(x-posted on RTCRM.com)

Despite my outgoing personality and insane level on social media involvment, I’m not very good at the conference/cocktail party networking thing.  I attribute this to my being an INTJ and a Virgo.  The “I” of INTJ means I tend to be introverted, and not comfy making small talk with tons of strangers. The Virgo means that I like to control situations and have things neat and orderly (not my house, just my life).

Nutshell is I suck at just chatting up strangers unless I have some specific thing I wish to say to them.

Thank goodness for the “back-channel.” I’m at the ePharma Marketing Summit and if it weren’t for Twitter (and my colleague Croom), I wouldn’t have spoken to a soul.   Twitter is the introduction to a whole bunch of new people and thanks to one smart person, Shwen, we had a “tweeple” lunch yesterday where many of us met in person.  Social media and technology has opened up an entirely new avenue of conference and post-conference networking.

Here’s my approach:

1. Twitter during the conference. always using the conference “tweme” code (trust me they all have them now, and they are usually pretty simple to figure out). I do it almost as a way of taking notes on what is being said more than commenting and giving my opinions.
2. Start following interesting conference tweeple, be sure to “@” them when they say something interesting and “retweet” good posts by other people. Be sure to look for the official conference Twitter person. There’s probably one there.
3. Ask at least a couple of public questions during QA sessions, if you can come up with anything good. It gives other people a reason to come and talk to you! Do start with your name. I’m terrible about remembering that part. Today I would have been the “woman in lavender.”
4. Organize tweeple meals or at least attend them. You can just listen and nod attentively, if nothing else.
5. When you do talk to people in person don’t just take the business card and file it away.  That night, the next morning — hit LinkedIn.com! Send them a network invite( mention that you just met them at the conference, refer to your conversation to jog their memory).

My boss insists that I at least talk to a couple of people at every conference and convince at least one person that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to social media, so I’ll get invited to participate on panels at future conferences.  I guess you could call the whole approach “influencer networking.” Often conference back-channels can be thoroughly overwhelming and distracting,  thank goodness for the back-channel at ePharma or I’d never speak to anyone!

[tags]networking, social networking, conferences, back channel, twitter, linkedin[/tags]