cruel to be kind

[Part 2 is about which information to prepare going to Paris]You probably already saw some mails from Presdo Match about somebody “liking you”. It is worth paying more attention to this and make use of its features.  I suggest you take the following steps.

• Edit your profile, part one
  Do the basic editing of your profile with a minimum of content so that if you like somebody, they will have a rough idea about who you are. Upload your Facebook / twitter picture = the one people are most used to.
• Connect with LinkedIn
  Sadly Presdo only allows to connect with LinkedIn and not Facebook (most Europeans use a local network or Facebook), but it is a good start. It will allow you to see under the “people I know” tab people who attend Leweb. Grab a piece of paper, visit their profiles  and start liking people.
• Check out who likes you
  Chances are, your contacts already like you. Go through the list and like them back! Leave out the ones which you don’t know until you are done with all known contact. Now visit the unknown and take the chance to either talk to them or if they are interesting to you, like them back.
• Start searching
  Then start looking for the people you might want to meet up with. This will also help you to determine the content for your own profile.  If you see something interesting in their profiles, write it down for your list, this especially includes words you think could describe you. Here are some ideas to search for:
  • Your country or company names you know
  • check the ones with similar interests
  • Job titles:  evangelist, ceo, director, strategist
  • Startups: founder, startup, entrepreneurship, investor, equity
  • areas of interest: technology, marketing , branding, communication, sales, education, b2b, b2c
• Like them! And learn from their profiles.
  The like is more like a  nod and will help you to establish a first contact. Start with the ones you already know and be generous with the likes – it is not a beauty contest or like poking, just a “look I am here as well”.  You will not look through over 2.600 attendees to find all your peers.
• Send them a quick note
  If you found somebody who might be interesting to you or you to them, ping them via the mail system from their profile. Prepare a template text with a quick info about you and the relevant links for you, like for example twitter. Just remember two things: YOU want their attention and time, so better make it easy for them as well as worth their time. I know it is hard, but the world does not revolve around you and unless you are one of the big names you should better have a reason to contact people.  ;)
• Which words would you like to be found under?
  Imagine your ideal client or person to contact you and then start writing down tags. Usually you will not come very far, which is why I put the search other people first. They will give you inspiration of what to put in there. Most people like to write down sentences because they expect people to read everything, but the reality is this: You can dress up your window all you want, if your location is not where the customers are, you will not make business. Meaning in presdo terms: They need to find you first.

  Which is when you start to look for terms for others, you will notice or get ideas about yours. Are you a PR agency? I will not look for “we are an award winning blablable” but I will look for “Public Relations” or PR or … and then realize that presdo does a bad job about searching for two words.

  I for example am a speaker on the topics of Social Media. Looking through the list of others I noticed that somebody had used the word speaker and I decided to quickly check that out. I knew that I had listed myself as such, but did not appear on the list. Why? I used the phrase “where I have been speaking” which a human can parse but not a machine.

• Create words to search for
  It might be useful for you and your colleagues to use a constructed term. I could for example search for “Girl Geek Dinner”  and have a lot of non relevant results, or I use the created term GirlGeekDinner which is specific for this organizsation. If that is something with a broader appeal, spread the work about it!
• Edit your profile, part two
  Now that you have collected a lot of words you would like to be found under, start adding them. Don’t be shy in using variations of this in the tag area, this is not for human reading but for machines to find you! Then use the rest of the profile to add relevant information about you which is relevant to other visitors of Leweb.

  If you are an executive or somebody with an attractive budget, this might be a good time to state what you are not interested in. If you for example are a Venture Capitalist, what are you really looking for in a startup?You can use a maximum of 2.000 characters in the “About me” box but don’t forget that there is the ‘positions’ option as well. If you hit that limit, rather use a word processor with built in statistics to get under 2K than do try and error.

• Make your name searchable:
  If your name has any kind of special characters in them, do provide your name in ‘plain writing’ somewhere in the text for people to find you. Try for example Loic and Geraldine – you will not find them by just searching for this because it is Loïc and Géraldine.
• Add full links
  Instead of writing “Nicole Simon (@nicolesimon)” or “find us at www.” you should use the full links, even if that is ‘ugly’ to look at. It will allow for automatic conversion.
• give a mini summary on what you are looking for
  It is always a good idea to give a quick overview on why you are at Leweb. It gives people a better understanding on what you might like to talk about or which topics to bring up with you. My selection is the following:
  What I am interested in at Leweb:
  – other Europeans to deepen intra European connections
  – international speaking engagements
  – clients who are interested in training their workforce in Social Media.
  – a panelist for my SXSW session
  – speakers for the Next-Conference in Berlin This is the place where you can put who you would like to meet or what to talk about. Give your reader the management summary and don’t be shy to link to the website or blog articles explaining what you do.
• Write reusable content
  While this may seem like a waste of time at first, think about writing you profile description for more than just this event, you will be likely to use it again. And don’t be shy to edit it over and over again. ;)
• Your tip?
  These are just my ideas of how to make more use out of Presdo, what are yours?`Leave them in the commens! :)

Now before you start editing your profile, I would appreciate a quick retweet or like on Facebook, which you can do through the buttons in the upper right corner. ;) See you in Paris!

Tags: leweb, leweb10