Image courtesy of Kıvanç Niş

“Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again.” That’s from the Bible, believe it or not. A seemingly contradictory statement, I have indeed found on many occasions that when I have put something ‘out there’, it has unexpectedly come back to me. Today I want to look at social media in the light of this principle, because as many of us no doubt have found, what we have said on Facebook, tweeted, or posted on our blog, has often yielded unexpected results.

Yesterday I wrote this comment on Jeremy Epstein‘s blog. I’ll quote some below, but to set the scene, Jeremy was talking about influencers vs fans, and the fact that very often you do not know who your influencers are, but you do know who your vocal fans are, and therefore, you should put more eggs into what he calls the “Raving Fans basket”.

Stop. For anyone who isn’t a digitall, let me clarify the language. A influencer is a certain type of person who influences other people to partake of your brand / idea / organisation / party / friendship. Notice this isn’t just about business – influencers are active in every area of life – brands and businesses are just trying to work out who the influencers are in order to gain from their influence. Jeremy makes the point that, as I have said above, very often we don’t know who these people are because they might not be too vocal, unlike the “raving fans”, who are very vocal about their support of a brand / idea / organisation / party / friend, even if they are not as influential.

In other words, an influencer is The Fonz – cool, calm and collected, but not in your face all the time. Whereas a raving fan is comparable to any girl who adores the latest boy band.

Ok. So, my comment went, in part, like this:

There is something to be said, as well, for your fans that you don’t know of. My blog is fed to my Facebook notes, as is the case with many bloggers. On Friday I didn’t post an new entry, and had an outcry from Facebook friends – none of them what I call ‘Digitalls’ (i.e., using digital technology like most of use savvy social media users). I had never even had so much as even a comment or ‘like’ on Facebook from them before, yet they were loyal readers with an expectation for a daily read from me.

My point is this: in life, and also in social media, we are continually ‘putting stuff out there’. We sow seeds of effort, energy, finance, time, etc, into people, and are sometimes unsure whether we are actually adding value or not. But just like casting your bread on the waters, the effort does indeed return to you, and very often it is when you don’t expect it, that you discover just where you have been adding value.

But I’m Just Using Facebook For Fun

No doubt many of my readers are. Textbook Digicools. But consider that Facebook, whether you like it or not, is an online extension of your social self, and can and does yield a similar return as your friendships do offline.

Getting in touch with your very first friend, finding out about people who otherwise you wouldn’t know, unexpectedly learning something new about someone – these are just some basic cases of your bread returning to you on the water.

So, enough concept. What are my examples? I’ve made business contacts from across the atlantic who’ve become friends. I’ve rekindled old relationships. I’ve made friendships with people in Exeter I never would’ve otherwise. People have come to my church because they saw me on Facebook. I’ve connected with like minded people from the other side of the world, as well as earning new clients.

The number of people who tell me weeks or months after I’ve tweeted or blogged to say ‘that really helped me’, or ‘that hooked me up with another person’, or ‘that off the cuff video had one line that has rung true with me’, is astounding. There are more people who don’t comment or this blog, don’t comment on Facebook, yet receive a lot of value from my thoughts, than those who do comment and respond. And that isn’t just me, I’m convinced all of us are unaware of the difference we are making in different places with different people.

The Act Of Casting My Bread

So enough talk and now some action. How do we practically cast our bread?

1. Be on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The world is only going to become more connected, not less, so it is a wise decision to invest your time into them now. Start by following these people. Then, Spend a small amount of time on each of them, maybe 10 to 15 minutes a day at least. Get to know how things work, and listen to people, so that when you speak, you’ll know what to say.
2. Develop a 160-character summary of yourself and use it across all your social networks. This isn’t about making some super brand for yourself, it’s about helping people understand roughly who you are quite quickly. You can include life goals, values, humour, etc. Mine is: “Creator and marketer of today’s currency: experience. Husband to a hottie, but not a father yet. Christian and love revival.”
3. Realise that it is all about accumulation. Social media is like building with Lego bricks. One brick is worthless, but many bricks create a building that others see.
4. Be open. Our fake-overloaded society desires authenticity. Be you, share your scars as well as your successes.
5. Treat each person who comments, responds and retweets with due respect. Because you don’t know which one is carrying your bread back to you.

Notice I haven’t said ‘set your expectations’. Why? Because the whole point I’m making is it is often the unexpected return.

Otherwise, thank you for reading through what is still an infant thought of mine and I haven’t worked through into a fuller framework. So with that in mind, what would you say?