The unsolicited recommendation

October 27, 2009 in philosophy
Tags: Facebook, networking

To me, this is the most valuable thing a small business can have.

I tend to give unsolicited recommendations generously, too, though mostly through the social media. One change I will be making in my strategy, though: I will HAVE a strategy. Here’s what I’ve actually done in the past:

• I consider which of my contacts have done something that’s pleased me.
• I try to repay them periodically in kind. If they’ve done me a turn in business, I am willing to recommend them to others. If they’ve entertained me in the social media, I will try to hook them up with my other friends.

My new-found strategy connects my need to be social to my need to be about the business. Someone I find a worthwhile contact for myself may prove to be a worthwhile contact for my friends – this is true with business contacts as well as purely social ones.

Facebook will be my experimental petri dish. LOL Here’s how it works:

• I will find someone every week for whom I want to recommend new friends. And here are a few hints about what kind of person this is.
  • It’s someone who TALKS. And talks WITH OTHERS. And some of you who study social media but are never social yourselves, you entirely mistake the matter.
  • It’s someone who talks TO ME once in a while. Addresses me directly. This makes me feel I have value to them. Again, some of you who only talk to make announcements and to play games? Not. Interested.
  • You are open to meeting new people. I am acquainted with many who are not. Or who are interested only in reconnecting with folks we went to high-school with. Or who share a common principle of politics or religion. Listen, friends, I respect that. You are keeping your online lives semi-private. And I will help you at that if I can. But that’s not my priority any more. You can find others just like you on your own; you don’t need my help for that. I’m about the world. I wanna grow and travel and meet interesting new people, even if they ain’t just like me.
  • You don’t MIND unsolicited recommendations. For some reason, some people do. Go figure. But if I recommend new friends for you and you ignore me enough times, I’ll remember it. Sorry. This process takes time and consideration, and I put it in. I don’t mean to waste it.
• I will search my friends for others to make that recommendation to.
• If I’m asked why I recommend person A to YOU, I will be prepared to defend that choice. You are worth it.

There’s nothing better about Facebook, to me, than that little note that says “Person A and Person B are now friends, as you suggested. You can suggest more people Person A knows.” It’s just too bad that fewer than one-third of my current Facebook friends seem interested in this service; it’s even worse that fewer than one-tenth of them have ever done it for me.

But like I said: Facebook is a petri dish. What we see there is astonishingly like what goes on in the meatspace. I just think the unsolicited recommendation is just as much a blessing in the meatspace as in the online world.