Chris Brogan, of ChrisBrogan.com, brings us a list of Five Things to Do at a Social Network Meetup. The tips include both things to do and a couple of advice tips on how to do things.
One of the big ones he tackles is what to do if you need to do business. That tip alone makes this post worth a visit. Another one of my favorites from the post is don’t crowd surf too much.
Lots of folks feel the need to meet everyone at the meetup. My own experience has been that this rarely results in serious or deep conversation. Along with that, it makes it more difficult to build new or existing relationships. One surprise of doing that at my last meetup was learning that several of my fellow St. Louis bloggers are Jewish. This lead to a discussion of how this impacted their lives and their blogs.
Chris ends with this leading question:
“What do YOU do at meetups to make them better, more interesting, a reflection of the value of real space versus online social networking?”
My own bit to add would be come prepared to talk about what you do. Do doesn’t mean how you earn a living, thought that might be interesting, but do, as in:
1) I blog about technology.
2) I blog about programming.
3) I use Twitter, Utterz, and Facebook.
People will ask, but even if they don’t, you can lead in by asking them what it is they do. Great ice breaker.
Another tip is get to the names. It’s one thing to be known as the guy from The Broad Brush, but quite another to be recognized as Todd or tojosan. Much more personal.
That’s it for me, but what will you do make the most of your next social networking meetup?
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Tags: meetup, Social Media, Social Networking, tips
