I’ll be speaking at UnSeminar 8 coming up in Austin Texas.

There is plenty to learn from the speakers, but the best reason to attend events like this is the long term relationships that develop from interacting with other attendees.

As I go through my preparation to network, I thought it would interesting to document some of the way the networking with speaker and attendees works so well for me.

Know Who Will Be There

As soon as I book a trip, I look for social media connections.

Let’s start with a list of speakers

• Joe Vitale
• Pat O’Bryan
• Wendi Friesen
• Erica Douglass
• Connie Ragen Green
• Bill Hibbler
• Jeff Crilley
• Tony Laidig
• Mindy Audlin
• Colin Joss
• Lawrence Ball
• Warren Whitlock (I know you’ll want to meet this guy

I have been doing this for a while, so most of the speakers are already friends on and off Twitter. For the few that I couldn’t recall, I used a Google search. Here is the syntax I use do find a user on Twitter using Google.

twitter.com “warren whitlock’

This all goes in the search box.

Google searches for occurrences of the text between the quotes on Twitter. Usually, you’ll get only the most active use with that name. You click on the link, see the profile and FOLLOW the person.

While on Twitter, be sure to read their recent tweets and click through to their blog and bio links.

Making a List and Checking it Twice (a day)

I created a list of these user handles to follow. I use PeopleBrowsr where I’ll keep a stack (column) open between now and June 20th to see what others are tweeting about. I’ve found that PeopleBrowsr is the fastest way to add people to a group and it allows me to keep it outside of Twitter, where the limit to lists is only 20.

You can use a Twitter list (if you do, let me know and I’ll refer others to it) or a group in almost any Twitter client for this. The Twitter search tool has improved, you may be able to find, follow, and list people as fast as the method I described.

Or, just follow this list I created Unseminar 8 Speakers

I’ll add other attendees to my PeopleBrowsr list as I find and follow them.  The speaker list above will likely be left as is to help you get started.

I use this for people I want to know better. I do not wait for them to start talking about the event, and actually prefer to find out what they are talking about besides UnSeminar since I want to have a relationship before and after that event.  I already know we have that in common, so I look for what else we can connect on.

Building Relationships Before the Event

Using the links I get from Twitter feeds, I’ll find links to blogs post about whatever expertise the person has, along with other interests on Facebook, LinkedIn and anything else they talk about. 

What I’m looking for is their passion. I’ve learned that it’s best to put off my interests for as long as possible and focus on what the other person needs and wants. Many of the famous people I network with are more interested in a charity, cause or avocation than you might think. Some might spend all their time talking about their niche or making money.. that’s okay, but what I’ really want to know is what passion they would follow if they had all the money they ever need. That’s where the real connections lie.

Attack With a Preemptive Love Strike

Here’s where the real fun begins.

Once you have spent a few minutes getting to know a person and their passions, you’ll find at least one thing to love about them. Now we get to put my listen and love marketing strategy into play.

Look for a question asked, a poignant comment, a shared life story or desire from the person you want to know better.  I rarely need more than a few minutes to find at least one question or something to provoke a positive comment.

Now do something nice for them. Instead of reading and thinking “that’s nice”  TELL THEM in a comment, tweet, or message. Please don’t settle for “nice post” or “I’m a fan (I use that when I’m nervous.. it rarely gets a positive reaction). Take a couple of second more and think of something specific and personal that you can say. It doesn’t need to be long, but it has to show you really mean it.

My friend Dr. Ben Mack is calling the a preemptive love strike which means that you don’t wait for others to reach out to you, you look for ways to show love.

Since I’ve used Twitter and social media to help me show love and appreciate to others, I’ve learned to do it much more often… and now find ways offline to do the same.. handwritten notes, a book from Amazon with a note enclosed, a phone call when it’s not expected.. I can’t imagine ever running out of opportunities.

This works. I just set up a joint venture from sending one post card, I have sold consulting to someone who watched how I tweet positive ideas and made new friends while strengthen bonds with many others from using these love strikes.

Watch for the HashTags

Attendees to UnSeminar 8 will be encouraged to tweet and talk about the event and add “#UN8” to the end of each post. This will trigger a link in their posts and allow others to click and see a stream of every tweet with that tag.

You can view this on the web using cool tools like TwitterFall

You can click on the photo to see the current stream for #UN8 or use this site to set up your own instantly updating stream with whatever search term, list of people you want to see.  It’s great for projectors or monitors at events.

Using the hashtag, you can also set up a stack or column in nearly every Twitter client. On the web you can follow us from any browser with Twitter Search

Attend the Preview Webinars

Anyone can attend the free preview webinars to spend time with Pat and the Speakers before the event. Listen to what they teach, but watch for ideas of where you might send a preemptive love strike.

UnSeminar 8 previews are available free online. Most other events offer similar pre-event training. When we do this, it’s a preemptive love strike on attendees and many others who won’t be able to make it.

Event promoters tell me that this doesn’t hurt attendance. In many cases, attendance as the following event goes up due to people hearing the training and deciding they want to get in on the best part.. the live networking.

Come to the Tweet Up

Many events have pre-events the night before the official start time. This is often the best way to get a leveraged fast start on meeting speakers, promoters and experienced attendees for a head start.

Austin Tweet Up expert Kate Buck will be setting up a Tweet up on Thursday June 17th for Austin locals, UnSeminar 8 attendees and you. Follow @KateBuckJr on Twitter and watch for announcements. When you see the invite, you’ll be able to access a list of attendee and follow them.

By the time you get to the Tweet up, you’ll already be seeing friends you met online.

Help Promote the Event

When you tweet about the event, you’ll be doing a preemptive love strike on the promoter, the speakers and other attendees who will benefit from meeting you network.

This can be done even if you can’t make it to the live event.

When you tweet about #un8, point your follower to http://UnSeminar8.com and let them know the handles of the cool people who are speaking or attending. When you tweet something like this:

you know that Pat will see it and appreciate you. This preemptive love strike is about as direct as you can get.

Keep in Touch After the Event

As you begin to use these tips, you’ll find that it takes a lot less time that you might have though before you start. Pretty soon, you’ll have new friends and connections, a network of people that will remember your preemptive love strikes and be looking for ways to help you.

It’s natural to think that you have to sell something to them or perhaps it might be a waste of time. Actually, the reverse is true. The more times you can reach out and help (love) your contacts, the more apt they will be to ask you how they can help you.

When they do, be ready to engage them and move into whatever you need.

Of course you want to keep your goals and desires in mind. I know we can’t do an individual love strike on every contact every day, but I have doubled, doubled again and still increasing my capacity to do this. So far, I can’t see any time that I will want to love less.

These are just a few of the quick steps I take when attending a seminar, and every day. I know each of these work because I’m using them. Do you have other ideas? Please share them with me. Leave a comment, Tweet about this post and let’s discuss what works and what hurdles you see. When you do, I feel your love

Imagine a time when you’ll have so many asking to engage you, wanting to reciprocate for the love you’ve show and anxious to see you do well.

Listen and Love.. it’s as simple as that.

Connections and our social networks are like a super organism that allows us to spread good and bad.

What you do affects those around you. We know that.. but recent work by Nicholas Christakis tells us that it’s in the structure of our networks

This short video explains so much

Since I first encountered Christakis’s ideas, I’ve looked at almost everything in a new light.

Instead of worrying about selling something to someone, I realize that helping him connect someone he knows to someone I know will build cluster of profitability. The ROI looks like serendipity, but is it?

I’ve been putting off doing a “page” on Facebook for as long as they’ve been around.

Fist off, I hated the term “fan page” from the start. I don’t want to be seen as a guy looking to get “fans” or establish myself as a guru.

Trouble is, the limits to connections on Facebook have kept me for interacting with more people and the “page” technology is perfect for allowing the loose connections with good stuff that I support and promote for authors and businesses.

Why I’m Setting Up a PAGE on Facebook

I’ve been playing with a page for the listeners of Profitable Social Media radio for the past few weeks and advises clients to set up page for every book and business.

After all, Facebook as over 400 million readers, pages have grown from 5 to 20 million in the past few months. This is where your readers are expecting to see you.

Today, I logged into Facebook and saw this at the top of my page:

Introducing the Like button

Starting today people will be able to connect with your Page by clicking “Like” rather than “Become a Fan.” We hope this action will feel much more lightweight, and that it will increase the number of connections made across the site

I like being liked!

Watch for the announcement and links to my page here. I’ll be sure to put gobs of great new information on that page.. that’s the best way to grow a community.. GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT.

In the mean time, if you haven’t got a page already.. got get one. If you are technically challenged, let me know and I’ll direct you to some of the wonderful people we have doing Facebook pages.

Do you have a page? Comment below and let me know.

If you’re at NAB 2010 this week and interested in Social median in the entertainment industry come by the tweet house session.

Be sure to head for the Destination Broadband Theater in the Las Vegas Convention Center from 5-6pm on Tuesday, April 13th to check out these awesome speakers at the official Tweet House session at NAB:Twitter and the Entertainment Industry: How the Real Time Web is Changing Hollywood.

A complete rundown of the session and speaker here

NAB Blog Review of Session

When you change your frame of reference, and take a 10,000 foot overview, you see thing that you may have missed

Gary Flake shows how we can get out of the pile of trees that we have seen as the Internet and view the forest of knowledge assembled for us.

More on PIVOT:

• Video: Discovering Insights with Pivot
• Article: Making Sense of Mountains of Data

Way back in the world before computers and cell phones, one of my favorite funny lines from TV was WKRP salesman Herb Tarlek assuring a client that everything work out OK

Del, goshdarnit I’ve got to go, but if you need anything, anything at all, I’ll be in my car somewhere.

Back then, if you didn’t stick around to see what happened, you really didn’t know.

Are you still using 1980’s Technology for Phone Calls?

Now that we have voice mail, cell phones and instant messaging, we don’t have to be tied down to a location. Herb Tarlek can leave the remote broadcast in the hands of Dr. Johnny Fever and the crew, keep the phone on and get more done.

There’s a lot of places where we need to be. Many relationships that can grow stronger when you show up with more connections and more business, we end up with more of these opportunities.

Yet, many end up sitting at a meeting with their phone or computer tuned into someplace else. After all, it still takes time to check in to voice mail, email, Twitter and wherever else people are trying to reach you.

Rethinking the Multiple Points of Contact Theory

I’ve talked to many a busy person who comes up with one way or another to manage all these contact points. If you have an assistant screening, you can get down to one point of contact, but that isolates you.. sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Others drop one medium for another. This week, I’ve seeing announcements that a new service is great and a user suggesting that no on try to reach them on the old one “cause I won’t be checking in”

That may work for some, but I’m convinced that the future of marketing, business and living is to Listen and Love.. I want to know when people are reaching out to me, filter out the noise and respond to real human to let them know I care, and what I can do to help.

I think the answer is a universal in box. Google has several initiative in place for this, Google Buzz in our Gmail accounts, search for just about everything, and Google Voice to replace voice mail.

Here’s how it works:

Most of my calls end up going to voice mail, with Google Voice, they are instantly transcribed and available to view and respond to… right in my Gmail account.

While I’m getting a lot less calls as people learn to reach me via email, buzz, Twitter or blog post comments, there are still a few that pick up the phone every time they think of it. With a universal in box, I can respond quickly.. often sending back an email before I get off the conference call I’m on or while waiting in line at one of those 3 minute intersections here in Vegas.

You can import contacts and forward numbers, so Voice can be integrated with just about any other system you’ve been using. It’s free. Some suggest Google is using the massive data points gained from transcribing messages to improve voice recognition and search algorithms. So I suppose you don’t want you billion dollar secrets left on a Voice Mail message (even if it’s a old fashion answering machine)

Last I checked, Google Voice was still BETA, but it pretty easy to get an invite and may well be open for all now.

I’ve been experimenting with a couple of tools that bridge databases to make it easier to reach friends and contacts where they want to be reached.

We’ll have an update on this weeks Social Media Radio Show.. including some stats on what social networks have the best connections and how one site promises to get 43% of your email list to open an email (unheard of on some mailing lists today).

With Facebook opening profiles to the search engines by default, this is going to get easier. I think that soon we’ll be able to talk directly to a contact in exactly the way they want to hear from us.. Text, Tweet, Post or Email. In the mean time, let’s make it easier to show where we want to be reached.

BusinessCard2 is trying to do that. I just updated my entry. You can get your own there free.

I read all the comments from this site. Some people don’t know that and still not sure how to reach me.

So I add this cool connection form. It should appear from time to time on posts and pages now. I just add a short code inside a post.

Send me a quick note and let me know it’s working.

Comment on I’m Giving Up My 37th Birthday!

Clean drinking water is the most universal of needs. I will share this with all I can reach

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost/a

We’ve been talking about the social media changing the speed at which we do business.

I say that when you can get real time information, the value of aged information is greatly reduced. That’s why people like Twitter, Facebook and other social media.

Now Google takes the next natural step with real time results from the social media above the older listings:

Now more than ever, we need to know what our customers, readers, friends, fans and foes are saying about our brand