User Groups and Beyond, Part 2: Successful Networking Online and Offline
Onward Search Career Cast, Episode #18
In part 2 of this two part series, the Onward Search Career Cast wraps up an exploration of successful professional networking, both online and offline, and the benefits of adding user groups to one's networking strategy.
Onward Search's Online Marketing Manager, Hillary O'Keefe, and VMware's Social Media Producer, Luke Kilpatrick, finish their conversation about striking the best balance between online and offline networking efforts, particularly leveraging professional user groups. Luke explains how your online networking efforts, specifically Twitter, can be directly connected to networking success offline whether it's for a job search or extending your professional contacts.
This episode concludes a wonderful conversation about networking that will offer job seekers and the happily employed alike plenty of advice on reaching their networking goals successfully.
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Episode #18 Transcript
PUBLISHED ON MARCH 17, 2011
Welcome to Onward Search Career Cast, the podcast that brings you the latest insight and career advice from experts within the Internet marketing and creative space. Onward Search is a leading nationwide provider of web-based talent and offers a full range of recruitment and staffing solutions. If you’re looking for a career in search engine optimization, interactive design, or emerging technologies, you should apply online at onwardsearch.com or call 1-800-829-0072 and speak with an experienced recruiter today.
Peter Clayton: Welcome to Onward Search Career Cast and part two of balancing online and offline networking with Luke Kilpatrick, VMware Social Media Producer.
And now here's Hillary O'Keefe, Online Marketing Manager for Onward Search.
Hillary O'Keefe: Thank you so much, Peter, and thank you all for tuning in to another awesome episode of Onward Search’s Career Cast. Today’s podcast is all about striking the perfect balance between online and offline networking.
Luke, thank you so much for joining me today. Moving back to the online side, you had spoken about a topic, how to use Twitter for selling; and that includes concepts that can be applied to the job search as well. Care to elaborate on what that topic is all about?
Luke Kilpatrick: Twitter is my primary means of communication these days. It’s public. It’s engaging. If you’re not using Twitter, if you’re not on there, if you’re trying to sell, promote, or learn, you’re really missing out. One of the things, I was at a conference a few weeks ago and I was talking with a sales rep and he’s like, “This social media stuff, it just seems like, it’s just not engaging, it’s not going to be any good in my day to day life.” And I asked him, “How often do you get called back on your cold calls?” Sometimes… it’s just not.
Twitter is a way to get into a sale hot or into a job hot rather than coming out of the blue. By identifying the person that you want to engage with and finding that they’re on Twitter, you can read back through their stream and see what they talk about, see what they enjoy; and the best way to get their attention, is find something they’re talking about and send them @reply. So do @ the person’s user name and ask them question about it. Most of the time, people will respond.
Twitter is about ego. It’s all about what I am saying is important and when you ask a question about something what they think is important, 9 times out 10 they’ll respond. The people that don’t respond are usually the celebrities, but most people that are engaged in social marketing, engaged in social media, engaged in selling, engaged in buying, they’re going to respond and so if you can identify that person, you can do it.
Another way that’s actually a really good way to build your network quickly on Twitter, Twitter has a location based services in it. This is actually how I met one of my best friends, who are actually with Onward Search, John Poore. I live in a small town here in Half Moon Bay, California, and some of the Twitter clients provide what’s called the 5-mile radius or 10-mile radius of who’s tweeting in this area. And so one day, I just punched that up and found a few different people that I thought were quite interesting at their tweets just nearby, and I engaged with them. Now one of my best friends is just from that technique and it’s been great for both of our careers.
Hillary O'Keefe: So that’s an excellent connection between the offline aspect of it and the online. As you were mentioning before, it’s a fantastic way to find people and do the face-to-face interaction that really can take you much further in your job search.
Luke Kilpatrick: Yeah. It’s getting to know the people that you want to engage with, with the jobs that you’re working to trying to get, or the people that are just down the street. Sometimes the people that are just the down street – it used to be you’d all meet at church, or you’d all meet at this place, or that place, the Lion’s Club. Now, this is how we do it these days.
Hillary O'Keefe: That’s a really cool point.
Luke Kilpatrick: That’s how you do it.
Hillary O'Keefe: Overall, what do you think is the best balance between the online and the offline networking? Should people these days be putting more energy into one of the other, or should it be about even, or will participation to begin with sort of dictate how it works for any individual?
Luke Kilpatrick: I think the online and offline thing, it should just be networking. It’s really out of its core engaging with people. It still boils down to life in general. It’s always has been. It’s who you know. The more people you know, the more people that are working to do stuff in your industry that you know and can get on their radar, the more success you’re going to have and it’s always been that way. Now, there’s just instead of the old family ties or being introduced via your network, you can actually go out and engage someone directly, but knowing enough about them to actually be relevant to them and add value to the conversation.
Online is basically the old cold call, but it’s a little bit more, because you can build and find common ground that, “Hey, you both have two kids… Hey, you both like to surf.” It’s that type of starting of the engagement, but really the end goal should be to meet in real life and see how you can help each other. That’s really the core of social media or any of this in general is helping others; the more people you help, the more successful you’re going to be, and that’s really going to drive your career and drive your personal life forward.
Hillary O'Keefe: Thank you so much for all that very useful information, Luke. This has been great. I really appreciate your time.
Luke Kilpatrick: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.
Hillary O'Keefe: Thank you so much to everybody who is out there listening. Make sure you check out Luke on Fire on the Bay. Any other groups?
Luke Kilpatrick: Photoshop 'Til You Drop. You just Google us up, they’re all on meetup.com and then you can follow me on Twitter @lkilpatrick or follow @VMware, which makes my job easier.
Hillary O'Keefe: Fantastic. Thank you so much.
Thanks everybody for tuning in. We will see you back here for another episode of Onward Search’s Career Cast.
Thank you for tuning in to Onward Search Career Cast. For more information on the career opportunities available through Onward Search, you should visit us online at onwardsearch.com or call 1-800-829-0072 and speak with an experienced recruiter. And you should also follow Onward Search on Twitter at twitter.com/onwardsearch.
