How big is your contact management system or business card file?
How many friends do you have on Facebook? Followers on Twitter? Connections on LinkedIn?
But actually, those numbers aren’t important! You see, as with many things in life, size doesn’t matter!
How many contacts you have is not as important as the quality of the contacts.
Now hold on! Before you say “of course” and move off this page, there’s a point here you may not know.
It is essential to the growth of your business or career that a portion of the people you are in direct contact with are not close contacts. But they must not be so obscure or unseen that they are simply numbers in a list.
You see, when building networks, we tend to focus on people who have similar interests, careers, viewpoints or those who may buy our product or service directly.
Yet, it’s people a little further out in our degrees of separation who are the best at challenging our status quo, helping us reach broader networks and opening new windows of opportunity.
Action – Review all your direct contacts. 25-30 % of the names on your list should be these outliers. But if you have too few or too many weaker ties to others, dedicate 1 hour a week to activities that will re-adjust the balance.