This morning, I spent most of my reading time following things Amber Naslund (of Altitude Branding and Radian6) posted on Twitter. She’s clearly had a Friday morning off, and no one else was making the right kind of cohesive noise.
Busy morning of reading – some new juice from Justin Kownacki about simplicity vs complexity, and a long exegesis from Clay Shirky on the collapse of the complex business model.
I found, through her posting, a very good article from Mitch Joel about the power of engagement – it’s an important thing to consider, I believe in his message enough I wanted to mirror my comment here for your consideration.
Justin Goldsborough‘s comment about engagement is quite astute – but I’ll add a note about scale.
Jason Falls’ level of engagement is a lot like Chris Brogan’s – being accessible in unique ways is part of both of their hallmarks. We don’t all need to be this way; sometimes it’s about looking for that one diamond among many shiny jewels. Making a connection, engaging, communicating – it doesn’t come down to the same thing.
How availabe you make yourself can be telling. Mitch, we’ve emailed back and forth – which is fine. I’ve traded comments with Brogan, but never once had an email answered – which is also fine. Both of you have done a good job of managing the expectation in both arenas; I never feel slighted, and I doubt anyone else does, when you don’t comment back. Nor do I feel bad when the Amazing Traveling Chris fails to email – it’s how he works, and it’s in public.
The trick about engagement I think people could learn more about is the setting of expectations as limits for yourself, as well as for those who communicate with you. It eases a lot of the pressure people (commenters, emailers, 4square stalkers like Joseph Jaffe talks about) who would otherwise feel unrequited.
Engagement – especially meaningful engagement – benefits from limits on channels. But you still have to address the channels, so people know out front, what to expect when they attempt to find you there.
The lack of a consistent keyboard is killing me. I swear I’ll be back soon with more posts – until then, a few questions:
What do you think about engagement? Especially the management of so many shiny channels to play in?
How do you adopt new channels, and when does the mass of some channels force you to reconsider your limits there?
How much attention do you pay to the details of your engagement, what flows go where?
And, how does the current lack of cross-channel flow affect your communication methods? (More on this later)