Networking the West with Liz Ryan

New Digital Divide for Networkers?

By Liz Ryan, 1-22-07

Just since the start of the year - don’t ask me why - people have been calling out of the blue asking me to speak to their groups about online networking. Some are local in Colorado and others are out of town. Some are professional associations, some are Chambers of Commerce and the rest are universities and corporations. This is a wonderful thing - I’m particularly impressed that corporations want their employees to know about online networking. But here’s what I wonder.

Is there a new Digital Divide emerging between accomplished online networkers and less-accomplished ones? More and more people I meet say things like “LinkedIn is mystifying to me” or “I am curious about online networking, but also really, really nervous about it.” I talk to people who have one or two LinkedIn connections and don’t know what to do with those, and don’t quite see the incentive to add more. Other folks become aware of people they’d like to reach out to, but are paralyzed about actually doing it. One woman said to me “I am the most comfortable networker you can imagine, in three dimensions. Online, I feel completely ill at ease.”

This is a shame, because proficient and happy face-to-face networkers can get terrific benefits if they also delve into the online networking arena. I don’t just mean job offers and new clients and all those tangible things. For me the greatest benefit of meeting people online is to connect and interact with folks you wouldn’t have had access to before - people whose social/business spheres don’t intersect very well (or maybe at all) with your own. One of my best online buddies, the very well-known networking guru Vincent Wright (creator of the Yahoo!group MyLinkedInPowerForum) is someone I can’t imagine having met via our “old-fashioned” contacts, even though he and I are both in the HR realm and both from the East Coast. That’s not enough - about ten zillion people fit that description. Online, there’s a self-selection aspect that puts people like me and Vincent together - that was even more true, of course, in 2003 when I joined LinkedIn as a new user.

This is why, as fun and exhilarating as it is to talk with avid online networkers, it’s even more worthwhile to help novice online networkers make that first jump and begin to move their networking into cyberspace. Many of them are very unlikely to do it without a nudge. Here are a few ways to get your more reluctant friends and associates going in the online networking ecosystem:

1) Ask them to connect to you directly on LinkedIn, and then send them a link to your favorite How to Use LinkedIn article (or write to me if you don’t have one);
2) Call them up and spend twenty minutes talking with them about online networking, to get them comfortable enough to take a step on their own;
3) If they’re in the Denver-Boulder area, invite them to one of Mike O’Neil’s LinkedIn!Live events to meet other LinkedIn users and share tips; or
4) Get them to join the New West Networking list-serv (just send a blank email message to newwestnetworking-subscribe@yahoogroups.com) and hear from the networkers there.

The thing about new spheres like the online networking sphere is that with each passing year (or half-year, or quarter) the gap between “doers” and “musers” widens. It’s not a land grab by any means, but the time you spend thinking about whether to do some online networking in 2007 is time you won’t be spending making tremendous contacts and moving your business and “life” agendas forward. I’ve been in a crazy-fun correspondence this afternoon with a fellow in Malaysia who found me online and has been recommending books on Asian business to me...and my question is, When would I have met him at a local networking event here in Colorado? Pretty much never. He doesn’t spend time here.

So one of my aims in 2007 is to help my friends who are interested in online networking to actually start doing it. Will their lives be changed? I hope so. In the worst case they’ll have invested a few hours and have learned a few new things and met a few new people. How can that be bad?

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.