Chris Brogan did yet another cool thing with his blog this morning. He asked:

What were your first steps into social media?
Who were your early people you admired and followed?
How did you get started?
If you were going to give advice to someone starting out, what would you tell them?
What will you do in the next few months with social media?

Little known fact: I experimented with blogging from Dec 2005-July 2006 as the Science Vigilante. What I lacked then: community and connection. I wasn’t using a blog reader or reading a lot of other blogs. I just came across stories in the news.

Early 2007 I started to read blogs more, and even pitched some of my “top 10 tips” sheets to a few bloggers. (Much love to Seth Levine for picking them up, my first-ever blog “ink!”)

My real start was March 2007 when I started “Great Presentations Mean Business” on wordpress.com as a way to build up a “database of my ideas” on the web. Getting my ideas out there, demonstrating how I approach presentations and letting the world see how I think has been a crucial part of marketing my consulting business. That blog continues today as my website.

Bloggers I loved reading from early on: Doc Searls, Jeff Nolan, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Tara Hunt, Kathy Sierra, Brad Feld. Funny, I’ve gotten to meet all but Kathy and Brad so far. Wow. Thanks universe. UPDATE: I have NOT met Seth Godin. Frankly, I forgot for a second that he was in the list.

This story is thoroughly told elsewhere, but Twitter is what REALLY put the juice in my ability to network, connect and grow. I’m @pistachio. The smartest thing I did was to play around with many different ways of using Twitter, and the best advice I got was from Chris Brogan: “be human.”

Advice I give most often to those entering the space? Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen way more than you “speak.” Five-to-ten times more. When you do speak up? Be useful. Be nice. Ask questions. Listen. Be considerate. And yes, be human.

Where I am going with social media:
1) help convey the benefits of it to others, both for business and personal growth, and especially for nonprofits and social causes and
2) experiment further with making live events “more 2.0″ www.mediacasters.tv, mashing up widgets, lifecasting techniques and popularity/quality/attention data sorting of content.

Thanks for “tricking” me into writing this post Chris. You’re an important influence on many of us, and we’re grateful for that.