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Blog post by Chris Collison on 2.26.13, that discusses reciprocity in fostering a learning atmosphere and adoption of best practice in an organization. Excerpt: "Reciprocity is an important principle for knowledge management, and one which underpins the idea of Offers and Requests. Offers and Requests was a simple approach, introduced to make it easier for Operations Engineers at BP to ask for help, and to share good practice with their peers. The idea was for each business unit to self-assess their level of operational excellence using a maturity model, and identify their relative strengths and weaknesses. In order to overcome barriers like "tall poppy syndrome", or a reluctance to ask for help ("real men don't ask directions"), a process was put in place whereby every business unit would be asked to offer three areas which they felt proud of, and three areas which they wanted help with. The resulting marketplace for matching offers and requests was successful because: i) The principle of offering a strength at the same time as requesting help was non-threatening and reciprocal - it was implicitly fair. ii) The fact that every business unit was making their offers and requests at the same time meant that it felt like a balanced and safe process."

Article by Joanne Fritz at About.com Nonprofit Charitable Orgs on managing social media. She suggests "high activity on a limited # of networks." She uses Twitter (#1), Facebook, Google + (because it is growing rapidly and counts a lot toward SEO), and Hootsuite as her dashboard for social activity. Also recommends sharing reciprocity as indicated below: "I generally try to maintain a ratio of one for me to two or three of everyone else. One recent blog post suggested using the rule of quarters: 25% your content, 25% interaction, and 50% others' content. Of course, there is a reason for that. It's called reciprocity. When I promote someone else's blog posts or articles, that someone is likely to return the favor. When someone else endorses my work, that is much more effective than when I do it. My system for sharing revolves around my RSS Feed (I use Google Reader). The key to success with RSS is to get into the habit of checking it often. Otherwise it becomes a mess. "

****This post by Derek J. Keenan explains his Social Professional Learning Model that served as his Masters Capstone paper at Alberta University, April 23, 2012. Its core is an action research approach to learning enriched by and anchored in social media. Substitute teacher with "other named professional" and it works for people in all types of work/interests. There is also a short (s cultivating connections with the people who have the same self-directed learning quest as you. The next step is reciprocating by publishing and sharing what you know or believe to be true. Throughout it is your experience that informs your participation and your participation informs your level of understanding--you are constantly learning and eventually building your personal learning network relationships to be there for you.