Daniel Johnson, Jr.

Behold the power of Twitter.

I’ve been going to a book networking group for job seekers at the Barnes & Noble in West Chester for a few months now. Monte Washburn, who works at the bookstore, holds a discussion about books and how they can help job seekers. This week, based on my recommendation, we discussed Mitch Joel‘s new book Six Pixels of Separation (affiliate link).

Monday afternoon Twitter:

• 4:10 PM danieljohnsonjr: @mitchjoel We’re going to be talking about your book tomorrow night at a Cincinnati-area Barnes & Noble book club!
• 4:16 PM mitchjoel: @danieljohnsonjr Wanna Skype me in?
• 4:17 PM danieljohnsonjr: @mitchjoel Let me talk to the organizer and get back with you. I’m danieljohnsonjr on Skype.
• 6:23 PM danieljohnsonjr: @mitchjoel We’d love to have you in on the discussion about your book at the Cincinnati-area B&N book club tomorrow!

It’s not uncommon for an author to be present at a discussion or a book signing, but, through the power of social media, we were able to have Mitch Joel, who lives in Montreal, Quebec, virtually with us in Cincinnati, Ohio, tonight while we discussed his book.

Here are some of my perspectives, based on my notes. I hope I haven’t misinterpreted or taken anything out of context. Here goes:

• Why blog? To be findable, to be knowable.
• Don’t blog with the intent to make money or find a job. You yourself are the best advertiser. Let your content and passion shine through on your blog.
• Communicate where your audience is. The reason Mitch wrote the book is to reach people who weren’t already in the social media space, top-level executives who might want to hire Mitch and his company to help them.
• The same can be said about the different social media tools we have at our disposal: communicate where your audience is. Are they on Twitter? Would they follow a news feed on Twitter? Communicate with them over there. Are they on Facebook? Communicate with them over there.
• Before you jump into social media, and often as you’re active with it, ask yourself, “Why should I be on (insert social media tool here)?”
• In response to a question from one person in the group who asked about whether he should create multiple blogs about different passions he has or combine them into one, Mitch redirected to the previous question. Then he recommended as general advice we
  • Use tools like Google Blog Search to find out who the players are in the verticals, the industries we’re looking to participate in
  • Play in their space – read their blogs, comment on posts, join conversations, etc.
  • Once you get comfortable in that space, then consider branching out on your own, if you have the desire to do so
• Mitch reads a lot. He mentioned a new book by Seth Godin, called Linchpin, which is coming out later this month. He says it’s like Purple Cow (affiliate link) but for individuals.
• Mitch mentioned – and I don’t know if this is from the book or not – Three Prongs for Success. If any of these three are off-balance, you’re going to have trouble:
  1. Professional
  2. Personal/family
  3. Community
• Mitch is seriously passionate about writing, and he writes all the time. He said it takes him about 20 minutes to write a 500-600 word blog post. He keeps notebooks with thoughts and ideas.
• I asked Mitch where he comes up with all of the ideas for his blog posts. He said a lot of his content is crowdsourced from social media sites like Twitter. He reads lots of blogs in Google Reader for ideas.
• There was a comment from the group about whether it was important to get a lot of visitors to your blog. Mitch urged us to focus not on trying to get as many visitors or many followers on Twitter for that matter.
• Instead we should focus on who we’re trying to speak to and create content for those people. A lot of this goes back to the strategy; understanding why we’re involved in a particular channel.
• As job seekers, our goal is to find the one place where we can find the work we were meant to do (emphasis added).
• Having a blog helps us build credibility.
• While some can accomplish their goals simply by being on a single social media outpost alone; i.e., LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, Mitch reminded us that these are third-party websites that could go away at any time. All of our content on these websites would go away with them.
• Having a blog and a community around a blog means you own your content and are not at the mercy of whether LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook evaporate.
• Once again, when deciding which communication platform – and that’s what all these tools are, really – to participate in, it’s important to consider which platform the audience is using.  Mitch doesn’t have a YouTube channel because his intended audience isn’t over there. He’s looking to reach high-level executives who are looking for business and marketing advice.
• Monte Washburn, the organizer of the group, asked about how to best go about blending online social networking with face-to-face social networking. There are some people who go to a networking event, and when the structured part of the program is over with, leave and then talk about how they didn’t get anything out of it.
• Mitch encouraged us to go into face-to-face networking events with the intent to help others. When we approach it from that angle, we’ll get a lot more about of the events.
• I mentioned that it’s hard to keep waiting for karma to kick in. He said that we’re not waiting for karma; we’re waiting for serendipity. If we approach our networking – online or in-person – with a helpful attitude, then we’re setting ourselves up to be front of mind.
• Mitch used tonight’s discussion as a perfect example of this. He spent 75 minutes talking to a small group of job seekers in Cincinnati, Ohio from his home in Montreal. We might buy his book, and that’s okay. But what might happen is that we leave the discussion remembering who Mitch Joel is, and we’re more apt to recommend him to other people.
• Mitch told a story about trying to get Gene Simmons and later Bono on the front page of a news publication. He contacted the artist’s management, asking for an interview if they were able to get on the front page.  Once they said yes, he contacted the publication, asking if they’d like an interview with the artists, provided the story gets on the front page.
• Key takeaway for job seekers:
  • Find a company or organization that has a problem. Identify what is missing.
  • Find out who can help, and connect the two together.
  • Do this many times.

After we were done with the Skype call, we discussed some things further, and we were all very impressed that we were able to bring Mitch in on such short notice. Some members of the group asked how this was made possible, so here are the details:

1. I’d been following Mitch through social media and his podcasts, Six Pixels of Separation and Media Hacks, for many months. We’ve been connected on LinkedIn, Facebook, and LinkedIn for some time.
2. Mitch wrote Six Pixels of Separation.
3. Monte set up the networking group meeting for people to meet face to face and discuss books relevant to people looking for jobs or ways to improve their careers.
4. A couple months ago, at one of these events, I recommended Mitch’s book to Monte.
5. Monte set up this week’s meeting to discuss Mitch’s book.
6. In my typical enthusiasm, yesterday on Twitter I said how excited I was that we’d be talking about his book, mentioning Mitch by his Twitter username.
7. Through listening to his Twitter stream, he found out about it and asked if we’d be interested in Skyping him in.
8. I contacted Monte to see what he thought, and we were good to go.
9. Mitch and I connected through Skype.
10. I brought my laptop to Barnes & Noble tonight and we brought Mitch into the conversation.

$timulus networking group in Cincinnati, Ohio

On behalf of the group pictured above, thanks again, Mitch, for spending your Tuesday evening with us!

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• 10 Steps to Achieving ROI (Return on Influence) Through Corporate Blogs (socialwebschool.com)
• Social Media Basics For Executives (slideshare.net)
• 30 second book review – Six Pixels of Separation (kevinsgreatadventure.blogspot.com)

Tags: Facebook, Google, Google Blog Search, LinkedIn, Mitch Joel, Seth Godin, twitter, YouTube

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 6:30 am and is filed under case studies, Featured, how I use Twitter, social media strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.