Marketing Yourself on the Web: Give the Gift of a Name

One of the nicest presents you can give two members of your network is to give each The Gift of a Name.

With one email you can turn two relationhips into four:

• Yours with one of the two members;
• Yours with the other member ;
• The new relationship of the two members;
• Your relationship with yourself, for taking the time to introduce them.

Not bad? Two relationships turned into four, something especially appealing to me as a progorammer who thus thinks in powers of two.

The time to write the initial email is small, but to be most effective you need to write many more emails, as follows:

Each and every time you accept someone into your network, or they accept you into theirs, you need to review all the membership, looking for two people known to you who would benefit from the give of each other’s name.

Thus the cost of adding a new member grows exponentially as the size of your network grows,

This is perhaps the strongest form, in terms of the value added by each new member, of what is known as the Network Effect.

Even though the cost is high, the benefits of creating new relationships will more than pay for itself, as I have written in my post, On Volunteerism: Cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days.