“Networking” Presentations. Whatever your role, building and maintaining an effective network matters. You do this through lots of little routine, everyday “presentations” to the people you meet/know/knew/used to work with/etc. You do not do this by asking big favors or playing remora. You do this by focusing on (together now) your audience and your business objective. Then you see what (if any) messages serve both. When those messages arise, let ‘em rip. When you can prepare for a specific audience & objective (you are going to an event), develop some effective messages to have ready.

Elevator pitching. Is it just me or do you have a love-hate relationship with the concept of the elevator pitch? Yes, you need to develop and use a concise way to convey your value. But if you are trying to build relationships, and ergo, a network, you don’t need an elevator pitch, you need some effective “elevator questions.”(Communications = 3-way) Or, have some ready phrases that cut right to the impact of what you do (who you help, and how). But not a memorized spiel. Please?

Relevance. You’re busy, you have work to do. So is your network. Respect that. “Cold-contacting” someone? (i.e., LinkedIn “whisper down the lane” introductions, or blog comments?) keep the message useful (to them, not you). Keep it respectful and pertinent. If you’re using your feed reader well you’ll come across a couple of articles a day that could be useful to someone in your network. Send them along (and while you’re at it, check that they’re helpful and wanted).

NOT Spam. Not relevant, not wanted = SPAM. Do Not Want. Ever get “recruiter” calls throwing your resume on the pile for the most random positions ever? Useless for you, even worse for the hiring co. SPAM. Who hasn’t had a well-meaning “Aunt Rhoda” send them about something “about computers… because, you work with computers, right?” SPAM. Do not start sending every good marketing article you read to Seth Godin, he’s probably all set on that.

You could fill an entire blog on networking. Here are the 3 things burning a hole in my brain right now:

1. Best. Definition. Ever. Secret to Being a Connector: Help People. (That’s it.) (There’s nothing else.) From the RAPLEAF presento by Auren Hoffman (from Ben Casnocha’s blog)
2. Social Media. Yes, you need to understand it. With less time and money than it will take for you to travel to in-person “networking events” you can make substantial connections (and yes, conversations) with interesting people all over the world. To start expanding your mind about social media, check out this brilliant video (Was in BlogLinkBankruptcy post but merits another mention. Found at Penelope Trunk’s blog)
3. YouTube - Web 2.0 Connect to Enjoy, Benefit from Social Apps
   
   Three Conditions for Social Media

3 Vs Disease, or, poor ol’ Albert Mehrabian

Anyone ever try to tell you what you actually say only supplies 7% of your credibility? Please tell me somewhere inside your skull someone jumped up and yelled “bullsh*t” when you heard that.

Mehrabian broke communications down into what we popularly call “3 Vs”: Verbal, Vocal & Visual. His research assigned 7% importance to the verbal (what you say), 38% to the Vocal (tone, or how you say it) and 55% to the Visual (facial expression, body language).

The research pertains ONLY to communication of emotions (feelings and attitudes) and situations where you are projecting “mixed messages” (face of misery, words of glee). In his words:

Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.

I still talk about the 3Vs, explained properly, for two reasons:

• It’s valuable to break communication into the Verbal, Vocal & Visual to show why communication breaks down when limited to just two (telephone) or less (email) of these 3 contributing factors. Even if the recipient won’t know it, you can use the missing one/s to help a little. Try standing up and smiling on your next important call to see what I mean.
• You often need to use emotional credibility for certain aspects of your presentation to work. If you are blase about the project and you shouldn’t be, you have a problem.

UPDATE: Another good explanation of this.

Pretty easy back when that song was released, but what about now? Raise your hands if you’ve ever accidentally or hastily sent an email you never should have sent. Some ways to avoid this:

1. address the body: go ahead and hit reply or address the email, but then before you write a word, cut and paste the recipient address/es into the body of the email. this saves you from accidentally hitting “send” on a half-baked missive.
2. serve it cold: emails written in the heat of any emotion — anger, enthusiasm, etc. may not be written well at all. if you were emotional in the writing, you need to take a step back (even if it is a trip to the coffee machine and back and then a re-read) before you send it.
   • don’t serve anger-ever: angry emails are never going to serve you well. even in the most outrageous and aggregious circumstance, you can probably accomplish a lot more using humor or other more positive tactics to respond to something that justifably made you angry.
3. take it outside: if it’s particularly explosive and really needs a lot of time in drafting, reconsidering, etc. don’t even write it in your email software, just open wordpad and spew away. the ideas are captured, and it’s just seconds to cut and paste it into your browser if you really need to.
4. the circular file: sometimes you just need to write it and NOT send it. period.

UPDATES: Similar advice quoted on Web Worker Daily 4/24/2007

3 Vs Disease, or, poor ol’ Albert Mehrabian

Anyone ever try to tell you what you actually say only supplies 7% of your credibility? Please tell me somewhere inside your skull someone jumped up and yelled “bullsh*t” when you heard that.

Mehrabian broke communications down into what we popularly call “3 Vs”: Verbal, Vocal & Visual. His research assigned 7% importance to the verbal (what you say), 38% to the Vocal (tone, or how you say it) and 55% to the Visual (facial expression, body language).

The research pertains ONLY to communication of emotions (feelings and attitudes) and situations where you are projecting “mixed messages” (face of misery, words of glee). In his words:

Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.

I still talk about the 3Vs, explained properly, for two reasons:

• It’s valuable to break communication into the Verbal, Vocal & Visual to show why communication breaks down when limited to just two (telephone) or less (email) of these 3 contributing factors. Even if the recipient won’t know it, you can use the missing one/s to help a little. Try standing up and smiling on your next important call to see what I mean.
• You often need to use emotional credibility for certain aspects of your presentation to work. If you are blase about the project and you shouldn’t be, you have a problem.

Pretty easy back when that song was released, but what about now? Raise your hands if you’ve ever accidentally or hastily sent an email you never should have sent. Some ways to avoid this:

1. address the body: go ahead and hit reply or address the email, but then before you write a word, cut and paste the recipient address/es into the body of the email. this saves you from accidentally hitting “send” on a half-baked missive.
2. serve it cold: emails written in the heat of any emotion — anger, enthusiasm, etc. may not be written well at all. if you were emotional in the writing, you need to take a step back (even if it is a trip to the coffee machine and back and then a re-read) before you send it.
   • don’t serve anger-ever: angry emails are never going to serve you well. even in the most outrageous and aggregious circumstance, you can probably accomplish a lot more using humor or other more positive tactics to respond to something that justifably made you angry.
3. take it outside: if it’s particularly explosive and really needs a lot of time in drafting, recondsidering, etc. don’t even write it in your email software, just open wordpad and spew away. the ideas are captured, and it’s just seconds to cut and paste it into your browser if you really need to.
4. the circular file: sometimes you just need to write it and NOT send it. period.