Things are changing faster than ever online. The explosion of social media usage on the web is extraordinary to witness and the numbers are staggering. It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users and television 13 years. By comparison, Facebook recently added 100 million users in nine months.
I’m talking numbers because it’s a numbers game. The power of social media partly lies in the maths. Once you’ve got yourself a hundred or so connections on LinkedIn it’s amazing just how many potential contacts are only one step away. I’m no fanatic, but already my particular friends-of-friends number is 10,000 or thereabouts.
If you wanted to put all those people in a room you’d soon find there wasn’t anywhere in the South West big enough to fit them all in comfortably. (There really should be, of course, but that’s another story.)
It’s those numbers that make social media such a beguiling proposition to the marketers, advertisers and recruiters of this world. The potential to target and reach so many people via the web quite understandably has plenty of people excited. But forging ‘relationships’ by the dozen online is one thing; getting to know someone face to face is quite another.
This month, fairly typically, I found myself involved with three Insider events: a roundtable discussion with a dozen or so senior directors; a panel debate in front of a 100-strong audience in Plymouth; and our annual property awards, which about 230 attended at Bristol’s Passenger Shed.
The appeal of these events partly lies in what we all know as ‘networking’. Or meeting people, to put it another way. And there’s the crux. Because to forge a business relationship with someone you do need to meet them – and then meet them again. If it’s going to work out, things will usually go from there.
So keep up the Twitter and LinkedIn, by all means, and keep enjoying all those whizzy iPhone applications, but don’t forget to get out there too and be really, truly flesh-and-blood social rather than just web-social.
Christian Annesley, editor
Also in: November 2009
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Plymouth's fresh start
With a new team at the City Development Company, Plymouth is looking to the future. Insider’s panel debated the challenge.
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Life is a box of chocolates
Established Bristol chocolate-maker Elizabeth Shaw has been buffeted by recession, but going back to basics is helping the company to find a way forward. Chloe Rigby met managing director Malachy McReynolds.