I met my wife through an online dating website. So I like to think that I know something about taking an online relationship and making it a real relationship. What I learned from online dating is directly applicable to social media even if it occurred before any such term existed.
Here’s what I learned
You can connect with people online and get to know who they are. You can even discover if you have any connections and build the foundation for an ongoing relationship. But if I really wanted to get to know someone, I realized that I needed to connect with them as people and not simply as an online persona.
I learned that it helped to talk to the person on the phone to get a sense of who they were. If we connected over a live conversation, I looked to meet as soon as possible because over time I found that it wasn’t until I was in the same room as a person that I had any idea whether we connected enough to get to know each other better–and I’m not referring simply to physical attraction. Meeting in person helped me to get to know a person’s personality in a way that I never found possible online or just over the phone. It also helped me to get an idea on their depth as a person, how they interacted with me and others and whether we enjoyed spending time together.
Take your online relationships into the real world
So when Joe Thornley spoke about taking online relationships into the real world at the last Social Media Breakfast: Waterloo Region, it resonated with me. As I observed in my opening remarks, there were people attending who I considered friends that I had originally met through social media. In every case, what turned an online connection into a friendship was meeting the other person in real life and getting to know them as people. The same is true for many of my newest professional working relationships. In fact, I believe that meeting Joe who I first met through Twitter at the International Association of Business Communicators World Conference helped me to arrange for him to come to speak to us.
There are many ways to enhance your online relationships. Tweetups, Social Media Breakfasts and similar events are one great way. An even better way is to join a group of people you follow online in supporting a charity, working together on a common cause, attending an arts event being discussed online or giving an online contact the opportunity to earn your business. My point is that by taking on online connection into your life (and vice versa) is how you truly put the “social” into social media.
Whether you are looking for romantic connections, friendships or working relationships, I encourage you to meet the people that you find interesting online. My life is richer by doing so and my business has a better chance of success because of the connections I have made online and extended by connecting in person.
The payoff is worth it
For a relationship to be fully realized, we need to know each other as people. We need to know what makes them tick. We need to know what they are passionate about. We need to know if their knowledge or expertise translates to the real world. We need to know if we like someone before we can care about them with any depth. And acquiring that knowledge sometimes that requires taking calculated risks as I did when I went to meet my wife in a room of Franco-Ontarians.
I am now happily married with a couple great kids and living in a city that I am passionate about making better. I am living the good life. A life that only happened because I had the guts to see if an online relationship had the potential to be something more.
What do you think?
I’d love to hear about how you have brought your worlds together–for better or for worse.
As a 15-year veteran of building/evolving/navigating relationships with people online, I totally agree, especially the part about meeting in person as soon as possible. (Which I know a lot of people are reticent to do, especially with the online dating part of things, but you’re not really plumbing the depths of someone’s soul, even if you’d like to think you are.)
I remember when I moved to Sydney, I met dozens of people I’d known online — some of them for years. And it turned out that probably… 80% of them? I wouldn’t have (and didn’t) become friends with “in real life”. But I had no way of knowing that until I got there, because no matter how real you think you are, online you are presenting a persona, and it is not (and can’t be) the whole of you.
It’s just human nature, too, to be inclined to favour those we have “traditional” connections with, and while you may have genuine friendships online with people you’ve never physically met, even an hour spent having a beer with someone in person will cement your connection like a million emails, IMs, tweets, etc. never could. It’s just how we’re wired.
Of course, for introverts, it’s really hard, at least for starters. But it only takes a second to get past that awkward “is that person who I think it is?” ice breaker moment, and after that it really is exactly like you’ve always known each other. You don’t even have to start conversation with stilted small talk, because you already probably know how work is going, if the person’s wife is recovering from her cold, and if the kids and the new puppy are getting along.
Of course, it can be hard if you realize that there isn’t an in-person connection, but hey, you can always surreptitiously finish your beer quickly and say you need to get going, or, if you’re at a group event, excuse yourself to get a drink or use the washroom, and then just find other people to meet and chat with.
Excellent observations Melle! Thanks for sharing. I agree that what we share online makes it easier when you meet in person. I almost always enjoy connecting in person with someone I met first online even if it’s just to put a face/person to the online persona. Sometimes it works the other way around too and a relationship with someone I first made in real life becomes richer from our online connection.
You’re a great example of someone I know much better than I would otherwise because we took the time to get to know each other over a beer. I’m glad we did.