Breaking the Borders of Networking

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Let’s face it, we are all creatures of habit.  It is like pulling teeth to get us to do something that is out of our comfort zone.

However, those who go outside of their habits and outside of their comfort zones are the ones who succeed in life.

Now let’s be honest, I’m a lot like you.  I get scared when I have to go outside of my comfort zone.  I get scared when I have to say yes, but you know what “EVERY DAMN TIME I DO, I’M GLAD I DID.”

I’ve recently found myself having this conversation time and time again, when it comes to networking events.  How do I do it?  How do I find time to go to every single event?  Well guess what we all have the time to do this.   I encourage every one of you to go to a networking event.  Grab a cup of coffee with a total stranger.  You can often meet the most interesting people at them.  You will find middle managers, people looking for a new job, lost souls, other networkers, and even people like yourself…and you know what, these people will be some of the greatest people that you will possibly ever meet.

Going outside of your comfort zone and meeting new people is scary. It is for you and it still is for me…but the greatest achievements in life, happen when we do go outside of our comfort zone.  So I beg you, go outside your comfort zone, meet new people, and challenge yourself.

What does your face look like?

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Me Heather Eric

Every company needs a face behind the scenes, or a few faces.  Every company needs that one person that you closely relate to the brand, for example Robert Scoble is the guy you think of when you think of Rackspace, Rand Fishkin is the guy for SEOmoz, The Verge has Joshua Topolski and a handful of editors, hell ESPN has a variety of personalities including Scott Van Pelt & Stuart Scott.

Every brand needs a face.  Someone that everyone can relate to and when they think of your brand, they immediately  think “oh, yeah that guy”.   Friendly, funny, lovable, a variety of words are often used to describe this person.  The one constant that’s always important though, is that this person is always reflecting your brand.  A trade show, a social channel, this person is often seen everywhere all at once.

A face is something that every company needs in today’s digital world.  Often it can be a role that the Owner or Manager usually takes, in the case of the Dallas Mavericks they have Owner Mark Cuban, but in some cases it can be a Social Media Manager such as Scott Monty of Ford or Rafe Needleman, who recently became the Platform Advocate for Evernote.  These are men whose job it is to speek clearly for the company and take positions on behalf of it, for better or worst they were hired to become the brand’s face.

The world values faces for brands now than ever before.  Have you seen Google recently?  Their authorship tag is now showing more authors than ever before in the search ranking pages. Use social media? People don’t want to follow companies, they follow people.

Finding a face for your company is more important now than ever, so it’s important that you find the face before your company creates one for you.

Finding the Perfect Blend

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MyImages

As I’m writing this in my apartment, I can’t help but think about but think about the age old argument of the work-life blend and where exactly I fall into it.  This is something that I think about a lot, as I often find myself working on projects beyond the 8-5 at a coffee shop or even at home.  Often times, these projects relate to something personal, be it a blog post or checking a social media network, but make no mistake THESE ACTIONS ARE WORK.  What you do online is not just a reflection of yourself but can be a reflection of your company as well.  Just ask ESPN personality Bill Simmons.  All of this is a part of your work-life blend.

Now if you’re not familiar with the work-life blend concept I would suggest for you to check out the WorkTalkShow.com, they discuss it there a lot. Basically it’s the debate of how you blend work & life in today’s tech world. The majority of us have smartphones where emails and notifications are coming at us all the time, no matter if we are in the office or not, so it’s important that we find the right blend to lead our lives.

The work-family blend means a lot, especially if you are a marketer.  Not only are we working for others, but often we can be found working on our own personal brands.  The ability to perfectly blend life and work in the 24/7 real time marketing cycle is something that I take very seriously.   With notifications and emails being easily available on our smart phones, it can be sometimes be hard for us to judge when we should put the work down.

Now being a single guy in a rather mid-size city, I might be a contradiction to everyone else’s schedule, I don’t have kids or a girlfriend that takes up a lot of my time, so I’m able to spend a few more minutes than the regular person checking email or writing a blog post.  As I do this, I often think am I overdoing this?  Am I actually doing something to hurt or help my career?  How does everyone else have time for all of this?  All of these are thoughts that I think about on an almost daily basis.

But let’s be honest, we all do the best that we can.  The challenge of living in this web 2.0 world is that we have to choose and decide when to log off and when to stay on.  It can be hard to get noticed in this great big internet world.  Yes, it’s hard and trust me I’d rather be playing that kick-ass videogame or out partying but to me this work is important.

The Passion

Why do I do this?  I do this for the passion and in my eyes passion is more important than skills, in today’s world.  I believe this and if you beg to differ let me know.  Love for work can easily be shown.  You will go the extra mile and you will probably think about it nonstop.  Yes, you will fail at times, but you will fail whether you have the skills or not.

Skills are great but remember if you don’t have the passion you will get bored easily.  Remember skills can be developed, but passion cannot.