What I learned from a social media legend

Yesterday I attended the first day of a two day event in Doncaster called Learnpod10. The informal, podcamp (participant-driven conference) style event was intended as a space for education professionals and social media enthusiasts to “come together for a free and informal exchange of practice and ideas”.

The event was organised by Quba alum Rob Wilmot and the keynote speaker was Chris Brogan. If you haven’t heard of Chris before, he is an eleven year veteran of social media, web and mobile technologies. He is the best selling author of the books Trust Agents and Social Media 101, and his blog is in the top 5 of the Advertising Age Power150, and in the top 100 on Technorati. Obviously I was keen to hear him speak…

Anyway, Darren Bristow and I arrived Wednesday morning and I immediately spotted Rob sitting with my former Together Agency colleagues, Jason Burrows and Nick Wright (now of Hubbub Ideas ). After the joyous reunions, I was introduced to none other than Chris Brogan himself. I sat down to chat and was pleasantly surprised to find him soft spoken and eager to pay attention to what other people have to say.

They often say that what makes a person popular is their ability to make whoever they are talking to feel like the most important person in the room. Chris certainly has this skill, I observed him quietly working his magic on everyone who timidly (or otherwise) approached him to chat throughout the day. He also takes care to remember names and to tailor his talks to his audience. For example, being nervous and not sure what to do, I gave him my business card after we finished chatting in the morning. During his introductory talk he made a passing comment that he “throws away 90% of business cards” he receives. I was mortified until he followed up with “Rebecca yours is safe”. That’s a good memory!

The key points I took from his talk were points that marketers should tattoo to the inside of their eyelids. So simple, yet so often forgotten:

Listen - The first step of understanding what people want from you (or your brand) is to just LISTEN. People are talking, don’t try to stop it or move it to a more acceptable platform just spend some time finding out what they want.

Be humble – Do not go on about yourself all the time (ooops). Chris emphasized the 12:1 rule, for every 12 posts you make helping others you can make 1 promoting yourself. When you do make your one request for help, people are much more likely to help you.

Be human – Find out people’s names, who they are, what they do and what they need. Make them feel important, be compassionate and build a mutually satisfying relationship. This is pretty hard to fake, but hopefully you won’t need to since your customers are the ones paying your bills ;p

He wound up the presentation with strategy points for career and personal development as follows:

Lay out your lifestyle wishes online and offline
Pick a niche
Set goals (business, financial etc)
Build a homebase (website)
Visit outposts (social networks)
Promote others and get yourself noticed
Refine how to be helpful
Provide value every day

Do you know what counts as value to your audience? What’s your niche? Do you have a homebase and do you know which outposts you need to visit? What should you do when you get there? If you would like to discuss any of these questions, feel free to mail, comment or tweet me.

Image source: Flickr