Networking Remains A “Contact Sport”

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I really wanted to use a picture of a fight but …………. (smile). With all the hype surrounding Social media as a way to make contacts, it reminds me that it is even more important to meet contacts. As others have properly pointed out, it’s not about numbers, it is about conversions. And, in my experience, conversions occur face-to-face. Networking is still very much about “pressing the flesh” and “meet and greet”. Why do you think they have TweetUps? Even good little Tweeple recognize that, at some point, they are actually going to have to speak to each other in order to take the relationship to the next higher level (smile).

What social media really is, as Justin Foster puts so well, “old rules, new tools.”  It’s still communication. Social media excels in the areas of branding and initiating some form of contact. Case in point. I was having coffee with Jacob Nordby the other day and as some people were leaving he stopped this one gal and said “Aren’t you …..”. And, yes, she was. They had never met but recognized each other from Twitter. This is a result of branding. Jacob was initiating a form of contact. Mission accomplished. And there are many avenues to get to that goal. Honestly, while social media can be a lot of work, by the same token it encourages folks to be lazy where it counts. Here are some of my favorite, and proven, old school methods:

1. Lunch or coffee. I have never taken a client or a referrer out to one of these without having come back with at least one new opportunity. Generally multiples.
2. Networking groups. Need I say anymore about that?
3. Public Hearings. I picked up the Home Depot account by being at a public hearing where I was, at the time, representing US Bank.
4. Networking events. Once again, pressing the flesh.
5. Any form of business or social group or event that involves meeting people.
6. How about picking up the phone or actually writing something that requires a stamp?

On a sadder note, I regret to announce the following …. Having owned a Blackberry about 5 years ago, I swore I would never have another. That pledge has been broken (smile). Naturally, inquiring minds want to know what has driven me to this crazed state. Had to do it. Had to keep up with technology. I was FORCED! So, why not an iPhone? Not much choice with that. I am a T-Mobile customer and, while T-Mobile I believe is the only other carrier around where you can “jail break” an iPhone and make it work, I was not about to spend the $500, or whatever it is, for that privilege. There is another more important reason. I live in what could be considered a “cell service free” zone and I work out of my home. I use T-Mobile’s Hot Spot at Home to connect to my wireless router and actually make and receive calls over the internet. It’s like having a cell tower in my house. As an added benefit, and as T-Mobile does not have 3G service yet in my area, my Crackberry Curve 8900 connects to my wifi for web browsing and I am more interested in email and Twitter than I am at surfing.

NetWorks! Boise Golfs For Project PATCH

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We held our second annual golf scramble this morning at Shadow Valley Golf Course. More on them to follow. One of our members, Greg Gaddis of Thornton Oliver Keller Commercial Real Estate, suggested that instead of the crummy prizes like we gave away last year, how about if each of us who plays were to throw in a few bucks and we can designate a hole for “closest to the pin” and then donate that money to a charity chosen by the player that wins that contest? What a great idea!

The result of this is that a check for $200 will be in the mail to Project PATCH which is the designated charity of Jeremy Presley of Materials Testing and Inspection. Project PATCH is passionately committed to restoring troubled youth and building stronger families. Sounds like a great organization and we are very pleased to make this contribution!

So, we are not a very large group to begin with but, we did muster nine folks to play and we separated into three groups. The “rogues gallery” is shown below…

NetWorks! Boise Hackers

From Left to Right: Jeremy Presley, Rocky Cook, Darrin Jaszkowiak, Greg Gaddis,

Tom Bevan III,  Skip Anderson, Clint Paskewitz, & Jim Coslett. I’m taking the pic

We had a great time and I do need to do a shout out to TJ and Ty over at Shadow Valley. I gave my clubs away 10 years ago and have not hit a ball since. They gave me free use of a set of clubs and even loaded my bag up with balls. Each cart came equipped with a cooler with ice and bottled waters and a couple of great cookies. If that were not enough, they designated one hole for long drive and another for closest to the pin and donated four boxes (16 sleeves) of Callaway HX Hot golf balls and a free round of golf along with a bucket of range balls. WOW! Thanks, guys!

5 Essential Gadgets On My iGoogle Home Page

I’m a person that just hates to have to switch back and forth through different windows. For example, typically I would have tabs or windows set up for: Gmail, FaceBook, and TweetDeck. Now I don’t have to. I use my iGoogle page as my command center. I am master of all I survey (smile). Here are my 5 essential gadgets for my iGoogle Home Page. I am also going to provide you with a link to each gadget so that you will not have to search for it.

My life kind of revolves around Gmail and I use it to interface with a hosted domain. Finding a Google gadget to perform this task was tougher than one might think. There are plenty of Gmail gadgets out there but only 3 for hosted domains. Two of those appear to be identical. What is nice about this is that it is really a stand alone product designed for mobile apps. This means that I can go to any box, read any message, and compose messages (if desired) without even having to go to my main email page which I can do just by clicking on the black bar at the top. Warning: This thing gave me fits when I upgraded to FireFox 3.5. I had to go back to 3.0.

Naturally, I also need to be able to access FaceBook. This FaceBook gadget is better designed to monitor activity rather than to post comments, however, you can also do that. FaceBook, as we are all aware, has massive amounts of content on every page so I would still suggest that you do your heavy lifting from the actual site itself.

As you can see, though, it does provide you to access to your home page, profile, friends, and inbox. You can click on any friend shown and it will take you to their page. All in all, it works well for what it is intended to do.

I just found and added this Twitter gadget over the weekend and I just love it! You can do just about anything with it that you can do on TweetDeck or Seesmic. I can post Tweets, shorten URLs, shorten Tweets, do replies, direct message, follow or unfollow, go to that person’s page, or in one click go to my main Twitter page. It is an amazingly robust client. You may have to use some CTRL commands vs. clicking on an icon but, everything you need is pretty much there. Hover over somebody’s image and it brings up their profile. Hover over a shortened URL and it give you the full address. And, unusal for most gadgets like this that I see, there are several user custom settings. Sweet!

ProxiFeed – One More Acorn For My Collection

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IMPORTANT: 8/15-09 – This is a great program BUT there is no way of looking at your tweets before they go out. As you will read below, ProxiFeed looks for key words and phrases and then sends out Tweets with links as if you did that yourself. I was just alerted to a Tweet that was recently sent out and the link took the reader to an entirely inappropriate site. I have been forced to disconnect it pending further review.

I’ll be the first to admit it, I’m one sick puppy (smile). I love to collect widgets and gadgets as much as this squirrel loves to collect his acorns. Difference between him and me is, he only does it before winter and I do it year round.

I have this folder on my desktop entitled “Social Media Tools in Use”. At last count I was up to 35 total. And, believe it or not, I use most of them regularly. I’m always scanning for the next great addition. I have more Twitter tools than you can shake an acorn at and, I keep finding more. I am about this close to breaking down and getting a Blackberry. That’s probably going to mean an entirely new folder all to itself. It’s definitely gonna’ get worse before it gets better.

I do have standards. Such as they are (smile). In order for any new toy to attract my attention it needs to show some promise of making my job easier. Twitter can be exceptionally time consuming and, frankly, I’m just not that interesting. I use TwitterFeed to automatically Tweet my blog entries, TweetLater to pre-schedule motivational and funny quotes, and HootSuite to snag content and Tweet it now or schedule it for later. Right now I monitor Tweets using TweetDeck but also go back and forth to both Seesmic desktop and web versions. I have searches set on each client. Using TweetDeck, sometimes I post to Twitter only, sometimes to FaceBook, and sometimes to both simultaneously. I refuse to use Auto-DM to people who follow me and I ignore all Tweets that promise me 100′s of new followers each hour. I know that those tools are out there but they hold zero interest for me.

Hello Social Media – Buh Bye Networking Groups?

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Disclaimer: I am a traditional networker who has been studying social media heavily for the last six months only. And, I am still learning more and more daily. My expectations and feelings about this phenomena change just about as often. As such, certainly what follows is merely my perceptions on this topic at this specific snapshot of time. There will quite likely be those who will read this and say “That idiot just does not get it yet!”. To which I would respond…. “O.K.” (smile). I also enjoy playing “devil’s advocate” and the devil in me just loves to “stir the chili”.

Let’s see now, traditional networking groups have been around since ……. well, a real real long time. Dinosaurs were around a long time too. And now? They be gone (smile). Evolution is a funny thing. So are the axioms “survival of the fittest” and “only the strongest will survive”. Therefore, with the explosion of Social Media, Business-Social Media, Internet Networking, whatever you want to name it, how does that bode for the traditional networking group? It’s gonna’ “bode” one way or another. The question becomes ….. will it bode well, bode badly, or have little or no affect?

I have been fortunate enough during my years in business to business selling to have been highly successful in a networking group environment. Extremely successful. I’m such a huge believer that I created NetWorks! Boise in hopes of taking a group of this type to the next level. Looking back, we probably started this right at about the time that Social Media was beginning to take shape and take hold. I would say that this phenomena really just exploded over the past six months. And, it is exciting. More importantly, I have no question that it is both here to stay and that it will completely reshape the networking landscape. I am just as convinced that traditional networkers, like myself, are presented with two choices: evolve or die.

What is it that makes Social Media so powerful?