Personal Note: What social media is about

I wrote this almost a a journal entry. The kind I trade back and forth with a close friend on a regular basis. However, I realized what an important reminder it was when we're caught in all the technology of social media. Whether you're Facebooking for yourself or your managing a large account for a company or organization, this is what it really comes down to...

Looking for a card to send my father for Father's Day this weekend.

I have a box of blank cards I've collected for all occasions. It sounds like I'm being really prepared, but it's more that I get enamored with a card, often in a museum gift shop, and have to have it. It goes in the box.

In this box is a collection of cards featuring Washington, D.C. landmarks. I laughed at myself because I bought these in 1994 while I was living there... with the intent of sending them as thank-you cards to all my aunts/uncles. There was lots of excitement that the eldest cousin had completed college, so I had received lots of congratulations from them. Procrastination... and they never went out.

All of those aunts/uncles and cousins are with me on Facebook now. There are a lot of them. I'm from the distant part of the family (the rest of them grew up in the same community), so it was like being suddenly included after being an outsider for years. Though I'm already one of them, now I'm one of them. They share their inside jokes here, so now I actually get them instead of just smiling and laughing along. Well, at least the ones that aren't just stupid.

Ironically, being involved in PR, marketing, fund raising, and sales, I have spent a significant portion of my career nagging others ("advising clients") to send thank-you cards. I've gotten much better at it since. D.C. was where shy, young Casey also received one of the best pieces of (obvious) advice ever. "Take people to lunch, especially people you don't know." Bob Maynes, known as one of the U.S. Senate's mast amazing press secretaries, and also as a strange guy (read: wasn't a clone of everyone else). I really liked Bob. He was the boss who knew exactly how to work with me... some good guidance as to what he wanted to accomplish, then leave me alone to figure things out. So I did... 'cause that's how I roll. (Bob also paid me the ultimate compliment. "You get shit done. You'll go far.")

I wish I'd taken all that advice earlier. Done more of the cards (though Facebook has eliminated the need to send them to quite a few folk... now they're just reserved for those I really need to touch... and they make a big statement in that). Taken a wider variety of people to lunch on a more regular basis. It's amazing what those two actions can accomplish. What a personal network can do for you. Earned by letting others know you care enough to pay attention and remember them. So simple.

Though I'm no slouch as a networker, I raise my foot for a good, hard kick for all the times I've neglected those actions. Then I remember... regret is how we learn. Do it different from now on.

It's also about going beyond your circle of like-minded friends. Seek out, break bread, and follow up with other as unlike you as those you immediately like. Take a chance and ask someone who intimidates you. Networks are how entrepreneurs build their businesses, how great fund raisers find donors, how journalists break that next story, how artists find audiences, how anyone who works for a living finds that next great gig, and how politicians get to the Whitehouse.

Ignore the hype and the next shiny new thing for a moment. Social media's just a tool for what great networkers already know.

I need to send Bob a card. Wonder if he's on Facebook.