Portland / Beaverton Handyman Edition Of Six Degrees Of Social Media Separation

I’ve had terrible luck getting and keeping good and reliable handyman for my house. I have a great plumber and a great painter that I work with and but with handymen, I’ve encountered either incompetence or unreliability with several different people. So, after I realized that this social media trend is probably here to stay, I decided to tweet my need to my network to see if I could get any leads on a reliable Portland / Beaverton Handyman.

I got one Twitter lead which would have been great had I lived in Portland, Maine (thanks anyway @monicawright). However, I had also setup my Twitter feed to port out to my Facebook page which allows all my Facebook friends to read my Tweets (which I do strongly recommend to everyone because I get a good number of people responding to me via Facebook).

Via Facebook, I got a message from Mike Gonzalez saying he does handyman work and would love to help me out. I asked for his phone number so we could talk about the logistics of what I needed. When I chatted with him, I first apologized that with all the Facebook friends and other social media contacts I have, I could not remember how he and I became connected. So, he told me…

A couple years ago, he was taking a business class at Portland State University. Our past SEMpdx President Kent Lewis teaches an Internet Marketing Course at PSU and he gave some complimentary passes to our first Searchfest event to Mike’s professor…one of which was passed to Mike. Mike attended Searchfest I where he remembers meeting me. Not only that, I was Mike’s first Facebook Friend. When I started pushing each of our SEMpdx events via Facebook, Mike received my Facebook emails and was compelled to join. One look at his page shows that he is clearly participating in the Facebook community. Currently, Mike is doing handyman work while attending school. He came by the house to see what needed to be done and both my wife and I have a good feeling that Mike will not only do an excellent job but have the reliability that our previous handymen have lacked.

The smartest folks in our industry spend lots of time building and nurturing large networks across many social media platforms. Perhaps some do it for ego but the value in having the attention of so many well-connected, influential, and helpful people with diverse backgrounds and abilities can not be overestimated. I don’t believe I’ve run across Mike’s name in any of the social media circles where I participate but he clearly has been following me and has seen the value in my conversations. I am very grateful for that.