about sharing - relay

Recently, I've read the book 'Let's connect', written by network coach Jan Vermeiren. It was given out as a freebie with the internal session we had on networking by one of the network coaches. And it hit me: I forgot to list a very important category of sharing activities in my book. One of the most important and actually quite easy sharing activities you can undertake is to relay.

The sharing activities I listed are mostly about sharing your own insights and expertise. Relaying is passing information from one part of your network to one or other contacts in your network. Obviously, you need to mention the source and not pretend it is your own work. Relaying is a valid sharing activity that you can do regardless of the expertise you have build yourself. You know what other people in your network are after, and you can help them by passing on information or even refer contacts from other parts of your network. It makes people know you care and they will be thankful you are filtering out the relevant information they are after. It doesn't cost you much time, just some thoughtfulness.

Here is the text from the new section in the book, as from the special Online Educa edition (november 2010):

So far we’ve mainly listed sharing activities that involve sharing your own insights. That might make sharing difficult when you start out. Fortunately, you can share the wisdom of others too. Relaying information from someone else to others is a part of the art of social networking. There’s so much information out there that you actually help people keep up by pointing them to interesting links or persons in your network. You are doing a favour by filtering information and recommending it to those people in you network you know would benefit from it. And you don’t only share information, but by endorsing or recommending people you are sharing your contacts too. Here are a few points to keep in mind when relaying:

• Find out what interests people or what they need at the moment, and only relay relevant stuff. Otherwise you will not act as a friend, but as a spammer.
• You are not a liar either, so always mention the source of what you are relaying and do not pretend it is your own. Adhere to copyrights or other restrictions.
• Make your goals known to your network too. How else will they know what to relay to you?
• Good things will happen to you if you are kind to your network. Don’t keep count nonetheless, it is the wrong attitude.

Key point: You can relay other people’s insights too. It is a form of social networking.