I had the pleasure of presenting to around 200 people at a Fingal Business Network event in the Clarion this week.  Very interesting mix of people.  The main part of the presentation was about how to use social media to generate addition PR opportunities for companies along the lines of ‘you have issued the release to the media now what can you do’.

I uploaded the presentation to slideshare so you can see the main points below

Overall it was mainly hints and tips to stimulate a conversation for people networking later on.  The slides were designed to look like tweets and thanks to Paul Murgatroyd who tweeted them as I was presenting.

The second part of the presentation was around using social media to enhance your business networking at events.  My experience of business networking is that most people drift into old habits of finding people they know when they arrive and hope they bump into people who will matter from a business perspective.  Social media allows you to get great insight into people, start a conversation with them and make arrangements to meet.  This makes a big difference in that the meeting at the event can be much more focused on deal making or other rapport where face to face is important.

I found it hard enough to find anything online about this so here are the few bits that came out of the session.

Before the Session

• Get hold of the attendee list and find people you wish to connect to.
• Search Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and if they have a blog.
• The website will probably short circuit this for you.
• Follow the person if on twitter
• If appropriate retweet, favorite posts they have put up – they will see this.
• Respond to their posts and start a conversation.
• If they have followed you back and you have established a relationship then direct message them to meet up on the night.
• LinkedIn will give you even more in-depth information on them which you can check for common areas and possible conversation points.
• You can also utilise LinkedIn to get an introduction from a trusted source.
• If they have a blog be up to speed on the topic areas and share your insight with a post or perhaps a link from an article on your own blog or blogroll.
• Similarly with Facebook

Paul Murgatroyd, Oisin Geoghegan (CEO), Fingal CEB and Eoin Kennedy, Knudger.com

Conferences, Business After Hours and networking events usually result in the collection of a large selection of business cards.  In the not so distant past they were collated alphabetically and neatly arranged into rollerdecks before gathered dust.  The proactive ones followed up with a DM piece and letter before email made that process easier.  The result rate from these was generally poor as you rarely created any particular link with the person.

Now I notice that after I attend these events that I receive a large number of online requests from LinkedIn, Facebook and an increase in people following me on Twitter.  Aside from the ease these open up real opportunities to connect with people.  Rather than an uninformed cold callesque DM piece you have the real potential to uncover much more about their interest, business model before engaging in real value add conversations.  It also increases traffic to the blog (which is modest at the best of times) but gives people something more concrete to view and help them form a more informed opinion of you and your offerings.

Tip for the day: dont let business card lie on your desk.  Give them more life by

• Immediately loading onto you contacts database
• Search using Spock, Wink or search engines
• Find and read their blogs if any
• Link with them through LinkedIn, Facebook and follow them on Twitter
• Have a look at their networks and areas of interest
• Create a conversation using these tools before blindly pitching your wares

  I have only received a few business cards with the full set of contact details outside of the normal phone, address etc.  There is lots of debate on the merits of too much detail on cards but Hoax Slayer has one peril I never thought of.