Adding Some Glue To Online Relationships

March 20, 2008

Earlier this week, I read a post on Freelance Switch about turning clients into friends. In that post, Andy Howard made the point that when you work in an office, you invite clients over for meetings all the time, so why change your habit as a freelancer? I thought it was an interesting point, though I’ve never thought of doing it myself.

Since there are 3,000–5,000 miles between me and most of my clients, my approach to getting personal is different. I have never met any of my current clients face to face. Nor have I met any of the writers I work with every day, nor the bloggers I interact with daily. Since humans thrive on contact with others, you might think that that’s a disadvantage, but it hasn’t been.

Making The Connection

My experience suggests that we always find a way to make that connection if we want to. I have different levels of connection with the people I have met online. With some of my long term clients, emailing back and forth several times a week has built up a relationship. I may not know everything about them, but I know enough to make the relationship personal, while still professional.

For example, I had an exchange a couple of days ago with an editor about wisdom teeth. She’d had hers pulled; I’d had mine pulled in the past, and we sent a couple of emails back and forth about pain and swollen faces. It didn’t harm our professional relationship and gave us some level of connection.

Something In Common

I have a lot in common with the writers whom I work with. Many of us have chatted on IM and we have a lot in common. Some of us are parents who work from home, and although we don’t spend much time talking about these issues, they come up from time to time. Even though we haven’t met, some of us ‘get’ each other, and some of us are friends.

I think the same is true of many of my fellow bloggers. It’s true that we only know a particular slice of each others’ lives, but over time you conjure up a picture of people through the posts they write and the comments they make, particularly if you all end up commenting on the same posts. You find that you share attitudes on some things and agree to disagree on others. That’s not so different from offline relationships.

Adding The Glue

So where am I going with this? I think every relationship is personal. Even if you can’t use Andy’s method of inviting your clients to your workplace, it doesn’t hurt to wish someone a good weekend, ask if they had one, or send them a birthday or Christmas greeting. That’s part of the glue that holds personal relationships together and if you’ve never met, you need all the glue you can get. It makes your online working life richer and less isolated. What do you think?