The Connection Cycle Revisited

I created The Connection Cycle as an incentive ethos when I first started out in digital marketing and communications back in 2013. 

Here's my original post about it.

It was I suppose at the time, intended as a marketing model and a way of describing something that I believed many business owners had forgotten. It forms the very heart of why humans connect, what brands try to emulate and the heart of my work.

Back then Social Media was still finding its feet and digital marketing had not yet hardened into performance. I had started my Online PR UK agency and was asked to offer a fair few industry talks and workshops. I was talking to freelancers, small business owners, and people standing on the edge of something new, often unsure whether they were allowed to bring themselves into the work.

What struck me, again and again, was not a lack of skill or ambition. It was hesitation. An uncertainty about how visible one should be. How personal was too personal?

Where is the line between professionalism and honesty?

I remember speaking at the Digital Marketing Show at ExCeL one year, clicking through a PowerPoint deck (hated those), i realised something. Everyone in the room already had the answers they were searching for. They were just hiding them for some reason.

Pride? Peter pressure? Fear?

What was actually missing was a permission slip to stop separating who they were from what they were building.

The Connection Cycle grew from that moment and I knew exactly why I was there.

The Connection Cycle

Tech moves on but this will never change.

Connection begins with compatibility. Not sameness, but recognition. A shared value, question, or way of seeing the world. That small sense of familiarity creates safety. From there comes clarity. We understand what we stand for, what we share, and what we do not. Clarity has a quiet power. It shapes identity without noise. When clarity exists, collectives form. Not audiences or followers, but groups bound by meaning.

Belonging does not happen by accident. It is built slowly, through consistency and care. From belonging comes contact. From contact, conversation. From conversation, communication that actually means something.

At its best, this energy spreads. People share not because they are prompted, but because they feel involved. Contribution follows naturally. Time, ideas, loyalty, effort. And through that giving, connection deepens again. The cycle closes and reopens.

This is the point many brands miss. They chase attention before resonance, scale before clarity, reach before relationship. The result is activity without attachment. Motion without meaning. Lots of noise, very little trust.

I believe when self and business are kept apart, everything takes longer. The work feels heavier and clunkier and progress / success slows down.

When they are allowed to mix, the opposite happens. Decisions become clear. Communication softens and results improve through natural alignment.

The Connection Cycle is not mine it’s ours.

It asks a simpler, more uncomfortable question: what are you actually inviting people to belong to?

In a digital world that is faster, louder, and increasingly automated, this question matters more than ever. Technology can amplify connection, but it cannot create it. Algorithms can distribute words, but they cannot supply their true meaning.

The cycle still holds because we have not changed. We still want to be recognised. We still want to belong. We still want to contribute to something that feels real and true. And will always.

The Connection Cycle is not a strategy. It is a reminder that connection is earned, community is cultivated and that when we allow ourselves to show up fully, in life as well as in business, everything else tends to fall into place.

LOVE X