This has been social media summer for me: rather than soaking up the sun, frolicking in the waves and dancing the sultry nights away with an eye to where the next Mojito is coming from, I’ve been soaking up the tweets, floundering in Facebook and blogging the grey days away, with an eye to my Search Engine Optimisation.
It’s been a steep learning curve – and an exciting one. I would never have believed I’d get so excited about being e-mailed with notice of a re-tweet, or get such a kick from a comment on the blog. It’s become all about the visibility, the reach, the influence, the followers…
I have to confess to getting quite hard-nosed and outcome-driven about it all. But I was stopped short when
talking to my highly valued friend and coaching colleague, Elaine Burke (find her at http://www.linkedin.com/in/elaineburke). Elaine started to talk about generosity and the importance of being generous with your materials and your knowledge. I immediately jumped in with, “oh, yes, of course, as a loss-leader” thinking in terms of growing a following and a market by getting your materials known. “No,” said Elaine, “I meant just being generous for its
own sake.”
I felt abashed and yet also excited. Connections started to be made in my mind, dominoes started to fall and cogwheels turn as I thought of all the material I had looked at in the last few weeks: words, diagrams, videos, ideas, reviews and tools that others had been generous enough to share with their online communities.
Links emerged for me between this generosity, so apparent within social media, and the idea of each of us as a curator of our own creative worlds. With iPods, we know longer rely on someone deciding on which music goes with which other music: we decide, we curate our own musical space. Then we share it for others to enjoy and adapt and make their own. With Flickr and InstaGram, we are all capable of curating and sharing an exhibition of our lives and passions for others to view, pass on and critique; we curate our own aesthetic space.
And with social media, and its inherent democratisation of so much knowledge, we can each curate our own libraries of information, picking what is relevant, and organising it in such a way as to make sense within our own unique workflow and social patterns.
This must influence us as artists and makers, as we look for inspiration within our social media communities as well as within our physical and inner worlds. How exciting to see others curate our work, incorporating it into their own lives and spaces.
Thanks to Elaine, I will seek to practise generosity for its own sake in my social media dealings – just as I take for granted that I can benefit from the generosity of others – and I will look with curiosity to see whether and how others curate my ideas into their worlds.
I know Michele would appreciate your feedback on her post, please leave your comments below.
i can feel your excitement michele, i am on the same journey 🙂
not yet sure about the generosity, but maybe it is that we don.t sit on our information and knowledge as the big bosses do.
when i started business with my ex, we used to have a very familiar way with our customers.
customers installed similar programs than we had, but have been less educated about the programs (they were the printing experts, not the layouting ones) – but we answered every question for free. my ex used to visit them and helped them with installing and explained anything they needed to know.
sure after installing they had been able to do some jobs on their own.
but usually they acknowledged the helping hand by asking us to do their books and journals.
i can imagine that this is a kind of generosity which elaine meant.
personally i am not the economic driven girl who is always calculating.
a nice social relationship – no matter if it is done via social media or in off line life – makes not only life but also business much better.
now i would like to sit in the comfy chairs in your picture and relax with a mojito in the lovely september sun.
Thanks for your feedback Helen, I agree with both of you regarding the sharing and how nice it is to meet and share with others in the ever expanding social circle.
Let’s go visit Michele and park ourselves in those seats and sip on one of her mojitos, sounds perfect!
Wise words…and really that is the whole purpose of the www – to share information. I sometimes find this difficult to fathom. Why would anyone spend half an hour or more typing up information, so that I (and others) can benefit from it? Far from being a cold functional store of information, it is actually millions of people generously giving their time for people they will never meet, which is rather nice.
Isn’t it nice! I agree completly, there is such a vast range of information available, fantastic resources donated by an endless array of generous people who wish to share their knowledge and skills. Fantastic.
Thanks for stopping by Hilary, it is nice to have your input.
Great to read these comments and I’m glad the generosity idea s ringing true. A word of caution, though: I think there’s a difference between being generous with our time, and making information available on-line ont he one hand, and giving away our ‘products’ fo free on the other hand. The first is generous, the second is foolish. After all, we may not all want to make shedloads of money but we are running businesses… I guess where the line is will vary from person to person but I do think it’s important to recognise it’s there, and to know where your own line is positioned. What do you think?
Hi Michele, you make a very valid point. It would be nice to open this up to a wider audience and have some more experienced input (more experienced than MINE I mean). There must be a fine line or ‘tipping point’ to where the generosity tips to someone wanting to know enough more that they consult on a different level? I know when I found the Nikki Pilkington challenges I was very happy to find free resouces – especially as new business owners withour spare $’s… Then I felt I was getting so much I wanted to sign up for one of the e-books, not sure how much more I would gain but the price was right and wanted to contribute back to Nikki’s business as well. Let’s invite some more people to comment?
when i read your comments ladies i wanted to click “like, like, like”
ok consider you all to be liked ;D
giving away … generosity vs foolishness.
as ruth said: there is a fine line and it is hard to see it.
i think there should be always a certain kind of exchange when business comes into the game. i realized that while being a member of different forums. people love to get an avatar made by me or a picture signature. they expect that for free, and honestly those who are giving no exchange at all are the worst. i won.t expect that anybody – no matter if paying customer or a friend – jumps on the first sketch and shouts “hurray that.s it”.
everybody can expect that i am doing my best, but i hate those ultracritical.
so exchange is necessary.
but exchanges is not necessarily money – although we all want to earn money from our business.
e.g. my sister likes to knit and is a gardener.
a friend of her.s a pedicurist. so while the friend is caring for my sister.s feet she is caring for the garden of the friend, and in winter she knits a pair of woolen socks for her friend.
both are happy.
trick is: if people expect something from you, make them to give something in exchange so that they are able to hold your work dear. even if it is just a tiny little bit … they are happy and you can be happy too, and they will tell everybody how wonderful you are in your job,
I think you have highlighted some important points as it is often friends who can take advantage without even realising they are doing it – although i am sure there are also some that are fully aware of what they are doing too!
I like the bartering idea, your sister, the gardening & the socks in exchange for the pedicures, as long as it is working for both parties then all should be happy. It can be hard to quantify time & valiue of service in some of these situations. I once exchanged 2 of our Fair Trade jackets for a painting and the painter always thought that he desrved more, it was a hard one to work out because we had agreed at the start and suddenly he was expecting more. Interesting indeed.
Like your end note about telling everyone how wonderful your work is, gotta love the word of mouth advertising.
A very inciteful post! Sometimes we get so caught up in me..my…mine that we forget that we are part of a larger whole. This great Wide Web can be whatever we want it to be…why not make it a place where we can be the loving, generous people we strive to be?
Hi Dena, thanks for joining us and for your feedback. You’re so right it is easy to get caught up in our own goals and ideals and to sometimes forget that there are a lot of people surrrounding us that want to help us achieve our goals!
i can feel your excitement michele, i am on the same journey 🙂
not yet sure about the generosity, but maybe it is that we don.t sit on our information and knowledge as the big bosses do.
when i started business with my ex, we used to have a very familiar way with our customers.
customers installed similar programs than we had, but have been less educated about the programs (they were the printing experts, not the layouting ones) – but we answered every question for free. my ex used to visit them and helped them with installing and explained anything they needed to know.
sure after installing they had been able to do some jobs on their own.
but usually they acknowledged the helping hand by asking us to do their books and journals.
i can imagine that this is a kind of generosity which elaine meant.
personally i am not the economic driven girl who is always calculating.
a nice social relationship – no matter if it is done via social media or in off line life – makes not only life but also business much better.
now i would like to sit in the comfy chairs in your picture and relax with a mojito in the lovely september sun.
Thanks for your feedback Helen, I agree with both of you regarding the sharing and how nice it is to meet and share with others in the ever expanding social circle.
Let’s go visit Michele and park ourselves in those seats and sip on one of her mojitos, sounds perfect!
Wise words…and really that is the whole purpose of the www – to share information. I sometimes find this difficult to fathom. Why would anyone spend half an hour or more typing up information, so that I (and others) can benefit from it? Far from being a cold functional store of information, it is actually millions of people generously giving their time for people they will never meet, which is rather nice.
Isn’t it nice! I agree completly, there is such a vast range of information available, fantastic resources donated by an endless array of generous people who wish to share their knowledge and skills. Fantastic.
Thanks for stopping by Hilary, it is nice to have your input.
Great to read these comments and I’m glad the generosity idea s ringing true. A word of caution, though: I think there’s a difference between being generous with our time, and making information available on-line ont he one hand, and giving away our ‘products’ fo free on the other hand. The first is generous, the second is foolish. After all, we may not all want to make shedloads of money but we are running businesses… I guess where the line is will vary from person to person but I do think it’s important to recognise it’s there, and to know where your own line is positioned. What do you think?
Hi Michele, you make a very valid point. It would be nice to open this up to a wider audience and have some more experienced input (more experienced than MINE I mean). There must be a fine line or ‘tipping point’ to where the generosity tips to someone wanting to know enough more that they consult on a different level? I know when I found the Nikki Pilkington challenges I was very happy to find free resouces – especially as new business owners withour spare $’s… Then I felt I was getting so much I wanted to sign up for one of the e-books, not sure how much more I would gain but the price was right and wanted to contribute back to Nikki’s business as well. Let’s invite some more people to comment?
when i read your comments ladies i wanted to click “like, like, like”
ok consider you all to be liked ;D
giving away … generosity vs foolishness.
as ruth said: there is a fine line and it is hard to see it.
i think there should be always a certain kind of exchange when business comes into the game. i realized that while being a member of different forums. people love to get an avatar made by me or a picture signature. they expect that for free, and honestly those who are giving no exchange at all are the worst. i won.t expect that anybody – no matter if paying customer or a friend – jumps on the first sketch and shouts “hurray that.s it”.
everybody can expect that i am doing my best, but i hate those ultracritical.
so exchange is necessary.
but exchanges is not necessarily money – although we all want to earn money from our business.
e.g. my sister likes to knit and is a gardener.
a friend of her.s a pedicurist. so while the friend is caring for my sister.s feet she is caring for the garden of the friend, and in winter she knits a pair of woolen socks for her friend.
both are happy.
trick is: if people expect something from you, make them to give something in exchange so that they are able to hold your work dear. even if it is just a tiny little bit … they are happy and you can be happy too, and they will tell everybody how wonderful you are in your job,
what do you think?
I think you have highlighted some important points as it is often friends who can take advantage without even realising they are doing it – although i am sure there are also some that are fully aware of what they are doing too!
I like the bartering idea, your sister, the gardening & the socks in exchange for the pedicures, as long as it is working for both parties then all should be happy. It can be hard to quantify time & valiue of service in some of these situations. I once exchanged 2 of our Fair Trade jackets for a painting and the painter always thought that he desrved more, it was a hard one to work out because we had agreed at the start and suddenly he was expecting more. Interesting indeed.
Like your end note about telling everyone how wonderful your work is, gotta love the word of mouth advertising.
A very inciteful post! Sometimes we get so caught up in me..my…mine that we forget that we are part of a larger whole. This great Wide Web can be whatever we want it to be…why not make it a place where we can be the loving, generous people we strive to be?
Hi Dena, thanks for joining us and for your feedback. You’re so right it is easy to get caught up in our own goals and ideals and to sometimes forget that there are a lot of people surrrounding us that want to help us achieve our goals!
Just picked this up from the Twittersphere and thought it interesting in this context: http://bit.ly/valueofgenerosity
Helen, I love your phrase about holding our work dear – I can wish no more for the work I offer than that.