Random Thoughts on the Eve of a Book Launch…

My passion is social media, particularly in the way it has changed – or really expanded – the way people communicate. I have been a writer for many years, gravitating toward sales, advertising, and web copy, as well as interview-based reporting. In 2003, I completed received my MS in Psychology, where my focus was on systems theory. I studied how people behave in systems, from family systems, to social/friendship systems, to work systems (such as work teams or departments).

In 2004, I had the opportunity to work with Ivan Misner, the founder of BNI, an international business networking organization, who wanted to replicate a study he had done on networking in 1985. We surveyed BNI members from all over the world, and got thousands of responses, which allowed us to publish some very accurate results of the state of networking at the time.

In the study, one of the questions we asked was “How involved are you in online networking organizations?” When Dr. Misner mentioned wanting to add this question, it was my first real introduction to the growing trend of online networking. LinkedIn was really in its initial phase, Ecademy was more well-known in the UK than the US, and there certainly weren’t the number of online networking opportunities that exist today. However, from that introduction, I became very active in a few of these networks.

Then, in 2008, Entrepreneur Press approached me to write a how-to-book on launching an online social networking business. I’m really excited that it is coming out this month. Normally, a “techie” book would be written and published very quickly. In this case, the publishing date was extended, in part due to production schedules, and in part due to the economy. While that was initially frustrating, it turned out to provide an incredible opportunity: The chance to truly study the trends of social networking for over a year.

The changes in that single year were – in a word – astronomical. When I was first contacted by Entrepreneur Press, MySpace was still at the top of the heap. By the time the book went into pre-production, Facebook had far overtaken MySpace, and this month the former giant announced it was laying off 400 employees. In early 2008, Twitter was still for the geeks, SXSW attendees, and early adopters. Today, nearly everyone has at least heard of it (especially after the celebrities started “tweeting”), and its role in helping keep information flowing about the Iranian elections has certainly taken the platform to its highest level yet.

As more and more people “socialize” online, so is there more and more discussion of how “healthy” is it to spend so much time with “virtual” relationships. This is a particularly fascinating topic for me, given my graduate studies of social systems. It is also why I covered the topic of bridging offline and online networks in my book. I revisited this topic in an article just published on Entrepreneur.com:

As most of the country’s top networking experts agree, an online network can grow faster and have longer life if the network offers its members face-to-face meeting opportunities, making the networking more “real” at a fundamental level. And those networks that have traditionally only met in person can extend relationships by adding an online component.

I am curious to hear from our readers: What has been your experience in online/offline networking – do you participate in both? Do you find you do most of your networking (for jobs, for business development, for fun) online or “in person” these days? If you have a story to share, please leave it in the comments or contact us – we’d like to revisit this in a future post!

Julien

(crossposted at DigitalMindshare)

Julien Sharp is the author of Design and Launch an Online Social Networking Business in a Week, and a contributing author to Masters of Sales: Secrets From Top Sales Professionals That Will Transform You Into A World Class Salesperson by Ivan Misner, PhD and Don Morgan, MA, both available from Entrepreneur Press.