A person is enjoying a meal in a restaurant's food court while taking in the indoor ceiling on their vacation.

How to further face to face networking online

While at Starbucks on Sunday, I was making use of their free wifi as I slowly sipped on my Venti Sumatra black coffee.  I’ve been overhauling http://jjrailsales.com, moving them from a Frontpage based site to a Joomla based site.  Translation: using a content management system that is built to support the back-office website needs for clients.

In between listening to some fun podcasts, I overheard a discussion on the PA Farm Show – and shared my obsession for a rare indulgence: maple ice cream.  It’s the real deal – 100% maple syrup in ice cream.  After some discussion, and more work, I was packing up to leave when Kyle asked “what do you do”.

In networker fashion, I used some great tips from Bob Burg.  “I help people” who have a need to grow their business or develop new clients implement a social media marketing strategy. I teach them not to be spammy, but managed to help Paul Buskager double traffic to http://hoofchutes.com, landing 7 out of 10 new clients all based upon web traffic.  I teach and coach them to show up online in a way that engages others and creates a natural interest.  The key is – be authentic, be mostly transparent, and interact with others.  What do you do?

Kyle was interested rather quickly.  He’s a student at a nearby university, a dj, and a reporter.  He asked to connect further for a potential news piece.  That does sound like a blast.  I then remembered – I’m in the social media networking world.  How can we connect further beyond swapping business cards after a good face-to-face networking event?  Well, let’s connect on all our social media sites of course!

Here’s the moment in action:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANouINHDSIk[/youtube]

A fast way to find all the other places you can connect online is http://retaggr.com.  It also includes great apps like email/forum footers, and a mega-list of places you can compare accounts and connect: http://ClickToAdd.Me/CourtneyEngle.

Are we connected yet?