Taking Social Networking Face-to-Face

How many social networks do you actively use? One? Several? How many friends, followers, and con­nec­tions do you have? How many of these friends have you met face-to-face in the last 30 days? How many friends have you met in the last 90 days you hadn’t pre­vi­ously met in-person? If you’re like many social media advocates, you’re not con­nect­ing with others who can help your orga­ni­za­tion or career as often as you’d like.

Is It Important to Meet Face-to-Face?

Yes. Social media allows us to better know each others interests and opinions, certainly more than a quick in-person greeting. However, meeting in-person adds to, and strength­ens, the bond. Although we may have online friends we’ve never met face-to-face, most of us have met those closest to us in-person.

How Do You Meet People?

Friend Allison Carter (@Allisonlcarter) and I conduct a pre­sen­ta­tion on this subject. She is the unwitting co-author of this blog (at least half the thoughts in this post are hers). Allison rec­om­mends starting by recon­nect­ing with people. She shares a story of an organization’s largest customer being from a previous working rela­tion­ship. Linkedin and Facebook are well-suited for recon­nect­ing. Twitter is ideal for finding people with similar interests, but regard­less of the media — Pinterest, Google+, Flickr — what’s important is to reach out.

As part of our pre­sen­ta­tion, we have every second person change seats with another. We have them introduce them­selves to someone new and ask the two questions mentioned below. To continue our pre­sen­ta­tion, we’ve had to interrupt the two social media groups to which we’ve presented. They didn’t want to stop sharing.

Where Should You Meet In-Person?

Allison reminded me to always consider safety when meeting F2F — meet in public areas. Tweet-ups, meet-ups, and most net­work­ing events are a good place to start, as well as one-on-one or small groups at the local coffee shop. Meeting in one’s place of business may also be appropriate.

What Should You Talk About?

This may sound counter intuitive, espe­cially if you’re attempt­ing to make a business con­nec­tion — don’t talk about you, your company, or product — unless asked. Introduce yourself and ask, “How can I help you?” Follow up with, “What industry, company, or person would you like to be intro­duced to?”

Our takeaway from this… folks using social media want to connect, and they enjoy helping each other, but may be unsure where to begin. Hopefully, you have a better idea where to begin after reading this post. How may we help you?

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