The other day I was talking someone through how I work. Used to practices which came about before social media and productivity platforms, their questions were about email. Together we made a list of the channels people connect with me for work:
- Work Email
- Personal email
- Client email
- Network email
- LinkedIn Messaging
- LinkedIn commenting
- LinkedIn Groups
- Home Slack
- Client Slack
- Network Slack
- Blog comments
- Work Teams
- Client Teams x3
- Client Miro Board
- Zoom
- Google Hangouts
- Webinars – that can be a range of platforms
- SMS
- Phone calls
They, quite reasonably, asked:
How are you meant to remember all of those?
And you know what? I don’t know.
I do know connecting isn’t connection. The act of being connected is meaningless unless you use that channel effectively to maintain relationships.
Please do make connections, don’t just connect.