Whether you’re interested in advancing your career, or having a new group of friends to go out with, you need to learn—and perhaps master—the skill of making friends. In this article, I would like to share with you 6 tips that will help you expand your social circles.
1 – Connect With Connectors
A great way to expand your social circle is to connect to someone through whom you’ll meet many other people. Those “connectors” are the types of people who keep friends on Facebook by the thousands, host parties whenever they can, and always seem to be with a large group of people.
Oftentimes, these are very open people and are easier to connect with than you think. They might not have the time to invest in a deep friendship with you, but they love to get to know more interesting people to add to their circle.
2 – Meet New People Constantly
A great habit to have is to always be meeting people that you can add to your circles. In reality, not all the people you meet will become your friends and not all your current friends will be around forever. This is why I always say that if you’re not making new friends, you’re actually making fewer.
I recommend that you go to places where you it’s easy and appropriate to walk up to anyone and introduce yourself. Ideally, you need to go to places where others are open to meeting new people as well. Examples might be trade shows, opening nights, galas, cultural or charitable events, seminars, and talks.
3 – Establish Yourself As a Giver of Value
When meeting lots of people, you have to “hook”. Nothing hooks better than having a giver attitude. First, listen really to what they say and imagine if you were them; see the world through their eyes. Second, be willing to share stories, contacts, or quick advice on what people are talking about.
When you meet new people, there are some psychological principles that determine whether or not they’ll want to meet you again. This works on an unconscious level. One of the most important principles is the giver/taker attitude. If they sense that you only care about yourself, connection isn’t going to happen.
You can portray a giver attitude in two ways. The first is about really listening to what they say, imagining the world through their eyes, and giving them your opinion on their stories and situations. The second way is to prove that you’re ready to share similar stories about what they’re talking about, or introduce them to someone who could help them.
4 – Commit to a Local Community
One of the fastest ways to boost your social life is to get involved in a community that has the type of people that you want as friends. This community should be in your local area and should hold social get-togethers once a month, or more.
What you do is find one that you like, maybe on meetup.com, and offer your help to the people who run it. They’ll most likely accept, even if they don’t need that much help; they’ll just be glad you’re interested. This works great because it makes you meet everyone, and because it establishes you as a giver of value.
5 – Reach Out to People On a Regular Basis
Staying in touch is vital if you want to keep your social circles alive. You need to follow up with the people you just met, and catch up with existing friends. The challenge here is that we tend to get distracted and forget about it, and regret later on.
To solve this problem, you can create a weekly ritual, where you spend only one hour calling, texting, and messaging people. Just mark on your calendar a specific day and time, and do it every week. A great time to do it is Tuesday or Wednesday, as it gives you the opportunity to make plans with people for the weekend.
6 – Know the Kind of Friends You Want in Advance
Before you start investing more time on making friends, do a little planning. Try to figure out what kind of people you want to hang out with. List out a few qualities, character traits, or interests that you like, and don’t hesitate to be a little more ambitious than usual. This is important because it allows your mind to quickly tell if a person you meet could be a great fit for you.
Here are some qualities you can start with: giver, interesting, fun, ambitious, honest, loyal, curious, and reliable. You can add others if you want, and you can also make a list of the activities you want to be doing with your future friends. These lists won’t be definitive, but the clarity they bring will save you a lot of time and frustration. I also recommend that you invest a bit of time learning about friendship and how it works.
