Leadership Communication, Friendship and Twitter

I don’t know David Armano, but I follow him on Twitter.

Does me following him make us friends?

Hardly.

But there are quite a few people (like David) I’ve ‘met’ on Twitter that I spend more time with than my ‘real’ friends.

I seek their advice. I listen to what they say. I trust their opinion. I share their ideas with others.

They’ve in essence become part of my strategic leadership team – or at the very least people I take cues from for leadership communication strategies.

Based on that, if these Twitter people aren’t my friends, what are they?

David’s personal blog has a great post today called Friendship Is Dead. Long Live Friends.

It’s a great look at this business of social networking and friendships.

I spend more time than I care to admit participating in conversations on Twitter and Facebook – for both professional and personal reasons. I’ve connected with old friends, built deeper relationships with current friends and found many new connections (I don’t know that I would call them friends yet).

As a leadership communications person I think it’s important that I have a working understanding of these platforms and have an opinion on them as they relate to our organization’s communications strategy.

As someone interested in leadership and/or communications – you should care too.

Why you should care…

I share David’s great post and these ideas for three reasons:

1. I think we all need to consider our ‘social circles’ (see David’s post) and evaluate where our personal and professional connections meet, overlap and possibly need to stay separate.
2. It’s important to have a solid mix of social media in any communication strategy. As part of your leadership training, if you don’t understand twitter – find someone who does. If you don’t have an executive blog – figure out if that’s a good strategy for your brand and get writing.
3. The ‘conversations’ we have online are recorded – basically forever. Are you (am I) building the relationships with the people you want to be connected with – forever? I’m continuing to grapple with that idea and can only hope that I’m surrounding myself with the ‘right’ friends!

I know my online ‘friends’ are adding value to my daily life. And I certainly hope I’m doing the same for them.

Would love to know what you think about this!