Online dating is not just becoming a bigger thing every next year, it’s the norm now and many success stories have come out of it. Turns out, 19% of brides met their husband online and are pretty okay with that fact. And why wouldn’t they be? Such apps are a great way to select the individuals that do seem promising and give it a try with a few first dates. No need for destiny anymore. Everyone just has a profile and is openly sharing that they are looking for someone, be it a relationship or just to kill some time with a nice person.
But that’s not all. With the smartphone addiction, the online dating industry’s revenue surpassed $3 billion last year. While the old generations might disagree that this is the way to meet your soulmate, millennials and generation Z (or the e-generation) are pretty okay with it. Not only do they find nice people to hang out with and a potential partner, but online dating helps their social and professional skills. When used in the right way, it can be an effective strategy to leverage your free time and level up in your career, right from your phone. Let’s see how that happens:
1. You learn to present yourself better.
Most of us aren’t comfortable talking about ourselves, especially highlighting our successes or good qualities, together with sharing more personal stuff. But that’s exactly what you need to get better at if you want to land your dream job, or build a business, or network successfully. It’s all about putting yourself in a good light. And while it’s okay to let your work speak for itself, only you can do that best.
However, we don’t get to experiment with that in the professional world, so we can’t really build it as a skill. That’s when online dating apps can help you if you give them a chance.
Every time you connect with a person, you’ll ask questions but also answer theirs. While some might be unexpected, it often begins in the same way – by having to tell a bit about yourself and what you do. That’s when you can find out whether you’re a good communicator already, or if there’s a lot of work to be done to improve this. You should be able to freely describe yourself and your life in a few sentences or paragraphs, depending on how chatty the other person is and to keep the balance.
If you persevere, every next time you’ll feel less uncomfortable doing this, will find out new things you’d like to add that are honest and sound good, and will replace some expressions with better ones.
For some, the problem is that they can’t keep it short. While others can’t think of anything about themselves other than their current job position. Both of these approaches are wrong. Start using at least one online dating app regularly to be able to express yourself better and create a great first impression.
2. You get good at reading people.
There’s a lot we can learn by meeting different people, but sometimes there’s not enough variety in our professional circle. That’s when you can turn to online dating sites and get the chance to at least chat with all kinds of individuals. Keep an open mind and don’t judge, just use it to understand how people think and what grabs their attention. That’s the foundation of sales and marketing, after all. And if you meet someone nice, you’ll take more than knowledge with you.
3. Practice your active listening.
One of the main reasons why many people are bad communicators is that they aren’t good listeners. Interaction begins by being present and paying attention to what the other person is saying, not interrupting, and waiting until they are done to respond. Anything else is rushing through the conversation and not allowing them to be comfortable and feel appreciated. That can often ruin relationships in the long-run and is a pretty bad sign that the person is impatient during an interview or when talking to potential clients or partners.
The opposite of this is called active listening. It’s so effective that it’s used in counseling, but it can work pretty well in real life too. In fact, that’s how we are all supposed to communicate on a daily basis. Just like we should live more slowly and stop keeping ourselves busy all the time. It takes some mindfulness, though. Take a few deep breaths before starting a chat with a stranger and prepare to listen. Everyone likes good listeners as most probably the other person hasn’t met many of them throughout their life. So they have so much to share and want to feel like someone on the other side cares about that and is ready to just keep quiet and listen.
Once you get better at this online, take the newly learned skill to your professional life too. You’ll see many benefits as people will trust you and respect you more, seek your opinion more often, feel like you understand them, etc.
4. Online dating apps can help you hone your copywriting skills.
Every business today has digital presence and must have a website and be on all social media channels. These places, together with every article published on behalf of the company or individual, has a few chances to either grab attention or be skipped. It all starts with an eye-catching title followed by a smooth description that makes the person want to find out more. So it is in the online dating world where you have to say just a few things about yourself (could be anything) and this will either make or break your success rate.
You have a few words to get people interested, although that applies to men mostly. As women are the gender that spends 50% more time reading through profiles, while men prefer to trust the photos and get that chat started already.
But humans’ attention span is short and there’s so much competition. You need to carefully think through what you’ll include in your profile. It must share just enough about you so people can connect, but at the same time keep the mystery by making them ask themselves questions that only you can answer. That’s the art of copywriting and it’s a skill we learn over time. Even seemingly stupid Tinder pick up lines can teach you a lot about creativity!
If you do allow online dating to help you improve it, you’ll be able to write better and more convincing emails, social media updates that get more attention, a more interesting CV, etc. Each of these can be the reason why somebody from a profitable company notices you and contacts you.
Conclusion
Apparently, online dating apps aren’t going anywhere, so you can as well make the most of them. Choose one with an easy to use interface and which you enjoy, if you haven’t already, and put yourself out there. You’ll start building social and professional skills from day one.
However, turn this into a habit. It’s easy to just install an app and never open it again. You won’t see its advantages unless you do it for a week or two. Just keep an open mind, know this can be challenging but also fun, and be ready to learn things from it.