Be like Jim.

There are some people who really shine online. I could name quite a few, but I’m going to save them for another post. This post is reserved for one guy in particular – Jim Connolly, a UK-based marketing consultant. Jim is an icy ocean away, yet he has somehow managed to create a warm and friendly relationship with me – and countless others, no doubt.

Jim, as they say, “gets it.” “It” is what another of my fave SM guys, Mack Collier (who probably thinks I’m stalking him by now) explains so well: “Don’t overthink social media. It’s not about the tools, it’s about what the tools allow you to do, which is share and connect.”

I first started following Jim about a month ago. Honestly, his name caught my eye because my father is also Jim Connolly. But a few link clicks convinced me he is a marketing guy I need to listen to. At the time, he was just short of 1,000 twitter followers. At last count, he had 3,241. Jim also has plenty of lively conversation going on at his blog. As I write this, he is compiling a list of people who want to connect on twitter.

But that’s just Jim. He’s always looking for ways to help others.

A few days ago, he tweeted this:

Thirty second later, my inbox was flooded with twitter follow alerts. By the end of the day I’d gained more than 150 followers, leading to this video. I’m beyond grateful for the (baffling!) attention, but I can’t stop thinking about what this says about Jim. Clearly, people trust and respect him. Not only did many of his followers act on his referral, some felt compelled to tweet me about him:

I took a closer look at his tweet stream and blog comments for more clues to the Jim Connolly “brand experience.” His tweets overflow with real conversations. He replies to most every blog comment. He’s always answering a question, plugging someone’s blog or praising an idea. Everywhere you look Jim is helping someone out. So the mystery as to how Jim has created such a following was solved: palm-up networking.

That left just one question to complete my case study: Where does Jim find the time to promote himself? I didn’t have to go further than my own tweet stream to find the answer. I had become an accidental evangelist:

And here I am at midnight hammering out an entire post about Jim, complete with links to his company site, blog and twitter page. Huh. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Photo credit: i_am_metolius via Flickr