By Personal Branding Blog, Published November 14, 2014
How many followers do you have on Social Media?
Would you be willing to make the commitment to meet 10% of them in person?
How about 20% or even 50% of them? Would you be willing to make the time, the effort and the commitment to go out and physically meet at least 10% of the people you follow and/or follow you on Social Media channels. You can pick just the more common channels of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn here. Or, depending upon how you use Social Media you may prefer to include YouTube, Instagram, Vine or other social channels.
Whether You Have 100 or 100,000
Some people have a lot of contacts across the various Social Media channels. And you might be asking yourself… To what end would this serve? Well, there are some logical points that could be considered. For example, if you are following them why wouldn’t you want to meet them in person.
FACT: Some people are better at a distance
I can tell you from personal experience that there are some people that I would much rather follow than meet in person. That’s life. It doesn’t mean they are bad people or that I am. It’s just that we can have a better conversation over social media channels than we can in person. I’m sure there are a few people like this in your stream of followers too. Again, it doesn’t make them bad or make you bad. It’s just that some people are better at a distance.
So, why would anyone want to do this?
One line of thinking considers why we follow people in the first place. In the real world we follow people for work, for sports, for entertainment and other purposes. In the Social Media sphere we might follow a completely different set of people. Why? Partially because we can. Also, because there are people in different parts of the world (or perhaps just around the corner) that can bring a completely different point of view to a conversation. For me this is one of the biggest factors in who I follow. There are people that have interesting, unique and sometimes completely opposite points of view to my own that make conversations great.
Why Won’t This Work?
And other excuses we tell ourselves. There are a lot of logical, logistical and perhaps financial reasons why this may or may not work. I’m sure you have probably already thought of 10 reasons why this would never work and why you wouldn’t even want to start. However, I challenge you to consider it. To at least consider the possibility. There is no right or wrong here. It’s just an idea. Who knows you might meet some very interesting people and have some incredible conversations that could only happen in person.
So, what do you say?
Can you make the 10% Commitment?
Drop a note in the comments and let me know why or why not. Inquiring minds want to know.
My Commitment to You: If I follow you or if you follow me I personally would like to extend an invitation to meet in person. I speak at a lot of events around the country and will be doing more global presentations again in 2015. Please let me know if you happen to see that we are at the same event or if I happen to be in your town. I’d like to see if we can be part of that 10% Commitment.
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