“… It’s nice to know that if I do post about my dogs or something, it’s not a total faux pas.”
That is from a comment left yesterday by Tzaddi, from ThriveWire, to my post I wonder what she’ll say? And I thought, yes. Dogs are a great example of what I’m trying to get at.
From the perspective of career, from the position of being a business or part of one, you would not think that tweets and status updates and blog posts about your dog would be appropriate and, strictly speaking, they are not. But …
As I tried to suggest yesterday, the seemingly trivial and inconsequential are a part of what humanizes what you put online because, online, life is no different than life offline and people aren’t any different either. The primary connection you make with people online is not what you put online, it is you.
And it is them.
Let’s go back to the dog and an example. I do occasional work with a guy and his company from Michigan, the Detroit area I believe. We met (online) through a mutual acquaintance about some potential writing work. He was looking for a writer. I was the writer he went with. Why?
The truth is, he could have gone with any writer. It’s not like we are in short supply. And no matter how big an ego I might have there is no getting around the fact that lots of people can write, lots of people can write as well as I do and many of those people can probably write better than I do. I am good but the reality of the world is that as good as you may be, there is always someone better. So why pick me?
Because, at a certain point, how good you are isn’t an issue. How comfortable someone feels working with you is. In this case, there was some sense of ease because someone he knew, the friend who introduced us, had given me a thumbs up. But what sealed the deal, in my opinion, was my dog.
We communicate primarily via email, though occasionally by phone. In our first phone contact, I had to apologize because my dog had started barking at something.
“You have a dog? What kind?”
He had a dog too. Since that call, almost all our communications make references, however briefly, to our dogs. Through the dogs he was able to get some sense, verbally by phone and in text via email, of who I was. And as minute as it may be, it was some degree of comfort. The way we communicate, about our dogs, gave him some sense of me as someone he could work with.
Walking with my dog in the park twice a day, I meet people and talk with them. They are people who would walk by me and that I would walk past with, at best, a nod of acknowledgement except … we have dogs. So we stop. Our dogs sniff each other. And we talk about our dogs and get to know each other. Because of my dog, I have friends I would not otherwise have.
Dogs are simply an example of the seemingly inconsequential elements of a life that opens doors, dismisses barriers and allows for people to communicate with ease. Another example? How about Star Trek? You wouldn’t believe the number of people I’ve gotten to know simply because we both like Star Trek.
Dogs and Star Trek. They have nothing to do with the work I do. But they do facilitate the relationships necessary to allow for the work.
So every so often I tweet, update and post about my dog, about Star Trek, and about a million every day mundane, banal, trivial things because it is who I am and being who you are is what lets people in. Taken to excess, yes, it definitely shuts down all those doors. But excluding it means they never open in the first place.
It may be digital but social media is about people and people don’t change. You have to have the skills to do the work but it’s who you are that gets you the work.
Listen 
