networking

Why you should attend ConvergeSouth

September 13, 2010 By Mark Tosczak Leave a Comment

Blogs and social media are great, but you can often learn more, meet more people and have a richer experience attending conferences, seminars and other events in person. There’s a big difference between skimming a blog post in your RSS reader and the immersive, interactive experience of a conference.

That’s why, if you’re interested in social media, search engine optimization (SEO) and doing business online, you should attend ConvergeSouth 2010. (Disclaimer: I am one of the volunteers helping to put the conference together. I’m involved because I’ve attended several past ConvergeSouth conferences and I think it’s a great conference.)

So far, this year’s line-up of speakers includes:

Six tips for getting more out of conferences

March 9, 2010 By Mark Tosczak 2 Comments

Don't just sit there. Make sure you get the most out of attending a conference or seminar. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/211097)

I recently attended Ragan’s Social Media for Communicators conference in Atlanta (which was excellent — the folks at Ragan did a great job finding speakers and putting on a great event). For 2½ days about 500 of us met at Coca-Cola headquarters and heard first-hand how some of the country’s best known companies are using social media.

In addition to getting a lot of good ideas about social media, I also came away with some thoughts — some new, some old — about ways to get more out of a conference or seminar.

1. If it is a social media event or if people will be tweeting about it, find out the hashtag (or designate one if no one else will) ahead of time. Bonus: start tweeting before the event to make yourself known to other attendees and meet them before you actually arrive.

2. Find other ways to organize attendees online. I started a Twitter list of conference attendees. After the Ragan conference, a fan page for conference attendees was started on Facebook and another attendee started a LinkedIn group.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Business, Career, networking, Productivity Tagged With: conferences

How to strengthen your relationships

February 15, 2010 By Mark Tosczak 3 Comments

Have you reached out and touched people in your network lately? (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/616726)

In social media it’s easy to get caught up in mechanical ideas of what building and maintaining relationships is about. Are you pinging your network regularly? Are you sharing content, creating value? Are you thanking people? In marketing, we start quantifying these things: How many tweets, how many retweets, how many followers or subscribers or fans?

And that’s fine. Except that it’s all just a way of dancing around the real issue: relationships.

I got an email last week from an old acquaintance (which I haven’t returned yet — sorry Jamie, I will). We’re connected via LinkedIn and she wrote to tell me what was going on with her life and to ask what was going on with mine. She said that she was trying to do a better job this year of connecting with her network. Good for her.

All of us should steal that idea and do the same. It’s not numbers of friends, followers or subscribers that are ultimately important, it’s relationships. That’s why it’s called social media, and that’s where its power lies.

How to budget time for social media

February 15, 2010 By Mark Tosczak Leave a Comment

You have limited time - use it wisely when it comes to social media. (Photo source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1068015)

One of the challenges of social media is how to manage the amount of time that you could put into these activities. How much time, and how exactly you spend that time, will end up being a little different for everyone depending on your goals and strategy.

Here’s a framework to help you budget your time. This is especially helpful for personal branding and networking activities, where it’s harder (or seems harder) to just carve hours out of your workday for these activities.

Content creation

Do you blog? Do you write articles or white papers or create presentations that you share on Slideshare? What about podcasting? Creating original content can help you establish a brand and demonstrate your expertise and knowledge. It’s a very powerful strategy, and if you choose to use it you’ll want to set aside some time to focus on it.

How much content do you want to produce each week or month?
How much time do you need to devote to produce that content? How many hours is that each week and each day, on average?
When will you put in that time? During your lunch hour? In the early mornings or late at night? On the weekends? Decide when and put it on your calendar.

In my case I’m probably averaging about 10 hours a week on blogging right now. You don’t have to spend that much time, but consistency is important.

Listening and reading

It’s important to keep up with what’s going on in your industry — reading blogs, articles and books, listening to podcasts, and generally keeping up with new ideas and conversation. How much time you spend on this will vary depending on your industry and goals.

Accountants need to keep up with the latest tax law changes. Doctors have to try to plough through stacks of medical journals. I try to keep up with the flood of books on social media that are being published and the many, many blogs on the subject. Since it’s so easy to become overwhelmed by the amount of information available, it’s a good idea to decide how much time you want to spend on this.

What do you need to keep up with? Books, blogs, professional journals, other sources?
How many hours per week will you devote to this?
When will you keep up with these? At night before you go to sleep? Can you listen to podcasts and audiobooks on your iPod on the way to work?
Do you have a system to bring the most relevant content to your attention? Google alerts? RSS feeds? Some of the tips in this post on finding and sharing great content can help.

Conversation

Of course, social media isn’t very social if you’re not talking. That could include sharing content you find, responding to others in a variety of social media channels (including commenting on blogs), and even reaching out to people via email to connect offline. It also is the tool that allows you to turn mere online connections into actual relationships (whether they’re weak or strong).

1. What social media channels are most important for you? Twitter, Facebook, a specialized social media network on Ning or a forum devoted to your industry?

2. How much time will you spend on these channels? An hour a day? Three hours a week?

3. When will you spend that time? In short 15-minute bursts throughout the day? In a longer, more concentrated period a few times each week?

More tips

All of us have a limited time and energy, but the vast world of social media can suck up an enormous amount of that if we’re not careful. So here are some tips to manage that.

Focus. You probably have limited time, at best a few hours a days, to devote to this. So concentrated on the 20 percent of tools/sites/strategies that are going to yield 80 percent of your results. For me, these days, that means Twitter, writing blog posts and reading blog posts and books get most of my attention.

Be realistic. Don’t sketch out a plan that calls for 30 hours a week (almost a full-time job) of work on this, and then find out a month into it that’s it’s just too much. It’s better to start out with very modest ambitions. As you become more fluent with the tools, you’ll be able to increase your productivity by becoming more efficient and integrating these tools into your life.

Consider the rest of your life. If you’re going through a really busy period at work, going on vacation or caring for a sick family member, some of these actvities may temporarily take a back seat. That’s OK. Don’t burn yourself out or disregard other priorities just for the sake of keeping up with some ideal social media time budget.

Got ideas or questions on how to budget your time for social media? Please share them in the comments below.

Filed Under: Blogging, Career, Content marketing, networking, Online marketing, Personal branding, Productivity, Social media Tagged With: time management

Changing my approach to Facebook

February 14, 2010 By Mark Tosczak Leave a Comment

Note: As I’ve mentioned previously, I challenged myself to write 30 posts in 30 days. I’ve not been as consistent with my blogging as I would have liked, so I’ve got to get a lot of blog posts published in the last couple of days. So, you’ll see several more posts than normal in the next couple of days. On Feb. 17, I’ll return to a normal schedule of three to five times per week. Please bear with me. Thanks!

Last year, I wrote a post called Why I’m becoming more promiscuous online, which explained my personal approach to social media and networking. Re-reading that, my philosophy and approach to social media hasn’t changed much, but I am making a tweak to it. I’m going to close off my personal Facebook account to people I don’t have some sort of real relationship with. Later this week, I’ll start unfriending people who I don’t know in real life or haven’t had some sort of interaction with. Here’s why.

Lately, I’ve started getting more and more friend invitations on Facebook from people I just don’t know. In some cases, they are friends with someone else I know, so there’s a chance I could run into them in my day-to-day life. In some cases, we don’t have any friends in common. I think some of them come from this blog. I’ve had my Facebook link posted prominently (the icon over on the right) for a while, in the last few weeks readership here has gone up dramatically. Some of those new readers have asked to connect on Facebook (and in some cases, I have).

But something else has happened in the last few months, also. My personal interactions and communications — information about my kids, my family and my connections to them — has increased. More relatives have connected with me online, and a lot of my Facebook activity has become more personal. I’m not feeling as comfortable about having that open to anyone who comes along. So with Facebook I’m altering my “promiscuous” approach and becoming more conservative.

The new MarkTzk.com fan page on Facebook

Still, I know a lot of people I might encounter online will still be interested in opportunities to interact on Facebook. So I’ve set up a Facebook fan page for that. The Facebook icon over in the right-hand column of this blog already points to it. I’m afraid there’s not much there yet, but I’ll start to gradually populate it with content over time, and I hope it becomes another place where we can talk about the topics and issues that this blog covers. I also plan to treat it as a kind of laboratory for experiments with Facebook marketing and Facebook fan page customization.

My LinkedIn and Twitter accounts will remain very open, so I’d still love to connect with you there. And if you know me from someplace other than this blog, there’s a pretty good chance we’ll remain friends on Facebook. See you at the fan page.

Filed Under: Administrivia, networking, Online marketing, Personal, Personal branding, Social media Tagged With: Facebook, fan page

How to get people (or at least me) to follow you back on Twitter

February 10, 2010 By Mark Tosczak Leave a Comment

I’ve recently been bumping up against the follower limits that hit when you start following 2,000 or more people on Twitter. As I understand it, once you’re following 2,000 or more, Twitter limits the maximum number of people you can follow to the number of people who follow you plus roughly 10 percent. So if you’re following 1,999 people and 1,800 people are following you — no problem. But once you’re following 2,000 people, you can’t follow any more because 1,800 plus 10 percent is equal to 1,980. To follow more, you’ve got to have more people following you. I don’t know if that 10 percent figure is precise, but it seems to be in the right place.

What that has meant is that some folks recently followed me that I couldn’t follow back, at least immediately, until my follower numbers were higher. So I started to work through this barrier by identifying Twitter accounts I could unfollow, freeing up spots for new followers. I also have been looking more selectively at the accounts following me before deciding to follow them or not.

I am basically inclined, out of courtesy and to open up the opportunities for meeting new people and having new interactions, to follow back anyone who follows me (I’m @marktzk on Twitter). But I am not following back everyone. Here are some of the reasons I might not be following you back (and if a lot of people are not following you back, chances are this applies to them, too).

1. You don’t tweet in English. Sorry, I’m monolingual. I’m not proud of it, and I would like someday to gain fluency in a second language, but it’s not happening right now. If I can’t understand what you’re saying, there’s not much point in following you.

2. There are a lot of affiliate links or ads in your tweet stream. I don’t mind you occasionally trying to make a buck through Twitter, but please do it occasionally, not frequently, and do it in a way that seems to fit in organically with whoever you are and whatever you tweet about it.

3. All your tweets are links to news and other web items. Sharing is good. Doing nothing but broadcasting stuff — basically hooking your Twitter account up to an RSS feed — is not so good. I’m looking for interaction and real human beings.

4. All your tweets are about you. Doing nothing but promoting your blog posts or nothing but making random comments about your life is just not that interesting. Those are both fine to include as part of your tweet stream, but I am looking for some evidence that if I follow you we might have a chance to interact at some point.

5. You don’t converse. Based on looking at your tweet stream, you never @reply or have conversations, you don’t retweet and you don’t seem to interact with others. All of your tweets are one way. Increasingly, I look to Twitter for interaction, sharing and at least the possibility of new relationships. In other words, if all I see is the behavior in numbers 2, 3 and 4 above.

6. You haven’t tweeted recently, or you only tweet rarely (once a week or less). Again, in my eyes this makes it less likely that we’ll have a chance to interact, so this is not good.

7. You’re account looks like it was set up to spam people. You don’t have a picture in your profile, there’s no link to someplace (a LinkedIn profile, at least?), or you have few or no tweets yet you’re following a lot of people. This makes you look like a spammer in the making, and I won’t go there.

On the other hand, the following things make more more likely to follow you.

1. You converse with people online. I’m looking for @replys, retweets and the like in your tweet stream. If I see them, no matter what else, I am much more likely to follow you back. Obviously, as you can tell from above, this is a big one for me.

2. You are (or could be) a part of my community offline. That might mean you live close to me (in the same state), or you work in the same industry (PR/marketing) or you have something in common with me that’s apparent in your bio or tweet stream (you’re a writer a or you share an alma mater with me, for example). Also, if I already know you in real life, than there’s a very good chance I’ll follow you.

3. You have retweeted or #FF’d me. Hey, I’m a sucker for flattery and attention, just like anybody else. So long as it doesn’t look you’re doing this purely for spammy reasons, I’m much more inclined to follow you if you do this. It’s just plain old reciprocity, one of the fundamental drivers of human social behavior.

4. You’ve replied to something I tweeted. Even if I wasn’t following you, you replied to something I tweeted. Maybe to comment on it, add something helpful or just say ‘thanks for tweeting that link.’ Whatever the case, this kind of personal communication lets me know that you’re into Twitter as a conversation platform, and that there’s a good possibility we’ll be able to interact.

I don’t have hard and fast rules about who I follow or don’t follow. But these are the factors, positive and minus, that usually go into my decision. How do you decide who to follow on Twitter? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Filed Under: Microblogging, networking, Online marketing, Personal branding, Social media Tagged With: Twitter

Four easy tips for making your business card and email signature more social

January 28, 2010 By Mark Tosczak Leave a Comment

Is your business card social media savvy? (Photo by blary54 at stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1022838)

So you’re a social media maven. You tweet, you blog, you have accounts on all the major social media sites, and a few of the minor ones, too. You know how Digg works, understand URL shorteners and subscribe to a bunch of RSS feeds from social media rock stars like Chris Brogan and probloggers like Darren Rowse.

But, do your business card and email signature reflect these facts? Or are they mired in the ’90s, when a fax number was just as important as an email address?

Here are some ideas to bring these two common identity tools up to date:

1. Add the address for the social media service you use most commonly. For me, that’s Twitter (@marktzk, in case you want to follow me).

2. Instead of a company web address, how about a blog web address? This may not be feasible if you are part of a company and have a business card and email signature that follow a standard, prescribed format. But if you are self-employed, have personal business cards and use a personal email account, why not add the blog address to those?

Tip: You can get free business cards at VistaPrint and Bizcard.com.

3. You may be writing brilliant, useful content on your blog, but are you letting people know? How about adding the three most recent blog posts you’ve written under your email signature? If that seems strange or too narcissistic, it’s certainly not any worse than the quotes and song lyrics I see regularly in email sigs. Firefox add-on WiseStamp can help you do this for your free webmail (i.e. Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) accounts.

4. Are you promoting a free offer on your blog to get people to sign up for your email newsletter? For instance, perhaps your offering a free report or PDF when people join your email list. Consider putting this on the back of your business card or, again, in your email signature. (While we’re at it — is this information included in your major social media profiles? Some people who review these profiles will probbly be interested in your email list.)

I’m sure there are other things you could do with your business card and email signature to make them more social. What are your ideas? Please share them in the comments below.

Filed Under: Blogging, Career, Content marketing, Email, Microblogging, networking, Personal branding, Social media Tagged With: business cards, email signatures

Five ways to turn online relationships into offline connections

January 25, 2010 By Mark Tosczak Leave a Comment

Meeting for coffee is an easy, tried-and-true way to build offline relationships. (Photo by trublueboy @ stock.xchng - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/644967)

So let’s say, hypothetically, that you’ve been really successful in your social media efforts and you are building relationships online. That’s great. But sometimes, to take a business relationship to the next level, you need to take it offline. How do you do that? Here are some simple suggestions:

Professional Meetings and Conferences

Nearly every profession has professional conferences, trade shows and other events where people converge to learn and network together. Reach out to your online contacts in your industry and ask whether any of them of will be at the events that you’re attending. If so, ask to have lunch with them, meet them at breakfast or find some other way to connect.

Local Professional Society Events

Professional societies are also a great way to turn local online relationships into local offline relationships. If you’re a member of a professional group (such as the Public Relations Society of America for PR pros), there is very likely a local chapter that has regular meetings. Offer to meet at one of those events and make a point of connecting in person there.

Tip: If you’re a member of a professional group that doesn’t have a local chapter, consider forming one yourself. Do that and your local (and national) professional opportunities are likely to grow considerably. (This was something I had planned to do in 2009, but then the year got overwhelmingly busy for me. We’ll see if I’m able to carve out some time this year.)

Tweetups and Meetups

There may be informal groups meeting in your area that include people you know online. Check out Tweetups.org and Meetup.com to find local informal gatherings you might join. If there aren’t any already taking place, consider organizing one yourself. Organizing an event yourself is a true power-networker move. Here are some tips from Mashable on organizing successful Tweetups.

Coffee and Food

Beyond group events, the old standby of “let’s have coffee/lunch/drinks sometime” is an easy, low pressure way to turn an online connection into an offline relationship. This usually makes sense once you’ve had some mutually enriching back-and-forth communications with someone and you’ve reached the limits of what you can practically do online. Sometimes, a 30-minute mid-morning coffee can allow for a level and depth of communication that’s difficult online. You can discover professional opportunities (for collaboration, partnerships or even employment), build your Rolodex and simply enjoy meeting someone new.

The same thing works when you’re traveling, too. If you have a trip coming up to another city, consider who you know online there that you might reach out to and meet in person. The worse someone can say is “I don’t have time.” A copywriter I only know online once offered to meet as he was passing through town. I accepted. We ended up canceling it due to an unavoidable conflict that came up on my end, but if he comes through town again I’d be happy to sit down and get to know him in person.

Note: Never put yourself in a situation that could be risky or dangerous with someone you don’t know well. Meet in a public place, pay your own way and arrange your own transportation. Exchange business cards, but not home addresses. ‘Nuff said.

Phone Calls

Finally, if you can’t arrange any of these in-person meetings, a phone call can sometimes work wonders for a relationship. If you’re an introvert (like me), this may strike you as unnatural and unnecessary. However, more often than not, this really works. After some online interaction where you find yourself thinking “what an interesting person” try sending this message: “Hey, I’d like to learn a bit more about you. Any chance you might have a few minutes for a phone call in the next week or two?”

What are your tips for taking networking and interaction from the Web to the offline world? Please share them in the comments below.

Filed Under: Career, networking, Online marketing, Personal branding, Social media Tagged With: networking, relationships, Social media, social networking

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