About Me

As previously announced, I spent the majority of yesterday morning at Titletown Brewing, representing @CameraCorner at the New North Social Media Breakfast.  I had a great time and got the opportunity to meet a lot of great, influential people that I’ve been following online for months.  I also had the opportunity to share my personal goals for Camera Corner, and learn quite a bit about what other businesses are doing in the social media market.  Abby Gutowski compiled a list of tweets related to the event, but the real benefits of the event came to me after the formalities were finished.

I’m constantly questioning whether my online efforts are paying off, as the hard number that I am able to tie to my online efforts equates to far less than a single percentage of our revenues, and when I compare that number to what is produced with print adds in the Sunday paper, you’ve gotta admit that social networking doesn’t seem to be worth the time.  It turns out that several of the others at the event have seen similar results.  Sometimes I just need a little reminder that a social network, whether online or in real life, doesn’t always produce instant results, but keeps a name fresh.

For me, it is easy to engage in conversation online, but in person, I’ve developed what my girlfriend has come to call “performance mode” or “sales mode”, which I have always denied until now.  As Ross said on one of his video blogs, there is a difference between talking with someone, and talking at them.  This is exactly what Trisha has told me on many occasions, and it is something that I certainly want to work on controlling more so it doesn’t get me in trouble.

I made some comments “in performer mode” that some people have taken an offense to regarding online privacy.  I have talked with a few of the offended parties, and for the most part smoothed everything over, but I still stand behind the message I was trying to convey.  Perhaps I blew up the story a little bit, but my intention was to convey a message with a strong emotional tie…  I heard some of the comments in the room, stalker was one of them, and that was exactly the message I was trying to convey at the time.  Your social networking activity, if not locked down properly, is an open door for anyone to stumble upon.  Why wouldn’t a hiring manager take a peek at what is available about you online?

I do think I was slightly misquoted, I believe the statement “Search results don’t lie” was attributed to me somewhere, and I just want to set the record straight…  If I said it, I retract it…  Search results are only as good as the content out on the web.  If you haven’t already seen Chris Hecker’s rant about media outlets, I highly recommend you check it out now!