Connectors and Mavens on the Tipping Point

At first glance, it seems writing is a solitary thing. In many ways, it’s true the writer’s task is individual. No one can help me write. I am left alone to sort my thoughts, to find the words, to set them to text with structure and expression. It’s a private search to articulate meaning.

In another glance, it’s easy to see writing is socially dynamic. We record our lives. We announce our plans. We write sadness and sympathy. We spell out love and loneliness. We describe our achievements and failures in detail and drama. Most of all we talk to each other. We talk around the world without a sound.

The longer I am a blogger, the more I discover how much we’re connected to each other by relationships. All of the words I write link me closer to the readers who read them. As we discuss our responses to each other’s thoughts in the comment box, we get linked more closely. I found myself once this week, calling a blogger friend to remark on a post. Once more my words have connected me to another person and the people around him.

I met this man directly on my blog and got to know him. I have met most of the people who visit his blog one by one in a similar way. He’s met most of the people who visit my blog one by one that way too.

People who’ve read The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference call me a connector and a maven – one who links like-minded people and one who gathers and shares deep information.

One who links like-minded people and one who gathers and shares deep information, that sounds the definition of almost every relationship blogger I know. We are connectors and mavens at the tipping point of communication.

Bloggers are just beginning to figure out the depth and breadth of the medium in which we are playing and working. The brilliant idea of Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers so well defined and described by Seth Godin underscores the exact importance of relationships in every business and every life. When Seth talks about marketing, he often uses a metaphor of dating – also known as having a relationship. All business is relationships. Everything people is relationships.

See Also

Old Blogging Sites That We Thought were Gone

Blogging is the tipping point of communication because no other form of communication has been so immediate, so interactive, so far-reaching and so ready-made for relationships. And it’s adaptable to any schedule — even the cell-phone won’t wait around until you are ready to take that call. Relationships that fit into our time and space to make them. It’s what Tony D. Clark said to me just last week.
“The whole thing changes when the world is your community.”

We are connectors and mavens at the tipping point of communication able to make relationships with people all over the planet. We are just beginning to figure out the depth and breadth of the medium in which we are working. With the relationships we are making and the information we are gathering. If we set our minds in the same direction, who’s to say that we can’t change the world?

Liz Strauss writes about Changing the World at Successful-Blog, and will be meeting with some of the most outstanding relationship bloggers at SOBCon07 on May 11-12.