“Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors…” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some people will tell you that being able to strike up a conversation is an art derived from your innate personality.  You either got it or you don’t. And if you don’t got it, then you aint’ gonna get it.

Wrong.

Take it from me: I spent two years working in the self improvement industry teaching professionals how to break out of their shells, put themselves out there and build connections with their customers, clients and family.  I specialized in working with introverts who hated the thought of being put in a large group or other uncomfortable social situation.

But I have found that it is most often the introverts who have the coolest stuff to say, if I can only get them talking.

Self-proclaimed “strong introvert” Nate St. Pierre (@ItStartsWithUs, on Twitter) is a great example.  Nate has an important message that deserves to be shared.  He’s building a community that helps people who have big, world-changing ideas but neither the time nor know-how to turn them into reality.  Nate’s website focuses on linking up the people with ideas to the people with the skillz to get the job done. In other words, it opens the lines of communication and makes the “how can I use my skill to help people, and how do I find them” question much more manageable.

What a great idea!  In my opinion, that is an idea that deserves to be heard, shared and broadcast.

Thankfully, Nate has the willpower to overcome his introvert tendencies and get the word out about his project.  You can read all about the project and how he gets over his shyness here and even help him design a header!

But for the people who don’t know how to start breaking out of their shells Shawshank Redemption style, here are two techniques that you can start using today.

1. Start a conversation with a long, drawn out sentence.

“You talkin’ to me?” – Robert de Niro

Lets face it, we spend most of our days stuck in our heads thinking about minutia.  Have you ever asked someone a question and it caught them completely off guard, thereby making the whole start of the conversation awkward?  Sure you have.  We all have.  They’re caught off guard because they’re stuck in their head.  But you can draw them out and focus their attention on you by using a long, unimportant sentence.  For example, if you wanted to ask John, the resident auto do-it-yourself-er how often you should change your oil you would do it like this:

“Hey John, I have a wild and crazy question for you – this might sound completely out of left field, but I think you’re the right person to ask this question since you know so much about cars.  Ok, so, here’s my question: ‘How often do you really need to change your oil?’ “

See how the first couple of phrases in that sentence are vague and meaningless?  I do that on purpose because people find it hard to focus on the first thing someone else says to them.  Imagine if, out of the blue, I had asked John, “Hey, how often do you need to change your oil?”

He would wonder where the heck that came from and an awkward pause would result.  By using a long, fluffy sentence at the start of a conversation, it gives people the space they need to focus on you and what you’re saying.  I save the important stuff for the end because the first few words of any beginning sentence of a conversation won’t connect.

2. Talk About Yourself

Quick – name the two things that people like the most out of everything in the world.

Got the answer yet?

If you said 1) themselves and 2) people like them, then you win!  People L-O-V-E familiarity, and that carries over into their conversations.  So in order to be a great conversationalist it’s important for the person you’re talking to to see a little piece of themself in you.

But there’s a difference between being naturally relatable and forcing your similarities on someone.  Forcing similarities looks needy.  For example, if John says he likes basketball, don’t say “Me too!” and wag your tail like a puppy.

The key to being relatable is talking about yourself and your experiences.  The more you about yourself, the more chances someone will relate to what you’re saying and grab onto your conversational threads and relate to it.  Being relatable builds empathy, and that is the basis for any relationship.

Now that I’ve shared a few things you should do to become a better conversationalist, here are a few things you should avoid in your interactions.

“Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” – Oscar Wilde

No one enjoys small talk because it is too safe and corporate-ish. As a great conversationalist, it is your job to shake things up and take a risk. Remember, it’s the guy with the spark in his eye and conviction in his words that is most memorable.

“The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man’s observation, not overturning it” – Edward G. Bullwer Lytton

In my opinion, the best conversations occur when both parties just let each other talk without passing judgment or throwing in an opinion (unless asked to do so). Yet, some people love to share their opinion like it is a stick of chewing gum in a big pack. To be a great conversationalist, invest some time learning when to speak your mind and when to sit back and listen.

“Do you really listen? Or do you just wait for your turn to talk?” – anonymous

The difference between a great conversationalist and an amateur can be observed by watching how each of them fills a void of silence in a conversation. The amateur will jump to attention and begin parsing words into the fray in an effort to not break the flow for fear of losing the vibe. But fear of loss of anything is weakening. The great conversationalist, much like a musician, knows that silence in a conversation builds interest and tension and uses this to his advantage. When the conversation lulls, he resists filling the gap and instead uses the time to collect his thoughts and make his next statement meaningful.

Wrapping it all up

If you were to dig down far enough, I think you’d find an optimist within me that wants to believe that people are capable of doing great things when they work together. Maybe that is why I spent a few years breaking people out of their shells. Maybe that’s also why Nate’s site resonated with me. In the process of teaching the art of talking, I learned that it’s really not an art at all. It’s a science that can be learned like anything else. I would love to believe that some of the tips I’ve offered help someone face their fear. If you are an introvert and go out and try these two techniques, please let me know about it. I’d be glad to write a followup if there’s interest and, as always, would love to read about your experiences in the comments below.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, no one knows if it makes a sound.

The same can be said of the blogger, writer or small businessman who puts his thoughts, ramblings and products online.  Without other people to hear our message, our voices become mute.  This is especially hard during the first few months for a blogger when it can really feel like you’re just writing post cards to yourself on your blog.  Luckily, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but to help you cross over to the other side a little faster I’ve marked down 5 techniques that you can use today to start building stronger relationships online.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, no one knows if it makes a sound.

Feature a Blogger You Admire

Go find a blogger that has a message you connect with and write up a little review of their work. Include some links to posts that have helped you. Bonus points if it’s all relevant to your main message i.e., they talk about personal finance and you talk about small business widget sales. Then, before you publish your article, email a copy of it to the blogger and ask them if there’s anything they’d like to include. Free exposure is great, and they will usually use this as an opportunity to promote their own ventures. This will lead to them tweeting your article etc. Follow up with regular comments and you evolve from a face in the crowd to a person with a name.

Tweet Value

I like to use the iPhone app Twitteriffic to see what people near me are tweeting. Here are some of my favs:

“My biceps swing both ways.”
“Cleaning and laundry today…What fun!”
“is sitting in the exam room at the vet. Dog needs up to date vacs so he can go to the groomed. Lookin shaggy.”

I blame this on the tagline “What are you doing?” because it leads people to literally tell us exactly what they’re doing. It turns out that we are not doing anything. If you are tweeting your daily schedule or replying to @therealshaq you are losing out on a valuable opportunity to enrich people by tweeting instead about articles that meant something to you. I try to keep my tweet ratio at 1:5 junk tweets to useful tweets. Anything beyond that risks becoming noise. Also, when you write great content, people will retweet it. Make sure to thank them (unless they are following 15000 people, then they are spammy and you can block them).

Solve Problems

I try to solve every problem that I come across online. It build credibility and trust, which are social currency even when money is not an issue. Forums are great for this. It is easy to tell who is genuinely trying to help and be supportive on a forum and who is just promoting their stuff. The more value you are able to give the more tends to come back your way. Also, check twitter hash tags (they look like this # followed by a subject i.e. #thesiswp) for interesting topics or problems people are having in niches that interest you. Then, just appear out of the air and hand them a solution. Maybe it’s a messiah complex but people seem to really appreciate that. I think it is an apex of social media.

Talk About Yourself

People who have studied business have been taught largely to reveal as little as possible about themselves while at the same time getting other people to open up and share tons about themself. They think it will make them powerful but they are wrong. A man with shields erected around him is a weak man and online this is amplified. When a reader comes to your site I think they are looking for two things:
1. Great Content and
2. A connection with the author.

In order to develop that connection it is necessary that the author be relatable. That means that your reader feels like “hey, this guy is just like me.” It has been said that people like two things: a) themselves and b) people like them. Being relatable will draw people like you to your message. But be careful! If you start seeing flamers and trolls it should give you an idea of what people are relating to in you.

Lets do a quick review, and while we’re at it, you can start right now to do these four things to build an online relationship.

1. Write a feature article about a blogger you admire, email him the draft and explicitly ask that they include any points about their message that you’ve missed.
2. Tweet something that does one of the following: solve a problem, make a person think deeply, answers a question or makes me laugh
3. Solve a problem in a public forum. Give and give and give until you’ve got nothing left. Then give some more. It is hard to build trust offline, and harder online where you can’t see the other person’s face. It takes a lot of time to build credibility and just a few bad decisions to lose it. Treat your credibility like money.
4. Be Relatable. People want to hear your story so go ahead and tell it. More on how to do this well coming in another post.

I’ve enjoyed writing this post. I like stepping back from Thesis tutorials and talking about some of the other things I know. If you liked it (or hated it) I would love to know! Also, if you’d like to start using some of these techniques I will be a willing lab rat

One more thing. I have pages written with notes about personal communication since I used to teach it. If you’d like more mixed in with the rest of the online/tech content please let me know.
Till next time!