpose. In a typical situation, there are two schools of thought regarding accepting requests: (1) build a limited, small but strong community of colleagues, friends, and relatives or (2) accept everyone who puts effort in adding you up to create a fan base and a huge network for sharing. Which one is your intention?

Complete your profile. You’d be surprised at how many profiles today have never been completed. People want to know you inasmuch as you want to connect and get to know other people. It’s not enough to just tick all the boxes (I’m a Sagittarius, in a relationship, etc.), because the more important meat of the profile is the ‘About Me’ section. Put some effort and thought on interesting facts you would like other users to remember you.

Don’t just sit on there. At times we feel so much relaxed or lazy; we tend to just wait for people to add us up, for bloggers to leave comments or for strangers to message us. Opportunities and relationships won’t pour over you without you putting any effort in the first place. I suggest you take the initiative to get to know people, to use important websites and apps or to join events in order to widen your horizon.

Update regularly. Aside from completing your profile, set a few minutes of every day (or every other day) to update your accounts and blogs. People won’t get interested if they don’t see any updates from you at all. Signing up is not the end of it – just like working – you don’t stop after being hired. But please, do not over update, because people might get irritated at you. Everything in excess is bad.

Add everyone you know. Most sites these days have the capability of scanning through your address book and processing your current friends to get possible connections. It’s not important whether the site is suggesting a friend from elementary or a long distant colleague – add them up no matter how distant their relationships are with you. Even if the degree of closeness is just minimal, include them in your list too, as long as you have an idea of who they are. Besides, the purpose of social networking is to reconnect with the often-invisible people, right?

Participate and contribute. The Internet is made to build communities and relationships. Participate in forums, discussions, and tweetups. Read interesting articles and share them to the people connected to you. Share more than just what you’re doing or where you are going. Contributing to the community is a great way to spread the knowledge and to earn followers too. You’d be amazed at how fast word-of-mouth can do, especially online.

Social networking has a reputation as a time waster, and I believe most of us will agree. However, when we put a purpose and we give an effort to maximize the potentials of social media, there’s a huge possibility that it can help us realize what it can do for us in exchange.

This article is my ninth contribution to Manila Bulletin -- one of Philippines' leading broadsheets -- published on April 04, 2011 (Monday) in the TechNews Section. You can view the PDF version here.

Photo Source: Manila Bulletin