Building Relationships by Writing Online

Consider these two approaches for relationship building.

1. Attend conferences, meet people and collect business cards. Organize a database of contacts, send them interesting articles and plan exciting events with them.
2. Consistently write online, share your unique perspective, and wait for like-minded people on the internet to find you. 

These two approaches both work for building relationships. While my time has been heavily weighted to the first approach throughout the first eight years of my career, my worldview changed during quarantine. Specifically, I realized the power of writing online to create new relationships.

Since May, I’ve been posting daily on Linkedin. While I mostly write about commercial real estate, I’ve also written about other topics that interest me – like reflections on living outside of NYC, working from home and the importance of creating non-COVID moments. In just three months of writing daily on LinkedIn, I’ve witnessed:

• Increased introductions, like Russ introducing me to Dan, who is building cool software at Dojo, and Cam connecting me with Jeff, who also writes on commercial real estate.
• An increased ability to form new relationships with colleagues in other markets, like Laurence Morgan in San Francisco and Jon Milonas and Matt Groppenbacher in Chicago.
• Enjoyment from reconnecting with old friends, like Eric Roseman and Wyatt Knight
• Two recruiters ask if I would be interested in new job opportunities.

Just by writing on LinkedIn, all of this has happened. And I’m just scratching the surface of the benefits of writing online. Graphically, I’m here:

I’ve tried this before, then failed with consistency. While I’ve got the daily LinkedIn post down, I want to form a consistent writing practice that will enable me to form more relationships and move up the graph.

I love the quote, “Start now, the time will pass anyway.” While it’s scary to retry something I’ve failed at, the small wins from writing on LinkedIn have given me confidence that the benefits of writing online – like forming new relationships – outweigh the difficulties.