• Understand Your Professional Brand
• Develop Your Voice
• Everything Online is Public
• Listen

Today I’d like to share how I used social media to land a job here at Magnitude Media.

My first step was to take the five and a half hour drive from New York to New Hampshire and attend a Social Media Breakfast to meet local professionals. Face to face networking is invaluable, and I left the event with three strong contacts. As I drove back to New York I knew I needed to be online.

The first step was to consider my personal brand. Who was Doug Ridley? How was I going to represent myself online?

To help answer this surprisingly difficult question, I unplugged. I brainstormed, talked with myself, talked with friends, mind mapped my strengths, and evaluated my values. With so many interests and skills, I needed to focus my message.

I wanted to be seen as an energetic young professional full of ideas. I wanted to be everywhere, interested in everything social, and share as much information as possible. I chose to use certain networks professionally, while leaving others for friends and family.

Coming from a camp background I had spent the past three years developing and using a conversational tone of voice online. I knew that this voice was perfect for networking. I wanted to be approachable and not use dry, faceless rhetoric.

Setting up a presence on a social network was important. I wanted to ensure my bio was optimized correctly and that I was on the networks that would give me the most bang for my buck. Most importantly I took the time to customize my privacy settings so that I was sharing appropriate content with the correct audience. Needless to say, I spent an entire evening untagging myself from photos.

As I began entering different social networks. I listened, a lot. I sought out people’s opinions and ideas. I learned the dynamic of certain online communities and used that knowledge to met people online and in person. In the end, listening eventually turned into sharing. As someone who was looking for a job, sharing content and ideas was something that I did all the time. I didn’t worry about giving away all my great ideas. My goal was to position myself as a knowledgeable, up and coming, young professional.

By being present online and developing a presence online, I was able to move from job seeker to strong candidate for social media positions.

For an in depth look at putting these pieces together I hope you’ll join me for my upcoming class on November 30th - Job Hunting For Young Professionals. I’m thinking that the third part of this series will follow up with the conversation from that night.

Some wonder if that hurts my business, offering ways for folks to learn on their own. Perhaps a bit, but it’s worth it to me to see my community become stronger from a collective effort to make everyone a bit better at being a business. Plus, I have the help of some fabulous people on each team for each event (check out the team pages on the event sites – I couldn’t do these big ideas without these folks – they are awesome). That makes it a bit easier to make everyone we reach a bit more awesome.

Why would a non-social media marketing wonk want to attend a PodCamp NH or a SMBNH? That’s easy – in addition to the connections and the atmosphere of learning at each, you are guaranteed to learn something new each time. With SMBNH I’m militant about not marketing to the attendees, and encourage people to let me know if they feel any of our presenters or organizers have sold to them during their speaking time instead of educated them via a clear link on the site sidebar and on the Facebook group sidebar. With PodCamp NH that problem takes care of itself thanks to the Law of Two Feet, one of my favorite things about PodCamps everywhere.

For the truly non technical, I’m offering a class at PodCamp NH in social media applications for the trades (construction, etc). I’m also talking social media and music and possibly film. That’s three classes right there that aren’t geared toward the social media marketer, but to YOU, and looking at the sessions proposed I see many, many more. Don’t see one you need but have experience in your profession to bring to the table? Sign up for PodCamp NH then go propose your own session over at the website. We’ll be getting a first draft of the schedule posted soon (though you should note, as a user driven conference, all drafts of the session are just that drafts – it is subject to great sweeping change even during the event as the users evolve what they want to learn in real time).

If you can’t spend a weekend learning (though it is highly recommended) you can try the two hour long SMBNH once a month. The next one is this Friday. And if you don’t live in New Hampshire, you can find a PodCamp in most states and several countries on the PodCamp wiki, or find your closest Social Media Breakfast by heading over to the national web site.

See you in class – let’s teach each other something new!

There are a few admins of the calendar who can edit the events you post (Myself, John Herman, Justin Herman, Christine Major, Nick Plante, Kelley Muir, Ted Roche, Kevin Micalizzi). We can also help you post an event if you find yourself “calendar challenged” by the Google Calendar event posting interface. Other people can post events but not edit (Don’t forget to set your event to “public” so we all can see it before saving, and to include an URL for more info in your description! Make it easy for people to come to your thing!).

Here is the plain html NH Calendar link for sharing in emails and tweets and such

Here is the iCal NH Calendar link

Here is what it looks like embedded and reduced to fit a blog post window (you can grab the iframe embed code from the share calendar button, or one of us can email it to you – standard embed width is 800px, this is shrunk to 400px):

We’re adding some of the existing events this evening, check back tomorrow night and if you don’t see yours yet – ADD IT. All of NH will thank you. Have fun!

Note: If you can’t add your event for whatever reason, any of the people listed here can add it for you – get us the details

Also, We’re getting a lot of emails about scheduling around school. We know parents will make it to these events if they can, and if not – there is always next month as many are recurring. We have a quite a few single and child free people who go to these various meetups as well, so there is a nice, diverse mix of people every month as schedules change and people’s availability rotates.

We’re going to have a band, Rick is going to roast a pig for us and serve all the fixin’s, and there will be a cash bar for alcoholic beverages (coffee, tea and water will be included with the BBQ). We are seeking sponsors (partial sponsorship is ok). The sponsorships will be used to pay the band and pay for the food. Rick is generously donating the venue space for free.

This Social Media Breakfast NH will be a slightly different format. Instead of having speakers, we are inviting you to bring your family to this afternoon of networking and fun. Sponsors will get the benefit of being part of the marketing for the event (we’ll make sure you get lots of exposure in the coming weeks). They’ll also get to take the microphone briefly to tell us a little about why they sponsored and what they do as a company.

I’m looking into getting shirts made for what we hope to be an annual event at varying venues across the state. If I do get shirts done (it’s pretty short notice), the sponsors will also have logos on the back of the shirt.

So, the sign up page will be going up shortly. If you want to be a full or partial sponsor, please email me directly or use the Google Voice button in the right sidebar to leave me a message.

This will be a blast, and a great way to celebrate and network before everyone get back to school and fall routines. Even CEOs get to play “hooky” once in a while – it makes us human.

The venue:

This month’s Social Media Breakfast is brought to you by Uptown Uncorked (your SMBNH organizer and monthly host), DimDim (live casting) and Southern New Hampshire University (venue).

Thank you to Jason Allgire who helped facilitate the SNHU venue for us.

Location: SNHU Campus, Manchester, NH – Building TBD

Social Media Breakfast History

On seeing growing demand in this area, I decided to fill the need with a new branch of the nationwide Social Media Breakfast in NH. It isn’t that we don’t love Boston, because we do, but our neighbor to the north is rich in technology and social media, and often overlooked when events are planned. I saw a need for networking opportunities that were easier to get to for the northern tech and social media crowd, and decided to step up and fill it. Because NH itself is a diverse and scattered state, the Social Media Breakfast there will be just a little bit different than the one in Cambridge/Boston. Our first meeting was in January 2009, and was a roaring success.

What is a Social Media Breakfast?

From the official description: The Social Media Breakfast was founded by Bryan Person in August 2007 as an event where social media experts and newbies alike come together to eat, meet, share, and learn. Marketers, PR pros, entrepreneurs, bloggers, podcasters, new-media fanatics, and online social networkers are all welcome to attend.

The breakfast series began in Boston and has now spread to more than a dozen cities throughout the United States and around the world.

How will the Social Media Breakfast in NH be different?

The main difference between Social Media Breakfast NH and other SMBs will be all-inclusiveness. I do not want only social media people and companies to attend, I also want technology types, programmers, coders, tech writers, tech companies and more to attend. As a state that is rich in technology but scattered in distance, I think the best networking and connection making effect will be achieved by combined our different cultures. You never know, as a social media type you might just meet the coder you’ve been looking for to create your dream project if we all come together to connect and to learn from each other!

Theme for the fourth Social Media Breakfast: Using Social Media In Education

The fifth Social Media Breakfast NH (hashtag #smbnh) will be all about topics related to using social media in education. In this struggling economy and shifting paradigm we need to be working together to be more successful and better weather the storm. We should be pulling in all aspects of technology, new media, old media and social media to succeed and more importantly to help the next generation succeed. This meeting will help us lay the foundation for a richer, better education, tech and new media community in NH.

In addition to myself, who will be your host and MC for the morning, you will have three speakers giving three brief presentations on topics relating to the theme for the morning.

Speakers:

• Opening Remarks by Leslie Poston, Uptown Uncorked and co-author, Twitter for Dummies

• Welcome Remarks by SNHU

• Wayne Kurtzman (Beyond the Biz, Destination Imagination, More) will be speaking about his work with Destination Imagination and more

• John Herman (OddNoggin.com, GravityLand.com, Improv, More) will be speaking about his use of social media and multi media in his class at Epping High School

• Kelley-Sue LeBlanc (Aleuromedia) will discuss her work this past semester with social media in a classroom at Daniel Webster College

This is going to be a great breakfast!

TO SPONSOR THIS OR A FUTURE SMBNH CONTACT LESLIE POSTON via Twitter, Email or Phone or purchase a sponsor ticket above.

Let’s make the new SMBNH crackle with energy and success! See you there!

I am an idea person. I don’t like to see a good idea die on the vine, choked by excessive caution, hemming, hawing or general “over thinking”. Sure, you need to plan, but there comes a point where you also have to take that leap and try the idea out – set it free to roam the wild. It’s the only you can grow as a person or business.

Some ideas fly high, like Uptown Uncorked, the Topics on Fire podcast (currently on summer hiatus) or the recent Twitter for Dummies project with Laura Fitton and Michael Gruen that just wrapped (hitting stores soon). Some build momentum more slowly. Some struggle to get past the enthusiasm stage. Some end up being put aside as not viable after all.

Some of my projects are building momentum at a nice steady pace now, like a new book I’m going to be writing with Jim Keenan from A Sales Guy. Some are building momentum slowly, like Social Mic, a fun music side project I’m working on with Maria Thurrell and a new hush hush project I’m creating with Alexa Scordato.

A few took off like rockets, going much faster than anticipated. One of those was Social Media Breakfast NH. The people in the business community of NH have embraced this idea and are instrumental in how successful it has been, and I can’t thank you all enough for the enthusiasm you bring to each month’s meeting (next month: Education 2.0 part two, by the way – save the date: 7/17). SMBNH grew so quickly I had to bring on the fabulous Kevin Micalizzi and Matt Turner to help. Another of these is PodCamp NH, which is really starting to gather steam behind the scenes. It’s a good thing I have a good team helping with that (Thanks team: Kevin Baringer, Kevin Micalizzi, John Herman, Christine Major, Nick Plante)!

One of my favorite ideas is struggling to get past the enthusiasm stage, mainly due to unexpected issues with red tape. That one is Strong Women in Tech, which I discussed the other day. Luckily, I reached out and am now getting some fabulous responses to that cry for help, and this idea may finally push past Stage One and really take off.

Some people look at all of the irons I keep in the fire – clients, speaking, writing, side projects, blogging, and more – and ask how on earth I can do everything I want to and still have a life. Simple: my network. Every single project or idea, as you can see, involves me reaching out to someone (or several someones) from my network I think would be a great fit for the idea actually getting legs and growing. If I didn’t have a strong network, none of this would work.

It isn’t just about me tapping my network, either. My network taps me for their projects all of the time (case in point, Laura tapping me for Twitter for Dummies). Be helpful. Be willing. Be supportive. This collaborative culture and collaborative economy we are in now is a two way street. Grow your network, take leaps of faith, help, support, DO, be bold – and you will grow in return.

Because we want as many people in the education space to attend as possible, we switched the off months to June and will be having this SMBNH on July 17th at SNHU. I’m still finalizing arrangements with the speakers and seeking a food sponsor, so stay tuned for more information.

Some of the tools I use to manage my business are tools I also use to manage and monitor my social media and online life as well. You’ll see those on both the “social media toolbox” list and the “CEO on the go toolbox” list. Also, it’s notable that several of the tools on both lists have had significant upgrades in recent months that make them even more integrated, collaborative with other tools, and useful.

As a refresher, my social media toolbox post highlighted: Evernote, Shareaholic (FireFox, Safari), Ping.fm, Ubiquity/FireFox, TweetDeck, TextExpander, Quicksilver, Google stuff, my HTC Mogul PDA and my MacBook. Expect an updated post on my social media tools to drop here or elsewhere soon, as some of those have been adjusted with passing time. You’ll notice that Evernote makes an appearance on both lists, and with good reason – the company introduced some nice on-the-go integrations recently.

So how do I run my business on the fly? It’s important for me to have as much data as possible accessible from anywhere. This means that I use a lot of web based solutions. Until they make a 1TB USB Flash thumb drive (and consider this an official “would someone PLEASE make one?” request), I can’t fit all of my data into any lightweight portable form to take with me. If you are a CEO with a MacBook Air or a netbook, this is doubly true for you – you have even less storage and need computing from the cloud solutions even more.

Equipment

My most essential tools are my MacBook and my HTC Mogul PDA. All of the tools I use for my business are accessible at least in basic form from both (some of the mobile sites leave something to be desired, but I find this true of many mobile sites). Along with that, I carry the chargers with me, which takes up valuable space in my League of Awesomeness laptop bag. Since power is key and cords are bulky, I am researching adding one of these to my arsenal. I also keep my iPod on me with a backup of my presentations, in case something horrible happens to the laptop – color me paranoid, but you never know.

Services

Evernote

Yes, Evernote is on both lists. It is a powerful, flexible way to annotate and track your life and business. I talked about the desktop and web plug in features in the last post. What makes it even more effective are the way it integrates these features into your mobile life. Evernote on my phone lets me keep track of anything I’m doing. I can handwrite a note using Ink Note; I can record a meeting, sing a song I’m writing, speak a poem or story idea I have or give myself a quick voice reminder using Audio Note; I can take a picture of anything and record it with the Photo Note feature; I can even send myself files and text notes. Evernote upped the game recently for this heavy Twitter user by allowing me to link my Twitter account to my Evernote account. By then following @myEV on Twitter, I can DM myself notes and reminders and links to add to my Evernote storage as well. With tagged search and other features, all of my notes are easy to find and ready for me to come back to the next time I load up the desktop app or go to the web site. I can even share the notes with people working on a project with me.

Freshbooks

I can not say enough nice things about FreshBooks. They recently won a Webware 100 award, and with good reason. This accounting solution is lightweight, easy to learn, easy to use and flexible enough to incorporate several other on-the-go tools to make it easier to track time, expenses, calls and more. I love that I can create estimates and invoices for my clients that include action items, allowing them to link to the live estimate or invoice and make change requests, accept the terms, pay online and more. It’s very convenient on both sides. Not only that, the customer who has an ongoing project can log in and track time spent on their project, see progress reports and more. It handles staff that work for you as well as clients, and now it is going social – allowing freelancers and subcontractors to link to projects as well, creating a network of people I work and collaborate with. I use this every day, either via the web client, the time tracking widget for my MacBook, my phone (using other services to text in time tracked, expense, or calls made) and more. An ideal accounting solution for the small to medium business that integrates with applications like Xpenser, SkyDeck, etc and exports compatible file types to other accounting software as well.

Xpenser

This little tool let’s me send a tweet, an email, an IM or an SMS from my phone to track expenses. It tracks mileage, meals, time on a project, and more. All you have to do is link it to FreshBooks using the FreshBooks API and it sends all of these expenses to FreshBooks to be associated with a client and project. It also offers a full slate of reports and other features to make it a good stand alone solution for export to desktop accounting programs.

SkyDeck

Another tool that integrates with FreshBooks, allowing me to sync my calls from my cell phone into my FreshBooks account and associate them with a client or project for billing time. It also has some pretty nifty other features, like being able to make a text or call right from the application, see who you call most, get reports to your email on your cell phone usage and even get nudged if you used to talk to someone and don’t call them as much anymore. There is a social aspect to SkyDeck, as it lets you connect with your friends who also use it, a nice touch.

Kall8

The Magnitude Media 800 number is run through a company called Kall8. It costs very little money to run the line, and comes with some nice features. A favorite is call block per number – you can log into the web site and block a number if you get put on a fax machine auto dial list or a telemarketer gets around the National DNC list somehow. This is very handy. Since it is web based, you can forward your calls anywhere you are, receive web based faxes (and send them), get voicemail and more.

YouMail

You may be thinking I spend a lot of time using call management solutions. I do. The less time I spend on the phone, the more work I get done, so I have several options for filtering calls. In addition to Kall8, I use YouMail. YouMail gives me the Caller ID of every caller, shows me when a friend is calling, but most importantly for this woman who hates to waste time checking voice mail, it transcribes my voice mail to text messages for me. Fantastic feature, and a total time saver.

PockeTwit

This Twitter client from Google Code is wonderful. It gives you an attractive, iPhone-like Twitter experience complete with avatars and a full feature set (as well as interacting with other services, like identi.ca, etc) for your WinMo Touch phone. The fact that I can use features like favorite, retweet and more while on the go is invaluable for me, as a heavy Twitter user.

QIK

This live streaming video solution for my phone lets me grab events and interviews on the fly and share them immediately without needing a ton of expensive equipment.

Contxts

Contxts give you Paperless Business Cards. Text geechee_girl to short code 50500 and you’ll see what I mean and why these are so handy.

Google Docs

I use Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office when traveling, as it lets me access my work from anywhere. At the home office I use iWork instead of Office, which imports and exports Google and Microsoft compatible formats.

Small Notepad and a Pen

Trust me, even with a phone and laptop on you, there will always be an occasion to use the old fashioned pen and paper when you are traveling. Your IMAP Gmail may hang up or fail, you may need to write notes larger than a business card back, your battery may run out of juice – stuff happens. Be prepared.

And there you have it, the tools that let me run two businesses (Uptown Uncorked, Social Mic), plan events like SMBNH and PodCamp NH, advise companies and write for my freelance writing clients while I’m on the go. What’s in your toolbox for business or for social media?

Disclosure: some links in this blog will be affiliate links

I don’t post more often because I like to put most of my ideas into action instead. I am a woman of big ideas, a connector, and I try to enact as many as possible, as quickly and as well as I can. I don’t like a good idea to die on the vine. A lot of these big ideas involve connecting the real world with the online world. The value of social media to people and businesses is in the connectivity it brings, and the doors that opens. This means I believe just as much in the value of face time as I do in the value of online time, and I try to instill that belief in others by building powerful real life networks.

I’ve been putting these thoughts into practice with Social Media Breakfast NH, Podcamp NH, in-person relationship building, client coaching and strategizing, writing books to make the concept easier for others like Twitter for Dummies (co-author with Laura Fitton and Michael Gruen), investigating co-working spaces like the upcoming Port Forward, real life networking whenever possible at events like NH and Boston Media Makers, local off-web events like Chamber meetings or last night’s Extreme Website Makeover event, one-on-one time with my colleagues and friends whose minds inspire me, and more. There is something about translating connections between the tangible and the intangible that makes the ideas much more vibrant and that makes the connection adhere more fully.

How is face time important for your business? Simple: it brings the human element into your brand. You can attempt to engage people online until you are blue in the face. You can throw money and resources at social media until you go broke. But if you can’t translate that rapport and effort into time off the screen somehow, you’re missing a key component to your overall social media and business development strategy. It’s not your 100 or 100,000 or more followers on various platforms that counts, it’s the number that come to your movie, attend your event, support your cause in person, talk about you to their friends, go to your concert, use your service in their homes or businesses, drink your wine in real life… you get the idea.

Never underestimate the value of face time. How do you employ face time in your business or life?