Seth Godin: How to do REAL social networking for business?

Influence and attention are different. Influence is fiscal and long term whereas attention is monetary and short term – Peter Kim

Seth Godin explains why there needs to be more focus on building relationships and a shift away from the current scorecard mentality, often seen in the social media. Like in real life, we can only count on real relationships, not mere connections. It takes effort in real life to build proper connections and same can be said for the online space as well.

The metrics driven scorecard mentality only makes sense when you have real relationships and are able to leverage them. I only see higher number of followers relevant from ‘impression/awareness’ perspective. At the same time, lack of connections is not an excuse for low influence on the web. It has to balance and the key element is to be able to ‘leverage’ your connections to drive the business process.

Social networking has allowed us to build one to many connections possible and one has to make an effort to engage the community in a conversation.

What are your thoughts?