The Ties That Bond

A Guest Post by Linda M. Lopeke, The SMARTSTART Coach

Not feeling the love in your social media relations?

Social media is a channel for building relationships from the comfort of home while cloaked in the anonymity of the internet. A place where your own actions and behaviours determine whether you thrive or dive. A place where your voice is a more likely to be unheard, lost in the gathering crowd, or (worse) deemed unremarkable. The same place where lasting friendships and stellar reputations can be made (or lost) in 140 characters at the touch of a send button.

If you truly seek to connect and fully experience the wonder of social community, you must first accept that the same standards required for successful face-to-face interactions apply to creating distant ties that bond. Satisfying relationships are born when you communicate effectively and establish mutual trust. Only then can bonds grow strong enough to meet our human need to connect. If you remain anonymous, or are incongruent in your actions, comments and tweets, the digital world will likely be a lonely, meaningless place for you.

In the virtual world, everyone is suspect until proven otherwise. And body language is expressed in punctuation, personality in photos and multi-media and both are responded to by sharing, digging and re-tweeting. The good news is it is entirely possible to feel close to someone you have never met. Sharing the truth about who you are is one way. Seeing the truth about those you encounter along the way is another.

Don’t overcomplicate the friendships you establish online. Just wear your truth. Unpretentiously. Confidently. Through trial and error, you’ll soon be able to quickly see who is loyal, interesting, and trustworthy and who is just there to pimp a link or push another product.

Ditch the fake personas, wannabes and also rans. Care less about what people think about you and more about whether or not you have anything useful to contribute. Be harder on yourself than others, but don’t take any of it so seriously you start measuring your own worth (and that of others) in meaningless friend and follower counts.

There are many ties that bond across the digital divide if you let them. The mentor who can teach you things you won’t learn in any book. The v-friend you feel comfortable reaching out to and sharing private information with. The e-lover who is neither friend or frenemy but who could turn out to be either in a nanosecond. The i-quaintance whose name you recognize but with whom your relationship is more casual than committed. There’s even the f-buddy who fails at social media because they’ll never see you as anything other than an outlet for link lust or an opportunity to pimp themselves.

Ahh, the digital playground. Where everyone wants to plug in and get naked. And everyone else needs to learn how to play safe and follow the unspoken rules.

Take care! —
Linda M. Lopeke
SMARTSTART: Success-to-go for people working @ the speed of life!

Thanks, Linda! I couldn’t agree more!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Make social media work toward your goals!

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