As I spend time spreading the good news of Ticor Title and Escrow throughout Tacoma, Gig Harbor, Puyallup, and beyond, I still run into people who are looking for evidence that blogging can lead to relationships and business. This naturally has caused me to reflect on the many opportunities, relationships, and surprises that have popped up for me since I have been blogging and participating in various conversations online. Although I have had actual title orders come right out of the blue by way of my blog (I'll tell those stories later), one relationship (with Meri Walker - The virtual Meeting coach) in particular stands out as being a great model to illustrate what I consider to be the life cycle of social media. And it all started with a tweet...

The life cycle can be broken down into four basic parts as follows:

• Content attracts conversation
• Conversation cultivates trust
• Trust strengthens relationship
• Relationship translates to business

Let me illustrate with a brief story if you will...

Content attracts conversation
Earlier this year I wrote a blog post about Vyew.com. It's a virtual meeting platform that we have been using for meetings and collaboration across our region at Ticor Title. I simply wrote about how we use it and why I liked it. After blogging I did the usual tweet that said "Just blogged about vyew.com web conferencing site. I'm a big fan. http://tinyurl.com/88uspd". No big deal, right? Except there happened to be a virtual meeting coach that saw my tweet, read the blog, and decided to ask me if I'd be willing to chat. I had no idea who she was but I was willing to have a quick chat with her to find out if this was legitimate or not.

Conversation cultivates trust
So I had a quick chat with Meri via Google Chat. I don't remember exactly what was said, but through our brief exchange, we established enough trust to progress to a phone conversation which in turn cultivated a bit more trust. From there we decided to collaborate in an interview online and feature the results on each other's blogs. That was just the start. And honestly, I wasn't sure if anything would actually come of it. We had merely agreed to a good idea.

Trust strengthens relationship
Over several conversations, I had the opportunity to discover more about Meri's business, history, philosophy, etc. And I also had the opportunity to share with her my experiences collaborating with René Fabre on social media projects, marketing, and research. I should have known it would happen when she asked if René would like to be a part of our interview. Duh! At that moment our conversation got much bigger. Our single interview became a series of four interviews over the span of a couple months covering topics ranging from our Lego Theory of internet marketing, to online profiles, to the Dandelion theory of social media and other colorful analogies.

Relationship translates to business
Just over a week ago René had the opportunity to be the key speaker at several real estate social media-related events across Oregon(a.k.a "Brother Love's Traveling Internet Marketing Salvation Show"). Meri was at one of the events (she lives in OR and to this point we had never met in person). And of course, René took the opportunity to introduce her as our favorite virtual meeting coach - an example of how a friendship and working relationship had grown from a simple tweet.

So we have not merely benefited by collaborating with Meri. She is part of our story. Our connection is evidence that our words are like seeds and our conversations are like gardens.

Enjoy!

Matt Sweet

Ticor Title