It’s Not What You Know. It’s Who You Know.

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” I’ve heard it my whole life. The funny thing about that quote is that you can hear it everyday but if that day ends and you still don’t know anyone it hasn’t really gotten you far, and when you’re a young college student with a busy schedule it doesn’t feel like you can really go door to door and introduce yourself to business owners. The thing that seems most unrealistic? That any business owners will take a college student seriously.

Can you see me now? I’ve made an appointment with your secretary and I’m eager to meet with you, but to say what? You’re going to ask me about my accomplishments and I’m going to tell you the truth: I have none. Most college students can’t afford to be at the school they’re at so they’re working part-time jobs that rule out the possibility of networking and others like me are competing in athletics to help pay for school. Which let’s be honest, is only turning into a career for less that 1% of us. So here’s the scenario, I graduate and I hand out a carbon copied resume of things I think are important. Mine says something along the lines of “I’m an academic and athletic all-american. I have a high GPA. I worked at some summer jobs and my bosses liked me a lot. Oh and here were the classes I took, but I don’t know anybody important.” Now what? It’s start to feel for a lot of us like graduating is just the step before being unemployed. And it’s scary.

The best I feel like I can do is try to market myself. Social media is huge with my generation and if you’re anybody you’re on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, FourSquare, etc. So I did what any kid in my situation should do. I created an online portfolio.  If we don’t have time to go door to door maybe CEO’s surfing the web have time to come to us. Maybe our network that consists of mostly college students we’ll end up competing against can develop and transform into a professional atmosphere. Maybe if we get some help. So check it out and see what you think: jaclynjmk.wordpress.com

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Today’s post was written by Jaclyn Luscomb,  a junior at the University of Indianapolis.  She is majoring in communications with a double emphasis in journalism and human communications. She is pretty smart cookie according to her GPA. Current member of PRSSA [Public Relations Student Society of America]. I’m also a repeat NCAA all-american in swimming.

6 Tips for Successful Cross-Promotion of Restaurants

Sometimes going the extra mile for an event in your restaurant can make all the difference. I work very closely with one of my restaurant clients who came to me with a patron of theirs who wanted to showcase their art in the restaurant for an evening. I was brought in to help market this one-night event. What was going to be a simple evening of tray pass h’orderves and art, started to get my wheels spinning. What could I do to get more people to come to this event without spending a lot of money? What would get me to come to an event at a restaurant? Quick brainstorming led me to connect the dots in cross-promoting this event with the actual guests themselves. Here are the key elements I used to make this first Art Mixer event so successful that it is now a monthly event that has increased in attendance each time.

1) Invite a Guest Chef - While it would have been easy enough for the restaurant to cook the h’orderves themselves inviting a guest chef adds an unexpected element and intices people to come out for something special. There are many foodie chef bloggers online who blog about their food and would love the opportunity to come share their food at another restaurant. After some quick research of top food bloggers in the area I was able to reach out via Twitter and line up 6 chefs who wanted to participate for free to help get their name, restaurant and blog noticed. Each of them shared the event on their site with their audience.

2) Invite a Local Acoustic Musician – While art shows are great on their own, adding some music can liven up the space without taking away from the show. This was actually the hardest piece to pull off, as musicians want to get paid and the restaurant was not allowed to have amplified music. The way around this was using acoustic musicians that are not well known. Finding musicians is easy but often times they are struggling to meet ends meet and want some compensation. Convincing them to play for free is not easy but what I did to convince them was explain that it is an event to support and promote local artists and that I would share their bio on our website and send out an email blast to our customers with a link to their music, which could in turn help them get more gigs. Done! To actually find these musicians I turned to our Facebook fans at the restaurant. By simply asking if anyone knew any local musician we turned up 2 immediate suggestions who were both willing to play for free. Those musicians in turn knew more musicians that wanted to play at the restaurant as well.
3) Invite a Guest Artist - Customers love to see art in a restaurant, especially art that comes from the local community. We were lucky to have out first artist volunteer. What I did to find more artist was contact a couple local art bloggers and ask them to help me spread the word about the event and that I was looking for talent. This was the easiest piece to complete, artists were contacting me left and right to have a free spot to showcase their work. Once patrons from the restaurant heard about the event they too were submitting their own art to be considered.

4) Wine Tasting - What is an art show without wine. By including wine in the mix we were able to charge patrons to attend the event and participate in a wine and food tasting. We asked one of the wine representatives to come in for the event and pour wine and educate the customers on what they are drinking which in turn also increased future sales of those wines. Once the other wine reps found out that one company was successful in doing that they all wanted a chance to share their wine. Setting up a wine station with the wine rep doing the work instead of a restaurant employee saved the restaurant in labor costs.

5) Throw in a Theme - While the talent in this event are changing every month, changing the theme can help keep the event fresh and fun. In October we did an Oktoberfest beer tasting instead of wine, made a german influenced menu and had the musician do his own renditions of classic Oktoberfest music. Another suggestion just came from one of the artists. His art is mixed media “street” art so he wants to have food that compliments his art. What we will do for this one is challenge local aspiring chefs via our Facebook and email blast to come up with a gourmet street food menu and who ever comes up with the best menu will be chosen to come cook their items at his art show.

6) Partner with a Local Farmer’s Market - If you are lucky enough to have a Farmer’s Market in your town this can be a great way to cross-promote your restaurant while supporting local farmers. I contacted the new local Farmer’s Market and they were thrilled when I offered to send them one chef every month and shoot video and photos of the shopping at the market for fresh produce for a local restaurant. This was a home run for everyone because the chef blogged about the experience, the market was able to brag about a local foodie chef making an appearance and share the chef’s blog with their Facebook fans and the restaurant got a free plug on each of their sites as well. The restaurant is now considering bringing seasonal recipes with produce from the farmer’s market to continue cross-promoting each other.

There are many moving parts to this type of event but the reason it is so successful is that each of the guest talent has their own local audience. They all come together to promote each other on a small scale which in turn draws a greater turn-out. Each artist has sold at least 5 of their pieces at each show (ranging from $200-$1000 each piece) and one was even sold to a person that was just walking by and happened to peek inside. By leveraging the restaurant customers via Facebook for suggestions we were able to find artists that the community already enjoyed and that didn’t cost us a single penny. Our new slogan: Bringing together local talent and fresh produce supporting small business and local artists!
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Daniela Bolzmann is the Social Media Community Manager for Symbaloo. She graduated from California State University, Fullerton, in 2009 with a B.A. in Business Administration with a concentration in Entrepreneurship. Daniela also freelances as a social media marketer, helping restaurants and retailers in her home town of Orange County. She writes about her lessons in being a community manager, freelancing and being Gen Y on her blog and can be reached via her many social networks.

Example of Twitter Success in Career Consulting

So…being in business is easy right? Wrong! It seems that the flash of inspiration that you had one day whilst doing the dishes has already been accomplished by superior visionaries and innovators. Five minutes browsing the web reveals thet there are so many companies and individuals already living your dream, how dare they??!! Not to be put off by some healthy competition (surely there’s enough work to go around and we all have our own unique selling point,) I went ahead with my business idea and realised that my research has proved accurate…there is plenty of competition and if you’re not on the first couple of pages of Google, chances are, you’re virtually invisible.

Of course, everyone knows about social media networking and how this can increase your web presence and in turn help you to develop new business contacts (especially in my job as a Career Consultant, my customers are individuals not businesses.) What is lesser known is how to unlock these mysteries and make it work for your own business. My web stats were somewhat below expectations which made the conversion rate less so. I have always been a fan of the “Dummies Guides” and they have proved helpful so I tapped into Kyle’s Twitter Marketing for Dummies, thinking it would be a good starting place. Wow! Look no further!

Now endowed with Nearby Tweets, Tweepsearch and Tweetscan, just some of the tools available to ensure that I was targeting and following a relevant audience (thus making my content of value to potential followers), my job of marketing suddenly entered realms of massive possibilities. After just one day of the implementation of just some of these ideas my daily web traffic record more than quadrupled. After one month my monthly stats record had tripled, this figure is forecast to double again this month.

Now, my follower / followee base is steadily increasing (without making me look like a spammer) and as a direct result, email enquiries are now coming in from around the UK, and as far as India!!

In summary, I know that I am good at my job but my marketing skills needed attention. Enter Twitter Marketing! Giving away valuable ideas and content in the form of blogs and articles didn’t seem entirely the right thing to do, but it works, people realise that you know what you’re talking about and they want to know more.

Not only have these ideas increased my visibility and presence in cyberspace, it’s been a lot of fun and made my job of reaching people with my message enjoyable. I have gleaned a boat-load of other excellent ideas from people I engage with on Twitter.

What’s not to love?
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Dave Smith is a Career Consultant in the UK – 17+ Years experience serving Jobseekers and Employers alike. Up-to-date knowldege of navigating the recruitment process and optimising the possibility of getting to an interview and getting onto the shortlist.

The Right Way to Market Yourself on Twitter: Part 2

Viral.  Almost anyplace you see that word it conjures up images of bad things.  Viral at the doctor’s office is never good news, nor is it welcomed on your computer.  The one place it has the connotation of being a good thing is in the realm of social media.  (Note: It can still be bad in social media if the viral story reflects negatively upon you or your organization.)

There are lots of benefits of social media vs. traditional communication, and they include 1 to 1 conversation, listening, etc.  But perhaps the greatest is the ability to spread the word about something very quickly one Twitter user at a time.  I recently had this experience and I can give you some hard numbers to support it.

Kyle was kind enough to ask me to write a post on the right way to market on Twitter which was regarding a conversation we had on a positive experience I had on Twitter.  I was pretty excited about it and Tweeted to my followers to come check out my blog post.  I have a bit.ly integration with CoTweet, so I am able to track how many times somebody has clicked on my link.  As you can see below, I tapped out at 49.

As my following is relatively small at 200, I was pretty pleased with that number.  But I was curious to see how often it had been clicked on based on Kyle’s reach.  When I clicked on the aggregate bit.ly numbers I got quite a different number.

Holy Canoli!  I had found out that the article had been clicked on 436 times.  Furthermore, it had been Tweeted or ReTweeted a total of 99 times and the reach was all over the globe.

Over 15 countries have seen this Tweet!  And at this point in time, the true power and possibilities of Social Media start to become a reality.

So what have I learned?

1. Influence the Influencers- If you want to get a message to the masses; you need to network with key influencers.  Note their number of followers, Klout score, and plan accordingly.  Here is a great article on how to get the attention of influencers.
2. Track your stats- There is no better way of seeing if your links are of value, than to see if anybody is clicking on them.  Find the total clicks, tweets, shares, comments, etc.
3. Activity Breeds Activity- I had some conversations with Kat @goheadband and she shared that she had an excellent day in sales the day this article was released.  It only stands to reason with the amount of people who read about her success, but I like to validate the hypothesis with real data.

Incidentally, my Klout received a bump during this process as well.  It sure is nice when everybody wins.

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Todays guest post was written by Brian Richardson has 19 years of sales and management experience and is a sales trainer at ExactTarget.  Follow him at B__Richardson (that is two underscores) and check out his Twitter bio for hobbies and interests.

The Right Way to Market Yourself on Twitter

Trying to market yourself on Twitter can be tricky. Being a pushy salesperson, while never popular anywhere, is strictly taboo in Social Media. So how do you engage potential prospects while avoiding the appearance of a door to door vacuum salesperson?

I recently had an interaction with Kat from GoHeadBand.com who negotiated the art brilliantly. I had tweeted how difficult a 2 mile run for me had been in spite of running a mini-marathon just 5 months ago. She responded to me with encouragement and some advice. I was told to take things slow, but to remember that I will attain fitness faster because of my prior running.

As I don’t know this person, I was inclined to look her up on Twitter to see what she was about. Her bio mentioned that she had completed 5 marathons and she also made “moisture wicking headbands.” Since my most recent run was in 94 degree heat and I am fond of headbands, I now found myself as an interested prospect.

Not once has she offered to sell me anything, but here I am as a potential buyer. So what did she do right that we can learn about as we navigate the roads in Twitter?

• Search. She obviously had a twitter client, like CoTweet, where she was searching for keywords like “running.” This helps you identify a group with interests in your product.
• She offered Value. She not only gave me some friendly advice, to adapt to things slowly, but she also offered me encouragement. You can trace those lessons back to “How to Win Friends and Influence People” as classic relationship management.
• She had a great bio. Her bio told me a little bit about herself in that she was a runner. It also clearly defined to me what she specifically offered as a product or service including a website link.

Much of the advice available in the realm of social media is pointed towards telling us what not to do. While those lessons can certainly help us avoid some challenges, it doesn’t give us clarity on what we can do. I am thankful for this experience and I will definitely add this to my “rules of engagement” on Twitter.

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Todays guest post was written by Brian Richardson has 19 years of sales and management experience and is a sales trainer at ExactTarget.  Follow him at B__Richardson (that is two underscores) and check out his Twitter bio for hobbies and interests.

Social Media 101 in 60 Minutes: The Web’s Best Crash Course

You’ve probably heard of how social media is disrupting various industries. For example, some PR folks are adjusting the way they work and are now pitching blogs along with the New York Times. Social media is here to stay, and it’s changing the way we do business.

I’m guilty. I work with a company that’s developing social software which is disrupting the “learning” industry‚Äîfrom small business entrepreneurs, consultants, and thought leaders to corporate training and development departments.

If you’re on Twitter and you follow Kyle, you’ve tasted the future. Oftentimes, Kyle uses Twitter to point his followers to awesome articles‚Äîa form of peer-to-peer learning facilitated by social technologies.

At Bloomfire, we’re taking that concept to the next level, and you can check that out for yourself on our website. The current generation of our platform is already available, and you can Test Drive that for free. If you’re an early adopter and want to test out the alpha version of our next generation platform, you can join our Alpha Program by clicking here. Be quick though‚Äîhundreds have already signed up, and we’ve got limited spots.

So in the spirit of peer-to-peer learning, I’m going to share a list of resources that has helped me (and many others) get up to speed in social media, fast. Think of this piece as a makeshift syllabus for a social media course. I’ve created each lesson from the most popular resources on the Internet (according to retweets, social bookmarks, YouTube views, etc.).

Here we go‚Äîlet’s begin your crash course on social media! If you watch the videos and do the readings, you should be done in less than an hour.

If you find this useful, feel free to share this with clients/partners/friends who are constantly asking you social-media-related questions.

Introduction: What’s in it for me?

If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably interested in how social media can build your business. Here’s the business case for social media: it generates revenue. Really.

It generates revenue for small- and medium-sized businesses—this TechCrunch article tells the story of several SMBs, including a Korean restaurant, dentist, and hotelier, who found tremendous success.

It also generates revenue for big brands. Did you know that Twitter generated $1 million for Dell? Did you know that YouTube helped Old Spice double their sales?

So if you’re interested in generating more revenue, then this course is for you. Onward!

What is Social Media?

Here’s the definition from Wikipedia: social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques.

If you’re the kind of person that enjoys textbooks, then you should read the entire Wikipedia article.

Don’t like that textbook? Here are nine more, courtesy of Google’s built-in dictionary.

But if you’re like me, then you don’t like textbooks. You like videos. So here’s the best one out there, courtesy of Common Craft. It’s called Social Media in Plain English, and it’s been viewed over half a million times on YouTube. It’s fun!

Bonus assignment: read Twitter 101 and LinkedIn 101, then submit a warm chocolate chip cookie to your nearest neighbor to earn yourself a pat on the back.

Quick Start: How to Get Setup with Social Media

There are a lot of social media sites out there, so I’m going to focus on what I think are The Big Three. Here are some great step-by-step videos for getting yourself setup on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Understanding Social Media Culture: Best Practices

In some ways, entering the world of social media is like moving to a foreign country. When I moved from Hong Kong to the United States several years ago, I needed several months to adjust to the new culture.

Which hands should I use to hold my knife and fork? When I’m having a conversation, should I look into my partner’s eyes, or avoid the eyes? Should I ask people, “How are you?” even when they’re complete strangers and I don’t really care how they’re doing?

It’s the same with social media.

How often should I retweet? Are auto-DMs rude? What should be on my LinkedIn profile?

There are ways to overcome culture shock quickly:

• Find a tour guide
• Carefully observe and take in your surroundings
• Read a textbook

I can’t help you with points one & two, but I can recommend a great “textbook.”

When I read textbooks in college, I always preferred looking at the pictures instead of reading the text. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

If a picture-book could be a textbook, then this would be it. It’s free, but it’s not a physical book‚Äîit’s a great blog post featuring 35 infographics on almost every facet of social media.

Final Exam: How Well Do You Understand Social Media?

What’s a course without an exam? Alright, I know I can’t test you, but I can give you a fun way to test yourself.

Julian Smith is a comedian who created a killer standup routine about Facebook, and it’s been viewed over 2.5 million times on YouTube. For your final exam, watch his video, titled 25 Things I Hate About Facebook.

You see, jokes often rely on cultural context. That’s why Chinese jokes translated into English don’t always work. So if you’re laughing at the jokes, then you also have a working understanding of the culture.

Want to Learn More?

Congratulations! You’ve just completed Social Media 101.

If you want to learn more, here’s a calendar of over 75 upcoming social media events. If you can’t find anything there, try searching “social media” on Meetup.com.

Nehemiah “Nemo” Chu is the Ambassador for Bloomfire, a social learning platform where employees, customers, or fans teach each other. Test Drive our software today, or join Bloomfire’s Alpha Program to test our next-generation platform (launching late September 2010). For fun, he inhales TED Talks in Kalamazoo, Michigan. You can find him tweeting @bloomfire, blogging at Bloomfire’s ePublication, and speaking at DevLearn 2010, an eLearning conference in San Francisco.

5 Tips to Connecting With The Boomer Social Boom

Randy Clark is the Director of Communications at TKO Graphix, where he blogs for TKO Graphix Brandwire. Prior to TKO, he spent 13 years with Unique Home Solutions as Marketing Director and VP of Operations. He is an avid flower gardener, beer geek, and he fronts a rock & Roll band on the weekends. And yes, he is a Boomer.

I am a Boomer. I was born between 1946 and 1964, and I have Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and You Tube accounts. According to USA Today, Facebook has 16.5 million users, 55 or older, while MySpace has 6.9 million users. Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb, states, “More than 60 percent of those in this generational group actively consume socially created content like blogs, videos, podcasts, and forums. What’s more, the percentage of those participating is on the rise.”

So why is this important to social marketers? AARP Global Network claims, “Boomers should be just as desirable to marketers as millennial and gen-xers in the coming years.” AARP quoted Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, “Boomers are the mainstream of the country now, when you attract a mainstream audience, you’re going to attract a lot more commercial interests. Boomers validate that this is a big market, and that this is a place where commercial interests can make money.” Since Boomers are increasing their involvement in social networking, it is important to consider how to connect with them. We are here, but we may not hear. You… may… have… to… speak… slower… and LOUDER!

Five Tips On How To Connect With Boomers

Keep it simple. If you want to engage Boomers, make it easy. Remember we hadn’t seen a computer until we were older than most of you are now! If we have to jump through too many hoops, we might become frustrated and give up.

Explain boundaries. Imagine George Carlin or Richard Prior on your Facebook account. Upon receiving a Facebook friend request from his father, Will Smith (not the actor) explained to his father what was not acceptable (PCWorld.com). “Politics, sex, jokes, things you find funny but offend me, comments about family members, any combination of the aforementioned items, and pretty much every email you’ve ever sent me.”

Grammar does matter. We have watched the language devolve, u no? Understandably, many Boomers think the rules have been thrown out the window. Take the time to explain that poor grammar, misspelling, and bad writing do influence readers on social networks. It is not okay to call it “the ‘puter.”

Teach us social network netiquette. Sometimes we are so excited when we learn how to do something, we overlook what is next. Should I have mentioned them in the RT? Oh, was I supposed to thank someone for friending me? These simple netiquette cues need to be explained to Boomers.

Speak our language. Boomers may not keep up with the latest and greatest APPadohickie. We are more excited just to be in the game! If we stare at you with a glazed, distant look, be patient and explain it to us.

According to Wikipedia, “Baby Boomers control over 80% of personal financial assets and more than 50% of discretionary spending power. They are responsible for more than half of all consumer spending, buy 77% of all prescription drugs, 61% of OTC medication, and spend $500 million on vacations per year and 80% of all leisure travel.”([24])

When creating your next social media plan, do not overlook the Boomer market segment. Do a little research and find out where the Boomers hang in your neighborhood. Sites catering to boomers, such as www.eons.com, with over 800,000 members, continue to grow.
And remember, like they always say… what was it they say? There was something I wanted to share…now what was it? It was just on the tip of my tongue. Oh well…make yourself a great day! Peace.

57 Channels and There is Nothing On. What is On in Your World?

By: Ike Eicher

Some of you reading this probably don’t remember this Bruce Springsteen hit or how 57 channels seems so “pre-U-verse” when this was released in 1992.

“Well now home entertainment was my baby’s wish

So I hopped into town for a satellite dish

I tied it to the top of my Japanese car

I came home and I pointed it out into the stars

A message came back from the great beyond

There’s fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on”

So almost 20 years later we have every kind of multi-media, social media, mobile media, blank-blank media to keep our shortening attention spans occupied. But to a certain extent, is there really nothin’ on?

In some cases I do feel that this sensory overload has warped our sense of time. We want instant gratification and short message spurts to communicate our wants or needs. We rarely watch “live” TV and the thought of having to actually wait for our online streams to load and play is crazy. And we want to take this all with us, all the time. So we have mobile devices now that are essentially super computers in our pocket.

I am guilty with all of the above, but it does make me think. From a communications standpoint is this bad? How has this changed how we deliver our message, brand promise, and call to action?

And that is where I find peace. All of these tools are simply new channels in our arsenal. And all the old rules apply. Know your brand and what it promises, know your audience and what they want and need, and don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

The other big message here is that in the past, for the most part, we had to only deliver a message. Now we can engage our customers, create a two-way street, and even remedy a problem… right now. The power of instant gratification goes both ways. If the customer tweets a bad experience and you are there immediately to fix it, everyone wins. No calling a 1-800 number, no filtering through an FAQ section of a website, and certainly no sending in the UPC code in a self-addressed mailer. So when the customer feels supported on their channel and we are listening and then reacting, what a brand champion we have created.

So, I’d change the Boss’s classic to 570 channels and yes, there is somethin’ on, let’s just hope we are sending a signal.

What’s on in your world?

A Definition of Social Media Marketing in the Security Industry

Damon Paine is Internationally qualified and experienced Executive Protection operative and security Risk Manager. Follow him on Twitter @safarprotection and check out the website www.safarprotection.com

Social Media Marketing:

In my line of work it’s a bit hard to actively market yourself without coming across as a shameless self promoter. There is also the problem of privacy with most our clients requiring mutual confidentiality agreements or just not wishing their lives or actions publicised.  So as to ensure future professional relationships we take privacy seriously however, now and then we are given permission to use client’s images or information to help promote our services. My only foray prior into social media was a personal myspace and facebook account I used to keep in touch with colleagues, and occasionally check out how much weight classmate’s had gained since graduation.  Having developed a website over twelve months earlier, I was still struggling with the concept of SEO and promotion our services without spending excessive amounts of capital. Although I could see the potential returns my business partner had a convincing argument stating “We had not yet received any income from our site”. Thus I could understand his reluctance to invest any more resources to the company’s website.

I came across Kyle Lacy’s Twitter Marketing for Dummies whilst on an assignment protecting clients throughout India. I had until then dismissed twitter as anything more than another fad that people with too much time on their hands would take notice of. However as I was contemplating purchasing the book my clients were sitting in the Airport lounge letting their thousands of followers know how their trip was progressing. Kyle’s writing style was relaxed and on the money with his book supplying me with the tools to start marketing my website and services myself. I linked my twitter account to a facebook page and began to start writing blogs.

It’s been a little over two weeks, four posts, fifty one tweets and over two hundred unique visitors to my site. All this for the cost of the book and 20 minutes a night either writing, tweeting or re reading highlighted sections of my now marketing bible.  Not only is it free and starting to show measurable results in website traffic, I now am able to easily follow industry leaders in my field.  In parting I would like to highlight that by using social media to market my services like twitter and facebook I am now exposed to experts in the field of social media. Their tweets, blog and words of advice provide me with new ideas to continue on this path of non traditional marketing to a worldwide audience.

And You Don’t Know What to Do. So Jump!

…And You Don’t Know What to Do. So Jump!

Preparation. Training. Practice, practice, practice. Vigil & discipline & duty & repetition. A smidgen of ingenuity & a touch of class and merging new media with the classics becomes second nature.

All those tips & tricks & shortcuts will become tools in your arsenal before too long. But all the Tweet Laters & scheduled posts & syndicated messages will not account for the time & effort it takes to make this stuff look as easy & inviting as everyone dreams it to be when they first blog, tweet and share something on Facebook.

In the end, if you decide to jump into this & make it work for you, what will determines your will be in those little decisions you make when you have the free time to make them.

Leveraging time after the 40+ hours a week

In his keynote address during the 2009 Blog Indiana Social Media and Bloggging Conference, Chris Brogan told us the crowd about how he used to leverage every penny and free moment he had to attend every scheduled industry conference he could find. Every resource he had went into registration costs, discussion forums, travel, hotel…All with the hope that there was a continental breakfast or something he could load up on so as to not spend money on food.

A couple best selling-books and a successful company later, and Brogan’s still spanning the globe, leveraging his time to help grow the community. So much so that he’s got his own conventions now.

And I’ll leverage my time to get to more of those events.

Which means summer ends a little sooner for this year.

The end of summer means the start of the trade show season. The first one I’ll be hitting is Blog Indiana at IUPUI in Indianapolis. Lacy will be one of the featured speakers at the event. I”ll be running around all over the place.

If there’s only one event you can make it to, make it Blog Indiana. If you can’t make it to the convention itself, at least try to sneak out to the after-party. This year, the day one after party will be at Sun King Brewery.

Whatever time you can leverage.

And if we don’t see you there, well, hopefully we’ll see you somewhere. Because if you don’t end up going somewhere, you’ll end up going nowhere.

“So you come to the edge of a cliff and you don’t know what to do. So jump.” – John Lennon (Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now. By Barry Miles. 1996.)

Nat Finn is an Internet Marketing Specialist at Golden Technologies. He also serves as an Officer for NWITweetup and as a Regional Director for Blog Indiana. With the time left over, he writes for SEO Boy as well as his own blog, “How to Publish a Book. Of Blues. Hopefully.” It leaves him little time left over to finish his Books of Blues. Luckily, he’s found a few friends to help him with the editing.