I have been thinking lately about how my cyberspace networking style is so similar to the one I have when meeting people face to face.

My style is extremely open, as I practically make a hobby out of meeting new people. There is something about getting to know the story of someone’s life (or at least the high points) that fascinates me.

Curiously, I am much more willing to reach out to new people I encounter on LinkedIn than I am on Facebook. When I am in a group with someone on LinkedIn and I find their comments to be cogent, insightful and worth reading, I think nothing of reaching out to them and asking them to connect with me.

Yet on Facebook, I rarely reach out to people I don’t already know in person (or have gotten to know through LinkedIn and its groups).

Does your cyberspace networking style resemble the one you use in person? Does this style vary from one social media site to another?

Perhaps you just aren’t comfortable doing any kind of networking, whether face to face or in person. In that case, I recommend you purchase a terrific book called The Fine Art of Small Talk by Debra Fine. She provides easy to follow steps to give you some tools to take your networking to a higher level.

Still, there are differences between networking where you can shake a hand in person vs. the kind where there is a virtual handshake. There are so many visual and auditory clues in the face to face environment that you don’t have in the virtual environment.

For me, there is nothing like picking up the phone and actually talking with people I have met through cyberspace networking. Though we don’t have the visual cues, we still have the auditory ones. Plus we can have the give and take that to me is best done voice to voice.

Through such a call, we can determine what the nature of our relationship will be, or even if there will be a reason to continue to have a relationship. In my mind, if there is no mutual benefit or possibility of such a benefit, there is no reason to have the relationship.

Please share your thoughts and experiences about networking, especially using social media sites to find those people with whom there can be a mutually beneficial relationship.

 

Joyce Feustel, Boomers’ Social Media Tutor

www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com