Scoble is writing about relationships at Fast Company's BlogJam (a great idea where FC invited a slew of guest contributors to celebrate their 1-year blog anniversary for a 48 hour period).
I look at Yahoo. That started as a relationship between two kids who were attending Stanford. Apple? A relationship between two high-school students in Silicon Valley.As I look back on my life, all sorts of good things happened due to relationships.
But, how many people really think about cultivating relationships?
I'd argue it's the only thing worth cultivating.
A few hours ago I was meeting with a company that I got in touch with through my relationship with Robert Scoble. In another era, you could say we're hardly acquaintenances. I was originally introduced to Robert briefly at the O'Reilly ETech conference by Steve Gillmor and then I met him again at an RSS Neighborhood event where he was speaking. We've exchanged a few emails and comments on our respective blogs.
Hmmm, but via reading Robert's blog (or for that matter any bloggers') I feel as if I know him a bit more than an equivalent casual acquaintance without a blog. And the company CEO I spoke with felt he know me pretty well from my blog. In fact, he slipped and said, You have an impressive resume. I know my resume is nowhere to be found online, and then I realized after we discussed it that he meant the body of work that had accrued over time that gives one a bit of a peek into who I am. Well, in a sense, my blog is an active resume.
No website does that. This is a common refrain from blog doubters (actual quote):
Blogs will just vanish in the obscurity of the Net just like the millions of never-updated-anymore Geocities homepages!
Nah, it's the relationships that thread through blogs via comments, citations/links, and trackbacks that glue together bloggers in a way that Geocities never could. Sure, they'll always be abandoned sites and blogs, but it's not all going away because social networks, social capital - and deep friendships - have been built on that blogosphere fabric.
Im not just speaking about personal blogs (and I have a slight preference for them over team blogs). I was reading BzzAgent's blog the other day. It's a team blog that works because in nearly every post the author shares a little glimpse - sometimes an anecdote - that makes a bit human - otherwise it would appear to be a mass cacophony of voices. This one act of sharing bonds me in some way to that author and by extension the brand.
I mentioned already that the undercurrent in my seemingly disparate, eclectic posts is:
People Matter (and What Matters to People Sells). A Corollary: We're all kindred spirits and there's a core set of universal values that bond and motivate us.
So I'll share some of my favorite (ok, some just may be in my more recent memory bank) posts I've done on relationships and relationship-building - not necessarily online relationships. They blur lines between personal and business - as in life:
This recent one is on why relationships are sometimes nipped in the bud: Dogma Secretly Lurks in Cafes, Blogs and Marketing.
And this one on that it doesn't matter if people are "important" enough to network with -- it's relationships themselves that are the stuff of life: On My Papi and More.
More:
- Deep Hanging Out
- Multicultural Blinders, Marketing Myopia Continued
- The Tree of 1000 Blessings
- Friends of the Wee Voice: Fresh Vision
- Friends of the Wee Voice: The Freedom of Friendship
- Ripple Effects
I'm working on a post which is basically about why being interested in what makes people tick - what David Wolfe calls the study of human behavior [also 1, 2] - and people themselves - is fundamental to marketing and innovation. Stay tuned.
I'll probably talk even more on using blogs as tools for relationship-building as I'm working on various projects in that realm - and it's a question that comes up over and over again so I'd like to share what I'm trying and bounce ideas.
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