Sanders Says - Stay in touch

March 11, 2010

Stay in touch

Last week an old friend rang me on my cell phone to catch up.

It was the third time he'd called. "Dude, what's up with you?," he wondered. "We are really out of touch, I've called you several times!"

"Man, I've been swamped," I told him. "Writing a new book, blogging, tweeting, you know - all that stuff. A few weeks ago I retweeted you, though. Does that count?" I jokingly suggested.

"We are good friends, have been since before the Internet. You tweet like 10 times a day and update Facebook every few hours. You can find 10 minutes to call me. If you don't watch out, you are going to turn into an information black hole." His final words really hit me.

He's right. There's nothing like face time or phone catch up time from a distance. When you see or hear that person, you synchronize, and sing a tune together. Why ping when you can sing?

Social media is addicting and eventually can become a bottomless pit of writing and replying. We delude ourselves into thinking that if we Facebook poke or email ping someone we are still cultivating a relationship. Wrong. We are maintaining a weak tie or association at best. But the feelings are being squeezed out of our relationships during digital compression.

For some of us, email is starting to be unmanageable too. Our voicemail is full. But if someone replies to us on Twitter or writes on our wall, we are quick on the draw - because that's on our radar. I've emailed Gary Vaynerchuk at least thee times to give him kudos, a business opportunity and a little advice. He's too buried under his barrage of tweets and video postings that he's never responded. However, if I wrote a 1 star review on his book, he'll answer it on the same day and give his personal email to me to contact him ASAP to work this out. (See what I mean). This is the future. While we aren't all doing this, we are getting more and more unreachable every day by the people that care about us the most.

As a result, I'm afraid we are trading in real friends for digital followers, and it's probably a downgrade in terms of our personal support systems. Remember, your network is your net worth. You cultivate it like a farmer tends for his fields. I'm going to vow, right now, to answer 100% of my phone calls and 100% of non-spammy emails that I receive. If I blog less or update a fewers times, so be it. No one will unfollow me for poor attendance!

Posted at 10:03 AM in Business Effectiveness , Relationship Management , Social Media | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Nicely said, Tim. You've really hit a resonance here.

We're all so busy using social media tools, that we've forgotten how to connect and communicate.

Why is it that we're all sometimes so afraid to talk with each other? You've set me thinking about that question.

Posted by: BillSherman | March 13, 2010 at 02:02 PM

FB and twitter have both been singing this same song to me recently. If you are my FB friend and live in the same town AND attend the same church--but can't take the time to say hello--please don't be offended when we are no longer "friends" on FB. FB (or any social media, for that matter) can NEVER substitute for REAL interaction.

Thanks for a thoughtful post.

Posted by: becca | March 12, 2010 at 08:34 AM

Great post Tim...

I couldn't find your review for the book through your link on Amazon. Can you post a direct link to it?

Posted by: Chris Harris | March 11, 2010 at 09:01 PM

Yep yep yep! I wrote about it myself two days ago.

One guy was saying to me "I hope so and so got my tweet" - I was like, "phone???"

Posted by: Scott Gould | March 11, 2010 at 03:48 PM

I totally agree with you Tim. This ambient intimacy that many of us use to "keep in touch" is really a falsehood. Pick up the phone and CALL someone today!

Posted by: Phil Gerbyshak | March 11, 2010 at 03:43 PM

Awesome post Tim! It's like everyone will do anything to get to where they wanna be, but simply not enough to stay there.

Posted by: Edgar DeJesus | March 11, 2010 at 12:02 PM

Terrific post, Tim. It really resonated with me, and I think these messages really need to be heard.

And thanks for cautioning people not to give detractors more attention than supporters. It's an easy trap to fall into.

Best,

Alexandra Levit
Author, New Job, New You
Columnist, Wall Street Journal
http://www.alexandralevit.com

Posted by: Alexandra Levit | March 11, 2010 at 11:12 AM