Building and Banking Your Social Dollars

4Sep/07

Building and Banking Your Social Dollars

As a follow up to the concept of "social reciprocity" mentioned in "Unlocking The Social Inner Circle Code", one of the key concepts are "social dollars".

They don't have a tangible value, but are a measure of the social goodwill you built.

Believe it or not, relationships can build to a deep level, even if the person lives 12 time zones away or is someone you haven't met (aside from seeing their avatar), 5 year relationship notwithstanding.

A friend told me about the concept of a "goodwill bank".
In any relationship, the things you do have the effect of depositing "social dollars" into the goodwill bank, or withdrawing from it.

Helping out a friend in need = depositing social dollars into your balance.

Asking a friend for a favor = withdrawing social dollars from the same balance.

Your social dollar balance has a way of accumulating "interest" too. As you continue to help people, they'll naturally talk to their friends about it, give you a recommendation in a social network, blog about your efforts, create buzz about you in the forum.

The best form of social goodwill is accumulated paradoxically through altruistic means...meaning if you set out solely to help someone out, without any expectation of reward, you'd probably get the biggest return from that.

Call it the "pay it forward" effect if you will.

If you help three people, who go on to help another three people each, inevitably, you'll perpetuate the cycle of goodwill and the returns come back to you multiplied a hundredfold.

The bottom line: Help others WITHOUT any expectation of a return and you'll get rewarded sometime and it'll come back to you multiplied many times over in the most pleasant manner possible.

It might be that newbie blogger or internet marketer whom you extend a helping hand to and subsequently becomes a superstar and helps you out in turn.

The universe works in mysterious ways.

To allay some readers doubts that "no post by Andrew Wee would be complete without the mention of schmoe", here's the schmoe take on things.

A schmoe on the other hand will help someone or do something SOLELY for the purpose of profiting from it. In 99% of cases, the effort will be transparent to the point of laughability...and part of the torrent of spam comments or emails I get each morning.

If you're constantly withdrawing social dollars from the goodwill bank, expect to be hit in an unexpected fashion...the likelihood is that it might be unpleasant though.

As Spock says "Live long and prosper"...and the pointy-eared dudes are usually right...

Be well.

Andrew Wee is a MyBlogLog Advisor and blogs about blogging, affiliate marketing and social traffic generation at WhoIsAndrewWee.com. His MyBlogLog profile is: http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/andreww/