In “Trust Agents,” Chris Brogan and Julien Smith write about how online friends aren’t equal to “move your couch” friends.

I totally understand where they are coming from. I have more than 1,700 people following me on Twitter, but I don’t know much about most of them. God knows I wouldn’t ask them to help me move my couch, but I have leveraged many of my online friendships into deeper, more meaningful and valuable trust relationships by attending a lot of events and building social capital and goodwill with folks.

How do I know?

I sent the following tweet today in an attempt to cash in on some of my hard-earned social capital:

Within a few minutes, I got four responses — all from people who I didn’t previously think of as “move your couch” friends. The main BlogWorld account even retweeted my plea for help.

Now I know that watching over @ReeseTheDog is a lot cuter and more fun than moving a huge-ass couch up and down flights of stairs in my apartment building, but I still think this is significant.

It’s not that your online friends can’t turn into “move your couch” friends, it’s just that you have to work hard to build up the social capital to do that. In my opinion, the best way to do that is to just be helpful all the time. Be a connector. Be a solver. Be a door opener for people. And don’t do it with the expectation of any kind of favor repayment.

If you do all these things, you’re a Trust Agent in my book. See you all at BlogWorld!