Creating Passionate People

Creating Passionate People is a title I took and changed from the blog Creating Passionate Users. It was a blog which offered an incredible amount of advice on how to treat your users. Unfortunately the writer stopped with it.

Not everyone though has an application where you are trying to convert your users into evangelists. What everyone does have, is thousands of people they connect with. Online these are brief connections, often short exchanges that get buried when you move on to the next thing. You get a reply on Twitter, you engage in a brief conversation and that’s it. You get a comment on your blog, you might comment back but then that’s it.

I’ve received so many tweets, comments and lengthy emails from people I’ve gotten in contact with through the internet in just the last few weeks. That a stranger is willing to write a 1000 word email to give me tips on my Blog and Social Media Experiment, Amazing! What’s more amazing is that this didn’t happen once; I’ve gotten dozens and dozens of great tips from numerous people, I even got a book!

I strongly believe that if you take an effort to take an interest in other people and build relationships you are Creating Passionate People. People who are passionate about the time you take to leave a comment on their blog or an email you sent them. I for one have become passionate about people who have done this for me in the last few weeks. I have written here how I am doing this.

I started to organize everyone I’ve had a meaningful conversation with in the last two weeks. It soon split itself up in four categories; Business, Twitter, Blogs, Emails. I then did the following steps:

I opened up Excel and I made a sheet for each of these categories. I then setup a series of headings: - Name - Email - Username (If Twitter) - Company - Location - Website - Biography (If Twitter / Blog) - Comments - Actions - Last Date of Contact

I went through my Twitter replies of the last two weeks and looked at which users I’ve had a conversation with.  I browsed to their profile and added them in a row in Excel. I copied the standard information but more importantly; I read their blog. In the comments column I added a little note about what we talked about and my first impressions. In the last column I added the date we last had contact.

For business contacts I did a similar activity, instead of Twitter profiles, I had business cards ;-) and notes I’ve made. For people I have been emailing in the last two weeks it often took a few searches through Gmail. Last I went back to all the blogs I commented on. I went to all the websites of the people who commented on my blog. The most important part of this are the comments you write down. It’s amazing how quickly you can forget little details and impressions you’ve had.

Now it comes to part which I am advocating, the actions. I’ve gotten so much value from these brief connections, I decided to try and scrap the word brief. In the actions section I wrote down how I could continue the conversation. I went over each person individually, I read the comments I had gathered and decided if I still needed to send an email to thank them, write a comment on their blog, any interesting questions I wanted to ask but hadn’t yet etc…

I am going to keep my Excel sheet updated and I am going to see if I can continue the conversation with as many people as possible. I read an article a few weeks ago about how a person can only obtain a connection with a limited number of people, I believe the internet is changing this. If you make an effort to maintain them you can be connected to as many people as you like. As your conversation becomes larger you also soon find out with who you want to continue to talk.

What’s interesting is that I got the idea for this post from the title of a book a Twitterer had sent to me (one I’ve had an amazing conversation with over the last two weeks). It arrived this morning and the title is SuperNetworking. I skimmed through it and realized that if I would write this after I had the read the book my idea might have been coloured by it. If I pick up any interesting things that I would like to add to this post as result of reading the book, I will be sure to write about it.

July 17, 2008 | Filed Under Mini Essays 

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