During the past month, I have witnessed the power of strong connections within social media to share the message of my new McGraw-Hill book, Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way. It all started when Jesse Lyn Stoner, whom I became friends with a few years ago at a Berrett-Koehler Authors Cooperative retreat, and who is interviewed in the book, offered to help network me in to some of her fellow bloggers.
 

She connected me with, among others, Lolly Daskal, Tanveer Naseer (whom I also interviewed on my blog) and Scott Eblin. Jesse’s personal recommendation led to my eventually co-hosting a Twitter chat with Lolly, writing a guest post for Tanveer and recording a podcast with Scott. Then last week, I wrote a guest post for Jesse’s blog. I remain grateful to all, and in awe of the results.
If I had just written those posts on my own, or recorded my own podcast, the results would have been limited. Instead, many people shared and retweeted the posts and the podcast, and the Twitter chat with Lolly allowed me to connect for an hour and afterward with countless highly-engaged participants around the world.  I had never hosted or co-hosted a Twitter chat before, and the process was exhilarating and a bit overwhelming. It was one of the fastest-moving hours I’ve ever experienced.
The engagement factor is important.  It’s highly admirable that all four of these people have built large online communities on Twitter and elsewhere with a high degree of trust.  The implied seal of approval from Jesse, Lolly, Tanveer and Scott has connected me to people I might not have come into contact with otherwise.  It is truly a gift of the season.