WiredCU

As promised, the Republican response. 

 I am not into politics, but rather humor  - check back for the Republican Response! 

 

That’s right, it’s not your business card, your faux event accent, or even your memorized list of credentials that sets the tone on whether anyone wants to meet you at the traditional event or seminar. 

NOPE! 

It’s that cheap plastic card with a clasp, or even worse, that sticky laser printed label currently curling up on your shirt pocket that sets your fate at an event or seminar. 

The traditional event is a wonderful thing to behold – from the infinite platter arrays of precisely placed square cheeses, to those barbecue seasoned nano chicken wings only the precious few get to enjoy before they “fly” off the platters.

Maybe you were one of the lucky few that made it to the chicken wings before they “flew the coup.” 

AND 

Maybe you just left a perfect barbecue flavored fingerprint on your name badge in your attempt to get your badge to “fly straight.” 

In a web 2.0¹⁰  perfect world, the people you were about to meet at a physical event would have already engaged you in conversations in a pre-event online discussion group or blog and had already exchanged contact information with you through various other social networking sites. 

TRUTHFULLY HOWEVER, 

Most financial institutions still conduct events and seminars via the 1960’s method explained to them by their 1970’s College Business Professors (you sing: “I like to teach the world to sing, in perfect h-ar-m-ony”). 

OK, 

For those of you who are shaking their heads up and down with me - I have a tip that will slowly help you build your web 2.0¹⁰ Rome. 

Even though your institution may be a slow adopter to social media and social networking techniques, this does not mean however that the people attending these events are not already using these technologies. 

The best thing operating in every institutions favor right now is that they are ON THE INTERNET and use online registration forms to register event attendees (if not, ouch!).  

Usually the list of attendees ends up in a spreadsheet somewhere usually on your network. 

Grab that list of names and email addresses and do one very valuable thing – cross-reference it against LinkedIn. 

You will be amazed at just how many names you will find that are registered with LinkedIn – I was when I processed my very first list. 

NOW 

Go create a LinkedIn Group for your event and invite members from your list that are registered with this service, to “link in” with you. 

LinkedIn also just recently added a discussion group feature that will let your group members interact with you and one another.  As the group administrator you have the ability to craft pre-event and post-event discussion topics and even assign members who take a lead in discussions as a group “manager.” 

After the event, be sure to post follow-ups to the group with answers to questions and links to online photos, presentations, and other media that the group can share on other social networking and social media sites (Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, etc.). 

So practice K.I.S.S. and give your events new life, after all, staying socially syndicated, “ain’t nothing but a chicken wing!” 

GG

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

I apologize for my lapse in posting - I guess I broke the cardinal rule of blogging - DO NOT FALL OFF THE MAP!

To make up for it I am going to share some of my experience with Social Media and Social Networking in the Credit Union realm.

So here goes…

Do you remember those General Science lectures back in school when Professor Imgonnayawn started talking about how Bees played an integral part of the pollination process?

We’re you paying attention? (<—ruler slapping the chalkboard)

OK, the simplified version of this lecture in case you were snoozing in the back of the class was that Bees actually helped flowers to reproduce seeds by leaving pollen grains from the anther of one flower to the stigma of another flower.

You could say that the Nectar Crazy Bee practiced bad hygiene by forgetting to wipe his feet as he moved from flower to flower in search of the sweet stuff - BUT, like a good Barry White song, he helped the flowers to propagate the earth.

NOW

I am going to tell you that in order for your hard work with your social media and social networking efforts to “sprout seeds,” is that you are going to have to consciously spend some time practicing good pollination hygiene.

Take those dreadful brochures, postcard ads, newspaper advertisements and other traditional media and start sprinkling them with your Super Pollen by providing links to your social media and social networking efforts.

Start a special promotion on your Blog site that integrates with a polling mechanism that you setup in every social networking site that has the ability to host this function. You can integrate a poll in Facebook and on your Blog in the sidebar navigation with relative ease. Require visitors to register before voting so you can capture their email addresses and make sure that the polling widget you are using has adequate tracking/logging ability.

With Twitter you can use that 140 character maximum space to point to the main promotion page on your Blog that features a description of your promotion and later as the promotion nears end you can send updates accordingly.

We all know that the wonderful part of using social media and social networking is that we are sometimes unaware that we are actually pollinating the Google Search engine rankings for our sites - what a wonderful side effect eh!

The idea is to cross-pollinate every single social media and social networking effort you maintain with links back to your main promotion. By all means, make sure you have your metrics reporting dialed in - I use Google Analytics and Sitemeter.

Now go on You Crazy Bee and start pollinating something already!

GG