The Unbearable Lightness of Bee-ing. One Writer’s Experience In The World of The Golden Hives.

I have been buzzing around on social media since it all started. It’s been a long and winding road. And it’s always had a fairly well-balanced pleasure to pain ratio.
But social media, like everything else, evolves, and your skills and ability to deal with it in a meaningful way for you evolve right along with it. And as a result, you get to know a good thing when it stings you. Just like you get to know a bad thing. Only the bad thing hurts a lot more.
For me, right here and right now, that good thing is called beBee.
It’s a place where I am connected to many people who are as fully evolved as the denizens of social media get.
The majority of the posts I read here are written with the confidence of people who have conquered their fear of expressing themselves: Who are not afraid to dive right into an idea and explore it: And who are equally confident and positive when commenting on other people’s ideas.
This, of course, has also led to a renewed energy on my part.
BeBee is the essence of social media for me, and obviously for a lot of the people I have connected with here. And I think we’re all pretty lucky to have found both this site and each other.

This Is A Unique Buzz

Having had a lot of not-so-great social media experiences, I was naturally skeptical when John White invited me to join beBee. But I have a great deal of respect for John, and knew that he was not the kind of person to steer someone up a dead end.
His confidence in Juan and Javier, (beBee's Head Bees), and the future of beBee was very high. And frankly, many of us were in the midst of looking at a number of alternatives to LinkedIn, where things had pretty much gone to hell.

I Don’t Believe In Coincidences…

But I do believe in timing, and beBee’s timing, at least for me, could not have been better. But I didn’t jump in right away. What I did was a little due diligence.
I’m a marketer and a creative person. I have been taught by the best people in the North American advertising business that you don’t go anywhere without a strategy.
So I nosed around on beBee until I started to get a good sense of what their strategy was. It’s actually pretty simple. And it was based on the concept of ‘affinity’.
I’m not going to give you the dictionary definition of affinity, because it can have slightly different meanings depending on how you’re looking at the concept.
What it meant to me, having just spent the last year working with Robert Wright on an affinity-based sales course called Selling To Buyer Personas, was being able to get into the head of your prospect and find out what makes them tick. What’s their business style? How do they interact with their company and the world? How do they like to communicate and be communicated to?
I have learned that affinity-based relationships are the strongest kind, because there is a lot of common ground that people can share. And taking the time to find that common ground is well worth the effort no matter what the situation.

Common Ground Is My Favouite Buzzword on BeBee

What’s Not To Love?

For a writer and long time blogger like myself, beBee quickly became the place I really wanted to be. And like good weed from back in the day, it’s something that you, want more than anything, to turn your friends onto.
beBee has managed to do something that very few social media sites have done, which is to create a distinctive and very positive brand identity and brand character for itself.
It is a place where people like to be. It’s light and airy. Its design is very clean and modern. And its personality (yes it has one), is very welcoming.

Nothing Good Happens Fast

beBee has recently arrived in North America and wants to grow. And because of everything I have just pointed out and a whole lot more that I have not, I have no doubt that it will.
It will grow because it’s defined a new category of social media site. And because of this, its growth will not be one of the hyper-accelerated, but more one of the slow and measured variety.
The user experience here is wonderful. And, frankly, keeping it that way through their growth is going to be the biggest challenge. We’ve all seen what can happen when you make things too complex, or you take your eye off the ball for any length of time.
But if I have learned anything about the people who run this enterprise, it's that I know they are aware of that and will do everything they can to make sure that their growth is never the cause for any impairment of the user experience.

The Bottom Line

Writers and bloggers and seekers/givers of knowledge need a home. A place where they can keep their stuff. I have found that home here on beBee and the longer I buzz around the more convinced I am that John White gave me some of the best advice I have ever received.

If you’re reading this on beBee, I strongly encourage you to forward this post, and some other good beBee info to people you feel could benefit from knowing a bit more about beBee.
If you’re reading this on LinkedIn, Facebook or any other site, I encourage you to check out beBee.com and get yourself established there. Because sooner or later, that will become a smart thing to do anyway.
I can’t guarantee you will have the same experience as I have. It all depends on what you’re looking for. But no matter what that might be, there’s a way to make that happen on beBee.
Thanks, Jim Murray

If you want to read more of my stuff, you can do that here:

https://www.bebee.com/publisher/@jim-murray

Download my free ebook, Small Business Communications For The Real World, here:

https://onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/small-business-communications-for-the-real-world/

All my profile and contact information can be accessed here:

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/this-post-is-my-about-page

All content copyright & Images 2016 Jim Murray. All rights reserved