Monday, June 14, 2010

HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Offline Networking Events

by Mollie Vandor
Reposted from Mashable


If you work on the Web, chances are a good chunk of your day is devoted to developing relationships online. You talk to people on Twitter, follow them on Foursquare, share photos with them on Facebook, swap music on MySpace and let them know what you’re working on via LinkedIn. Of course, contrary to the stereotype, that doesn’t mean we techies spend every day in keyboard-covered caves.

In fact, from conferences to networking events, there are plenty of opportunities to turn those online connections into real world relationships. The web can actually make maintaining all those real world relationships even easier, especially if you know how to optimize your networking – both online and offline. Luckily for the would-be social media social butterfly, there are a few simple tips that can help you do just that.

Make The Most Of Meet & Greets

First of all, you have to find the right events. Join Meetup groups around your interests, do a targeted ticket search on Eventbrite, use the Mashable events calendar to find conferences and panels in your part of the world, or join a niche networking group like Social Media Club, Girls in Tech, Women in Technology International or 140 Character Conference.

Once you’re actually at an event, focus on putting a face to your name – your username, that is. Since a lot of people will probably know you solely by your avatar and handle, they may not immediately put two and two together when they meet you in real life. The simple solution to this is to make sure you keep your business cards up to date with your most recent usernames. Make sure you also include those usernames on the nametags you wear at networking events.

It’s also good to make plans with the people you want to meet before the event actually arrives. Doing so will avoid you standing in line while the person you want to talk to is mobbed by other would-be networkers. If you approach them in advance, and make plans to meet, you’ll feel much better about cutting through the crowds to find them. Plus, you’ll save yourself precious minutes of intro-time and be able to jump straight into conversation.

If you want people to come to you, then don’t be shy. Tell your followers, friends and fans where you’re going to be and what you’re going to be wearing. When you get to an event, scope out a particular corner or table and send your location out as a status update. Don’t just check-in on your favorite location-based sharing service, use it to find other people that are at a particular event, and to contact them while you’re there. That way, the people that follow you on the web will be able to find you out in the world, which can be valuable when you want to be found.

Follow Up

Whether you leave every event buried under buckets of business cards, or you have one great conversation and make a single, solid connection, there’s no reason not to follow up afterwards. How do you follow up without coming across as a social media stalker?

I like to start on Twitter – it’s a completely open forum, so people tend to be more welcoming when it comes to making connections with folks they might not know so well. Use services like Twiangulate to find connections you have in common, or to see if your new contact might have other connections you’d like to communicate with. Similarly, you can use a person’s Twitter lists to see what their interests are, and who else is in their network. By the same token, try making some Twitter lists yourself. It could come in handy when someone new is researching you.

LinkedIn, and other professional networking sites like Xing and Jigsaw, are also a natural fit for following up with a new friend you met while networking. Unlike social networks like MySpace and Facebook, where everyone has different policies about the balance of personal and professional contacts they want to maintain, these sites are purely professional. Use services like LinkedIn’s Shared Connections to see who you may have in common with the new person you’ve just met networking, or who that person might know that you’d also like to connect with.

Of course, there is nothing better than a good, old-fashioned thank you email. Just make sure you keep it short and sweet, and remember to include where you met and a quick tidbit of what you talked about.

Stay Organized

Speaking of entering your contacts, if you’re out and about in the offline world, you’re bound to collect boatloads of contact information.

You could always bypass the business card entirely by using a service like Bump on your Android() or iPhone, which allows you to literally send your contact info to another mobile device by touching them together. You can also set up a more traditional vCard that you can exchange via email. And, there are plenty of apps you can use to manage these virtual business cards from your mobile device, so you’ll never have to actually exchange paper cards again – which is better for the environment, and probably better for your organizational sanity too.

If you’re set on standard paper cards, you can also invest in a card scanner – either a traditional external machine or a mobile app, depending on which one will better fit into your lifestyle. Or you could use a card scanning service like CloudContacts.

Once you’ve got your contacts scanned and saved, keep them with you at all times with services like Google Sync for iPhone or Always in Sync for Android. Both systems will let you automatically sync your Google contacts with your mobile device, meaning you can manage your contacts in the Google cloud for free and take them with you wherever you go.