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How Can You Get Your Online Social Skills Working Offline Too?

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One Room, One Community of the Most Incredible Ones

Every year when I plan the content for SOBCon, I realize it’s an amazing proposition for every person — speaker, attendee, sponsor who walks into that room. It’s one room, one most welcoming community but intimidating too because it’s made of up of the most incredible ones.

It’s like walking into a living Internet. Shiny minds everywhere …

How can anyone be visible in a room like that? Yet we were. I’ve thinking about what made the conversation work for even the newest members of that highly charged group. What I was that the skills we learn on the interwebs can serve us in the most power-charged rooms of real people.

We just have to translate back to real people what we already know. Here’s a few I saw in action that helped folks connect last week.

  • Focus is attractive. We like people who know what they’re about. Rick Wion’s unabashed passion for his client, Klondike bars, drew a conversation around him. Gail Goodwin’s vision for the Global Hug Tour got a whole room ready to wrap their arms around the world. Go buy a hug now.
  • Change the plan when it’s not working. Greg Ross, from Colgate said best when he said, “The suspense we’ve built is far more the video will deliver. Let’s move on.” How cool was that?!!
  • Disruption can be fun, when it’s respectful. Elevator pitches in a real elevator got us to forget our self-consciousness and laugh. Thanks @DaveMurr and @RamseyM
  • One question can start a conversation. Amy LeForge said so much in her story of changing what she feared. What she heard was that so many others felt as she had when she stood back last year.
  • Community is about learning, not teaching. Walmart, Colgate, Allstate, WeSeed, Metzger, BuzzCorps, AirCell, TheImageStudios, One2OneNetwork, BlogCatalog — all sponsors — came to learn from the community and left with a roomful of friends and a passel of ideas.

That handful of skills made ones — individuals — stand out in an outstanding room of people.

How can you get your online social skills working offline too?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Social Networking in the World of Life

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Time to Network with Humanity

Iim_so_strong_by_Liz_Strauss

In this new online world, we choose how we spend our time. We define our place. We build our reputation. We can spend endless hours in those endeavors.

As we establish an onlne presence, do we miss opportunities to have a life, be fully present, to be fully human?

What if we bring our social media and social networking skilss back to the the world our where we are eating, sleeping, and living? How might it change and how might it change us?

Social Networking
in the World of Life

What if we take our social networking off line and outside the world of business?

What if we steal an hour to meet people we’ve never talked to before?

Do think that time might give us more inisght, more skills, and more energy to reach out to the people in our lives and in our business circle?

  1. Have a conversation with someone who is alone. It’s not hard to find someone who is shut-in, sick, or cannot get out to see a starry night. Make an hour to go visit. Your conversation last through many lonely nights for you as well as for the person you visit.
  2. Use the telephone to call someone who’s not in your email address book. Approach the conversation with a beginner’s mind. Ask that person how they meet new people. Then sit back and listen.
  3. Learn about the communities in your community. Go alone to a restaurant in your neighborhood or town. Get to know the person who serves you. Find out about the people who frequent that space. Explore the connections.
  4. “Friend” the people you encounter this week. Ask them questions of the sort that might be in their profile. Make up your question of the day before you leave home. Where are going? What do you do for fun? What do you wish would change soon?
  5. Use your eyes to listen for what people aren’t saying, but want you to know. Watch how people respond to you and the things around them. Notice how each person’s response reflects their mood or attitude. Notice the way you respond to them.
  6. For one day, trade in smiles and conversation, rather business cards. Give yourself extra points for the laugh of a child.

Moving outside our circle of family and friends is the definition of networking. Giving first is the mantra that makes networking worthwhile. Let’s not move all of our great giving to only those we meet through a computer screen.

When we get more social offline in a truly human way. We bring depth and insight to our online presence.

What sort of nonbusiness offline social networking do you recommend?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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