When it comes to contacts, what comes to mind first? Is it the "world with connections" advocated by some people who advocate network determinism? Or what people who scoff at connections say, "connections are not important, what matters is your ability"

In fact, these are all misunderstandings about contacts. Good contacts can make us get twice the result with half the effort, but only if you have high enough value. It is one-sided to advocate and belittle contacts blindly.

according to Stanford university professor mark? According to Granovett's research, our relationship with others can be divided into two types: strong connection and weak ties.

Strong ties refer to friends who live and work with you. Usually, your three views are the same.

weak ties refers to someone you know outside your familiar circle. It may be a friend of your friend or someone you haven't known for a few days. Usually, your work and living habits are different.

maintaining strong ties depends on feelings, while maintaining weak ties depends on value.

Professor Mark found through research that weak ties can help us more than strong ties and bring us new opportunities. Because you are in a strong contact circle, what you see and hear are basically the same, and the information you share is basically the same. People in weak ties are often inconsistent with the information you have access to, and they are more likely to bring you valuable information.

This book introduces some common misunderstandings about personal connections and how to effectively improve your personal connections and make them work for me.

First of all, share some common misunderstandings about personal connections: "card hoarder", "crown syndrome" and "familiar stranger".

Business card hoarders are people who believe in "the world with connections". They attend various social activities all day, accumulate business cards of big bosses and add various WeChat friends, thinking that they can meet many people in this way. then what When you really need help, are there any awesome people to help you? In most cases, you don't. You just hoard a lot of business cards of big bosses, but there is very little that can really help you.

"Crown Syndrome" believes that "connections are not important, what matters is your ability", and that "gold always shines" and "wine is not afraid of the depth of the alley". We are taught in school to be humble and low-key, so we seldom take the initiative to promote ourselves and wait for others to discover ourselves. But in today's society, actively promoting yourself is an effective way to enhance your influence and popularity. Waiting for others to find out about yourself is tantamount to waiting for him.

Another misunderstanding is "familiar stranger", which means that you just added someone else's WeChat and chatted once or twice, and then you haven't contacted again. Waiting for the next time I want to ask questions, I feel embarrassed to ask, so he becomes the "most familiar stranger" in your address book.

there are different solutions to the above three common misunderstandings. For "business card hoarders", the most important thing is to be clear about their needs and values. Knowing what you really want will help you socialize in a targeted way and avoid futility. For "Crown Syndrome", you need to actively promote yourself. You can build your own personal brand and expand your own popularity. For "familiar strangers", it is necessary to consciously revitalize their personal relationships. Of course, everyone's energy is limited. According to the 28 th Law, we just need to revitalize 21% of our contacts that are really useful to us.

no matter what the above methods are, the first thing to do is to expand your circle of contacts. According to your destination, the purpose can be divided into long-term purpose and short-term purpose. For example, if you want to change jobs and switch from manufacturing to Internet industry, you need to develop in the Internet industry for a long time in the future. Short-term goals are problems that you may need to solve urgently at present, such as finding someone to cooperate in developing a course. Different purposes, different ways to expand contacts.

for long-term purposes, you can expand your contacts through the following three steps. (1) define the purpose (2) find the circle (3) determine the role, respectively.

the purpose of definition is to clarify what kind of people you want to know and what value exchange you want from it. You can ask yourself two questions: (1) What is the focus of your current staged life? Everyone's career development will have different needs in different periods. For example, the initial focus of newly hired staff is their own career, how to work efficiently and improve their working ability; For executives who have worked for a certain number of years, their needs may be how to balance career and family. Through this question, make clear what your current life focus is, and then you will consciously move closer to the focus;

(2) What kind of circle is helpful to me. For example, if you want to be self-media, you may need to improve your writing ability and operational ability. At this time, there may be a writing circle and an operation circle, so you should consciously choose what circle you need now. Define the standards of your personal network and ensure that time investment is valuable.

after locating the circle, how can you find a circle that can help you? You can help yourself find the right circle through strong contact recommendation, online community and offline activities.

strong contact recommendation means that if someone you know well has corresponding channels, you can ask him to help you recommend you to the circle you want. After all, acquaintance recommendation can greatly reduce the cost of trust.

you can also join online communities to join the circle. Let's take self-media as an example. If you want to improve your writing ability, finding a good writing circle can make you get twice the result with half the effort. Nowadays, there are many writing communities on the Internet. It is not difficult to find a writing community, but it is difficult to learn to distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of the community.

Finally, you can join the circle by participating in offline activities. When participating in offline activities, you should socialize consciously and purposefully. If you just sit there and say nothing, you will make the mistake of "crown syndrome" again, and it is difficult for others to remember you. This is ineffective social interaction. You can set goals for yourself in advance, such as talking to 1/3 strangers, having deep communication with more than 3 people, and keeping in touch with at least one person after the meeting.

after joining the circle, how can you find your own role in the circle and provide your own value for the circle?

There are different roles in a circle, so it is important to know what kind of role you are. Generally speaking, there are four roles of members in the circle: star, node, expert and assistant.

In a network of relationships in weak ties, it is impossible for everyone to know each other. At this time, we need a node to connect everyone, either to the initiator of the community or to a well-connected person, through whom we can drive the development of the whole community.

An expert refers to a person with a certain professional knowledge background, even resources. According to the 28 Law, the value of a circle is basically contributed by 21% people, who are rich in information. Compared with the questions raised, you will have profound and unique insights to answer your questions.

A star refers to a person who is easy to convince others in the circle, has certain influence and personality charm, and may not necessarily have a professional knowledge background. Sometimes the expert's opinion may be too obscure, and then the expert's opinion can be relayed through the star.

Assistants refer to people who provide services in the circle. They may not have professional knowledge background and are not easy to convince others, but they can serve the members in the circle enthusiastically. For example, if you join a writing community, they may summarize the essence of the writing course and make a mind map for everyone to consult.

Each role has different functions. You can judge your role according to your own advantages, and you can continuously provide your own value according to your role.

With the help of the power of the circle, we can expand our contacts. As mentioned above, this is a method aimed at long-term goals. It is inefficient to find someone who can help you in this way if you have problems that need to be solved urgently. At this time, we often need bears to find people who can help us in the potential crowd. Similarly, it can be carried out in three steps: (1) clarifying requirements (2) searching for objects (3) initial contact.

Clarifying needs means that before seeking help from others, you must first find out what you really need. The deeper you ask, the clearer your core needs will be. Some people like to ask some grand questions, such as how to achieve wealth freedom and life goals. Put yourself in the other's shoes. If someone asks you this question, what would you say? Do you think he is whimsical? Therefore, it is important to know your core needs before asking for help. You can ask yourself the following two questions: (1) What do you need the other party to do or provide? (2) What kind of people can help me. From these two perspectives, we can roughly have a portrait of the person who needs help, and then we will enter the second step: searching for the object.

You can search by keywords from common social platforms, such as Zhihu, Weibo, etc. First, roughly sort out a list of people who can help you, and it is best to screen the list once. If you are an alumnus or work in the same place, it is easier to get the favor of the other party when asking for help.

after determining the personnel, further contact is needed. This step is often the key to many people's failure. When making first contact, three points need to be made clear: understanding each other, clarifying the purpose and clarifying the value.

Getting to know each other means getting to know each other's background information and recent trends through preliminary research, which is more targeted when sending emails or verifying short messages.

It is your core need to show your intention. What do you need the other party to do? Of course, your tone should be euphemistic.

the last and most important point is easily overlooked: what value you can provide to each other. It is easy for us to put ourselves in the position of the weak when seeking help, and take it for granted that others help the weak. In fact, no one has the obligation to help you unconditionally. Only when you can provide value to the other party, your request is more likely to be accepted.

If you ask for help through Zhihu or email, you'd better condense these three aspects into less than 111 words. And if you add friends through WeChat, you need to streamline the number of words.

All the ways mentioned above are to find people who can help you on your own initiative. Another way to expand your contacts is to let you come to you on your own initiative. The most effective way is to build a personal brand.

Personal brand means that when others think of a certain word, they will think of you at the first time. For example, when it comes to knowledge payment, you will think of Luo Zhenyu; When it comes to carbonated drinks, you think of Coca-Cola.

so how to build your own personal brand?

first of all, we should define our own position, find our own unique labels and the people we want to attract. Everyone has their own unique advantages, maybe you just haven't found them yet. We can use the help of others, such as asking friends about their impressions; You can also determine where your strengths are by exploring your own strengths.

then see if you can combine related resources to form a unique label. For example, if you are a person who likes to taste food and make food, and you just like photography or writing, then you can combine the two and share the process of making food. Then gradually expand their influence and create a label of "gourmet who loves photography".

the next step is to select channels that can reach the target audience. Take the above example as an example. You can share your experiences in Weibo, Zhihu and other platforms, or answer related questions, and gradually establish your professional level in the field of food and gradually accumulate your influence.

last but not least, it is necessary to have the ability of continuous output and ensure the output with a certain frequency. Brand is something that needs to be constantly strengthened in order to deepen the memory of others. For example, if I say, "There will be no gifts this year," you will definitely think of melatonin; When I say "I won't order anywhere", you will definitely think of BBK point reading machine. These advertisements strengthen your memory by constantly outputting.

the same is true for building a personal brand, and it is also necessary to have a stable output. If you hold the mentality of fishing for three days and drying the net for two days, you can't build your own personal brand.

In addition, make sure that the theme of your output is consistent. Take writing as an example. For example, if you write a dry article today, an emotional chicken soup article tomorrow, and an inspirational article the day after tomorrow, it will be difficult for people to have a deep impression on you. Keeping the output of a unified theme is the effective output to build a brand.

suppose you have a certain influence and your network is much larger than before, how can you revitalize your network?

In fact, the most effective way to maintain the vitality of interpersonal relationships is to continuously generate interaction.

It can be done from the following three aspects:

There is a foot in the door effect in psychology, which says that if you want someone to do you a big favor, you can ask him to do you a small favor first. This can make the other person feel "I am a good person" psychologically, so it will be easier to ask others for help in the future.

The book Influence mentions the principle of reciprocity. If the other party accepts your kindness, the other party will not refuse your request. Therefore, actively solving problems for each other can maintain the vitality of interpersonal relationships.

The last way is to become a node, such as introducing different friends in your circle to each other, so that you can become a node in the circle and be more influential. More importantly, if you introduce your friends to each other, he will introduce his friends to you, thus expanding his circle of contacts.

Finally, it needs to be emphasized that truly effective social interaction must be based on value exchange. What value you can provide to the other party determines whether the other party is willing to spend time and cost to establish a relationship with you. In an exchange, you have to have chips first. Secondly, your chip, the other party should admit its value. Whenever you want something, please count your chips first. If you can't afford it, you should choose to improve your value and increase your chips, instead of stealing and robbing or complaining about the injustice of heaven.