Growing up in Dallas, I saw a lot of anthills as a kid.  In fact, I was once tricked into sitting in one by one of my “friends”.  I wouldn’t recommend this, by the way.  That hurt and itched for a long while, and I’m sure we used up a bottle or two of Calamine lotion at our house that week.   The only time I can remember pain more clearly was the time that I got stung by a bee on my forehead at age six.

But I digress…

What is the first thing that happens when you step in an anthill?  The ants start to rebuild it, and quickly.  There’s no hesitation.  The ants don’t look around at the destruction, wondering, “What happened here?  We need to form a committee and get to the bottom of this.”  It seems more like they were already busy building when you stepped on it, exposing their activity to the summer air.

What do you think would happen if Facebook disappeared tomorrow?  Or Twitter?  Or any other favorite social media site?

I posit that another one would take its place without hesitation.

Why is that?  Because people have come to crave and value the interaction and validation that they get online in these types of communities.

To put this in perspective by way of analogy, I used to optimize my website for search engines like Lycos, Excite, and Altavista.  In the late 90’s, those seemed to be invincible.  Google wasn’t even part of the equation at that point.  Just keep in mind that there might be something even bigger and better coming down the line.  I’m certainly not advocating waiting around for that day, but rather I’m illustrating that you should spread  your efforts around a bit.  Keep in mind that there were probably a lot of people who spent time building up their MySpace pages before it became….whatever it is now (namely not the top social media destination that it could have been).

The lesson: Don’t worry too much about focusing on the tools themselves.  Instead, focus on building a reputation of integrity and building solid relationships.  The number of friends/followers/subscribers doesn’t really matter that much in the scheme of things.  The irony here is that those will become part of the reward when you focus on the right stuff.

Promote and help others when you can.  I realize it sounds supremely trite now, but paying it forward actually does work.  Who knows?  Maybe you’ll even have a chance to build your own anthill sometime.

I would love to hear your input – thanks for reading!