We live in what many experts describe as a ‘fragmented society’ where we routinely shut out the world and avoid communicating with other people.  The denser the population, the more acute this becomes.

In the book ‘The Tipping Point’, author Malcolm Gladwell talks about weak relationships and strong relationships in the context of people of great influence.  We all have a number of strong relationships with family and close friends and a number of ‘weak’.  These are people who you know by name and will have a conversation with when you meet but are not close friends.

What Gladwell found is that people those people who are the great influencers in society, those who are trend leaders, have are far greater number of quality ‘weak’ relationships than most.  Whilst they may not have more than the average number of close friends, they are on first name conversational terms with many more people than is normally found.

In the age of Social Media, a new breed of influencers has emerged.   There are those who are building a large network of weak relationships with on platforms such as Twitter.

If you don’t see the value in these weak relationships, imagine this:

 You have been on Twitter and connected with someone called John who is local to you and whose profile says he is a plumber.  Over the course of six months, you have brief tweet conversations on trivia.  He has commented on a couple of you posts and re-tweeted some of your tweets.  You know a little about him due to his posts such as he’s got a pet dog, goes to watch Crusaders and went on beach holiday in Cornwall in the summer.

Now, when you need someone to replace that radiator in your hallway, who is your first port of call, the ‘Plumbers & Co Ltd’ who you’ve seen advertising in the local paper, or your tweet friend John who you now know a little about?

Social Networking is helping glue a fragmented society back together again.

With a free social media account and a mobile phone or computer, we can build a large network of ‘weak’ relationships.

This is not only good for the soul, we all have a psychological need for a sense of communal belonging, it is also a valuable asset for a business owner.