One of the fundamental aspects of social media is that it crosses many different technologies and methods of reaching people. You may have a blog, but that blog may be commented on through a conversation on Linkedin, and through Linkedin you may find that a professional network is going to gather at a local conference. This article helps connect the importance of meeting in person by coordinating online, and also how like-minded individuals can be exposed to each other after a real world meeting.

Understanding the process of offline/online exposure is essential. Social media is a detached marketing method. 95% of social media’s impact for promotion may be 1, 2, or 3 degrees removed from the initial instance. You may not know someone directly, but through a friend of a friend, or a reader of a reader, your message is exposed across many levels.

One of the quickly developing areas of social media is localization. Search engines like Google and Yahoo are driving more and more results locally, but social networks are also driving tremendous local results- by the very nature of social networks a majority are fundamentally local.

A good example of this is Biznik, a community site of indie business owners where I have been a participating community expert on social media promotion and search engine branding. A good portion of the 10,000 members are located in the Seattle area- of which I have probably met 12% personally. That is a very interesting metric, that as of today I have personally met 1163 members of the community in person.

On another community site Meetup, I have been to roughly 25 events in the past year and have personally met roughly 500 individuals. These Meetups are typically focused on a wider range of non-business topics, from start-up companies to politics. Meetup has the added benefit that most major cities have dozens of different meetups happening (group size 5 to 500)

What does this mean to you?

As someone in a business development role (President = sales person, waterboy, clerical assitant, marketer, and HR guy) I am constantly in a flux of practicing the mantra of “never eat alone”

It is a time saver. From my viewpoint however, “never eat alone” actually means “don’t do anything alone”

As part of my daily routine, I do in-person networking events and I leverage my online presence when doing it. An example of this is a simple social media dinner over pizza (Are you in Seattle? Come on 5/13). Nothing too formal, just an easy way to enjoy a dinner and meet professionals interested in what I do. Why waste 90 minutes of my life eating pizza alone?

Outside of the local networking opportunity, you can also utilize online networking to facilitate real world interactions for larger events or out of the area conferences. For instance, on June 4th I am on the committee for the MIT Forum in Bellevue, which we are promoting on several other sites (for free) that will expose us to thousands of professionals. I will probably have the chance to meet 100+ professionals in person at that event, which I will then invite a handful to coordinate with me through my Linkedin account. Rather than lose track of critical assets, my online networking allows me to have repetitive contacts with hundreds of business professionals.

Using online networks to coordinate your in-person meetings can also be a great schedule saver. I typically go to a conference once a month or so, and by looking at my network of out of the area professionals I can usually plan 10+ appointments while I am at a conference. This face to face time usually strengthens a basic relationship I have established online or over the phone, and typically results in an ironclad networking session that is far more effective than meeting someone with no preparation for the first time. (Useful Tip: If you are meeting someone for the first time and they have a blog, make sure to read their last 3-5 posts and you will have plenty of information to talk about with them!)

With some proper planning, I can have 2-4 days of breakfast, lunch, and dinner appointments scheduled when I am at a conference and maintain a healthy and growing network. If a networking site allows you to see members before and after a meeting, you can prepare your networking event by having a list of “must meet” individuals to talk with, and you can follow-up online with the few you may have missed.

On the more mundane side: if you need to host an event, you can also look towards these sites to promote your message and help coordinate your attendees.

Upcoming.org (a Yahoo site) - allows free booking and community interaction. Event attendees can”friend” each other and communicate about where they are going to be, if they are interested in certain events, or just looking for different options.

Eventbrite.com (2.5% ticket cost) - offers a more robust application that accepts credit cards and allows you to fully manage you member communication with e-mail and advertising of your event. For 2.5% of your ticket cost, you can easily have access to 24/7 monitoring of your attendance and utilize a variety of different options (I’ve used Eventbrite for several events before, and find it to be simple and straight-forward)

Conclusion:

All of these websites will not fix a flawed mindset. They will not “force” you to network, but they will greatly aid you what networking you can do. In fact, one of the greatest assets of online social networking is that it produces a tangible and measurable result, for instance I can actually go back and see that I have met 1163 members of a community and weigh that information against the results reached.

If you are using online social networking as a method of promoting your business (I sure hope you are), you should be thinking about how that information can help improve your results.

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