March 2012 Talk for Neil Thornton's Niagara College Sales & Marketing Students

March 2012 Talk for Neil Thornton's Niagara College Sales & Marketing Students

Transcript

1. Yelling at Neil’s Students (working title)
2. Sales & Marketing sucks. ...which is to say, we’re in the middle of a major shift in media formats and public attention, which forces a lot of good Sales & Marketing people to do lots of boneheaded stuff using tools that are ill suited for what they’re trying to accomplish. That sucks if you were trained in the old way of doing things and now find yourself thrown online with no good strategy. Sales & Marketing people are by all likelihood perfectly swell people, or so I’ve heard.
3. Who? @adamwhite http://about.me/adamwhite
4. People like lists.
5. “Eating a Sandwich” Why is this a popular stereotype? #1
6. Social particularities are not obvious to outsiders. ...even more so when only a single sense is involved. #1
7. How do people become socially fluent? Immersion! #1
8. Anthropologists call this participant observation. #1
9. You can only truly learn how to engage with online communities by doing it. #1
10. #2
11. #2
12. We’re storytelling! ...sharing a narrative. Editing and documenting our experiences. #2
13. As Geoffrey Miller in “Spent” said we’re Taste Signalling #2
14. "Many products are signals first and material objects second." #2
15. "Many status updates are signals first and content second." #2
16. Why? #2
17. People share because they want recognition and appreciation. #2 (try it)
18. So we’re storytelling... ...but stories have one truly killer feature that we lose sight of: #3
19. They’re interesting. #3
20. How do you become interesting in a single 140 character Tweet or among a sea of Facebook status updates? #3
21. You don’t. What you say only has real meaning to people you’ve established a relationship with. #3
22. Self-branding (online and off) takes years of hard work. Reputation building is a marathon, not a sprint. #3
23. Everything we say online has subtext #4
24. What’s subtext? Implicit meaning. Reading between the lines. Something understood. #4
25. If you're conscious of subtext you're self branding! The reason you post something (or not) becomes clear. #4
26. Awareness of subtext drives your internal editor. #4
27. Everything (worthwhile) we post online has subtext! #4
28. What if you share lots of different subtexts about a lot of different things? Your context becomes messy. #5
29. If you’re difficult for people to “peg” it doesn’t make you compelling or interesting online... it makes you easy to ignore. #5
30. So only engage in topics you want to wear. Create discussions on topics you’re comfortable being #5
31. ...but we were told we’re supposed to look and sound human online! #6
32. You are, but that means you should have a personality, not that you shouldn’t self-edit. #6
33. Figure out the handful of topics you’re passionate about and engage in those. Opportunity arises from the intersections. #6
34. Respect the Implicit Contract #7
35. You must provide something of value in exchange for the imposition on people’s lives. #7
36. If you’ve built the reputation to sustain it, interaction with you might just be the value... ...but it’s hard to get there. #7
37. Discovering what value you can consistently offer is the game. #7
38. Your personal brand is going to get you a job (or not). #8
39. If I can’t find the awesome stuff you’re sharing about yourself online I’m not hiring you. I want to proof. #8
40. If your online breadcrumbs reveal a subtext and narrative that doesn’t jive with my company’s values, I won’t hire you. #8
41. You can’t trick the search engines, they’re smarter than you, so create good stuff in your name consistently. #8
42. Start thinking like a freelancer. #9
43. People know me as Adam from online interactions. They know my company less, but I get clients because of who I am, no because of where I work. #9
44. If my company went away, I’m still here. My personal brand gives me flexibility and control of my life above and beyond my employer. #9
45. Your reputation, online and off, is your job career security. #9
46. You’re probably as smart and able as most of the people you compete with. #10
47. If you all have the same free social tools sweat equity starts to matter more than money. #10
48. Hustle only gets you so far though. Connecting regularly and sincerely with people doesn’t scale. #10
49. That’s your challenge. #10
50. READ.
51. READ.
52. @adamwhite http://about.me/adamwhite