1) Plan Your Intro. When approaching someone you don’t know, think about an opening line (just don’t ask them if they come here often). A tried and true approach is to inquire about their connection to the organization hosting the event.

2) Engage the loner. Have you ever been at an event where you know no one, and are tempted to hide out near the buffet table, but then someone approaches you and makes an introduction? Now think about how grateful you were that someone engaged you. The loner nursing a beer and scanning his BlackBerry in the corner may in fact be a great contact for you.

3) Ask compelling questions. Take the conversation beyond small talk, and ask them interesting questions that aren’t too focused on business, but could lead to a lively discussion. For example, you may ask, “have you read any books or articles that really stuck with you recently?” or  “did you hear that a couple in Israel named their child ‘like’ in an homage to Facebook?”

4) Plan an escape route. There is nothing wrong with bowing out of a conversation that has run its course. At any point, you can simply say, “it was great to meet you. Keep in touch, here’s my card.” They will probably be relieved to move on as well.

5) Follow-up is key. The day after an event, examine your stack of business cards. For people who would make a good addition to your network, drop them a casual, non-salesy email. Tell them you enjoyed meeting them and note one personal piece of your conversation. Consider adding them to your network on LinkedIn and following them on Twitter as well.

There are scores of articles published offering their own set of networking tips. The best one I’ve found is a compilation of crowdsourced tips (read it here). My favorite – never use the word “I” until the third sentence.

I’ll no doubt be using these strategies at Affect’s office warming party tonight, where we will show off our sparkling new space to friends, clients and partners.

Do you have any tips to share?

Image courtesy blog.larrybodine.com

So maybe your company has decided to sponsor a few industry-related events this quarter, and you are the lucky soul that’s been selected to man the 6 foot table.  Or maybe you’re a small business owner that’s trying to drum up business by networking at some local conferences.  Either way, you have a choice.  You could look at this as an opportunity to sit all day and speak when spoken to, or you could view it as a proactive opportunity to meet new people, expand your network, and sell your products/services.

It’s no secret that face-to-face interaction is a great way to ‘sell’ your product or service, and industry events are a great platform for lead generation.  But, like any other marketing initiative, you need a concrete plan to be a success.

Over the years, I’ve been on all sides of the sponsorship table (as an attendee, an event-planner and a sponsor), and I’ve picked up the following tips to, in the words of Tim Gunn, “make it work”:

1. Create a Master Plan – Make sure that you sit down at least 3 weeks (or more, depending on the scope of the sponsorship/size of the event) and devise a plan for your company’s presence.  Who is attending?  What are you bringing?  What is the schedule?  Give assignments, map out deadlines and create a checklist.  Three days before the event, sit down with your team and make sure that everything is accounted for.

2. Give It Away Now – Don’t event think about attending an event without your business card.  If you’re going to have a marketing table, make sure that you give yourself enough time to develop unique/creative handouts and giveaways that are tailored to the event’s audience.  Generic handouts get thrown away or forgotten, so take the extra time to create compelling collateral.

3. Send the Right People – Not everyone is a networker, and we’re not all great at sales.  Evaluate your team and send people who are up to the task.  You’ll want to make sure that the people representing your brand are well-versed in your company’s messaging, and understand the types of people that they’ll be talking to.  Outgoing, enthusiastic and talkative employees are usually great for manning the table and walking the event-floor.

4. Network, Network, Network – Don’t wait for people to approach you – get out there and meet the crowd!  If possible, request the attendee list in advance and highlight the people that you’re hoping to meet, once you’re on-site ask the event organizer to introduce you.  Remember, there is no chain attaching you to the marketing table; walk the floor with your business cards and strike-up conversations.

5. Follow-up, Stat – Follow-up with the people you’ve met the day after the event if you were an attendee that collected business cards and within the week if you were an event sponsor and have a larger list to tackle.  A simple, personalized note saying ‘thank you’ or ‘nice to meet you’ is perfect.  If possible, include an offer or giveaway to transform your conversation into a lead.

As cheesy as it may sound, preparation, planning and good attitude are your best tools for success – now, get out there and work it!

PS – I’d love to hear your tips too, leave them in the comments below and I’ll tweet the best ones.

–Katie Safrey

I had the recent pleasure of helping put together a panel for the International Radio and Television Society Foundation (IRTS) titled “Doctors on TV: Medical Editors and Correspondents”. The event was held in the HBO auditorium in New York City and brought together four of the most prominent medical correspondents on television today:

Dr. Max Gomez, Medical reporter for WCBS-TV in New York
Dr. Timothy Johnson, Medical editor for ABC News
Dr. Jonathan LaPook, Medical correspondent for the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric
Dr. Sapna Parikh, Medical correspondent with WNYW-TV and Fox NewsEdge
Mr. Richard Huff, TV editor for the New York Daily News (moderator)

The audience was a mix of medical representatives, public relations professionals and broadcasters. The discussion revolved around the ever-changing world of television news and how medical reporting is impacted by the business of television reporting. The panelists agreed that medical stories are receiving less real estate during the nightly news and that oftentimes they feel the pressure of focusing on more sensational stories. They also agreed that the business of medical reporting has changed significantly in the past few years, forcing them to be more selective in the stories they choose and more stringent in the vetting process.

Nowadays, a medical story needs to be backed up by a phase three trial or a published report in a prestigious medical journal for it to be considered. Patient stories are usually only used in the context of a major medical announcement, and even then it is not very prominently placed in a piece. They also discussed how much harder it is to convey a story in a shorter allotted time. Many times, they need to explain a whole story just in the promo, which runs approximately five seconds.

Each panelist discussed their love for what they do and the sense of satisfaction they receive in reporting news that can impact people’s lives. When asked about pitching stories to them, they agreed that persistence is a virtue (as long as it doesn’t become stalking) and that a concise explanation of the story at the beginning of the pitch is more effective. Because of the amount of emails they receive, they usually give each email four seconds of eyeball time. If the pitch doesn’t grab them in those four seconds, there is almost no chance of capturing their interest. It should also be noted that most of the reporters do welcome story ideas to be sent directly to them. In the case of ABC, all story ideas need to be vetted first through the Medical Unit pipeline for consideration.

The panel was lively, informative and very illuminating. Kudos should be given to Jim Cronin, Director, Member Programs & Development for IRTS, whose brainchild this forum was. Also special mention should be given to Sandra Bossert of Wave Entertainment and Patricia Bifulco, SVP of Hill and Knowlton for their hard work in putting this panel together. I recommend people visit the IRTS website for future events.

-Walter Ocner

About T3 PR:

“The T3 PR Conference will take place in NY on 9/11/08 and will be devoted to issues facing today’s practitioners who specialize in public relations for organizations in technology industries. The Conference will also feature the annual Awards for Excellence in Technology Journalism.”

To download an application and view additional information including application instructions and rules please visit:

http://www.prsa.org/networking/sections/technology/callforpresentations.html

Yesterday afternoon, I noticed a few tweets regarding Sarah Lacy’s keynote interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Sarah, a tech reporter for BusinessWeek, was universally panned — not necessarily for the content of the questions she asked, or for the answers she was able to squeeze out of the notoriously hard-to-read Zuckerberg. (As she notes from her Twitter account: in my book, getting mark to publicly admit to the yahoo deal, address beacon, and give news on changes in the platform and france equals successful interview.)

From where I sit, there seem to be two critique threads emerging:

1. She didn’t involve the crowd enough. In an audience teeming with bloggers hungry to ask their own questions, she held off opening the floor for a Q&A until the final ten minutes, an inarguably bad move.

2. Her interview style was more flirtatious than journalistic. This is the meme I find more troubling. Apparently instead of going for Zuckerberg’s jugular, she engaged him in a two-way conversation, often cutting him off to make a point. In the words of this commenter on the CNET post recapping the debacle, Sarah opted to play the “let me pretend to be your girlfriend” trick. She killed the substance of her questions by picking the wrong approach to posing them.

The commenter goes on to raise the larger question the tech establishment should be asking itself:

This points to love/hate relationship that geeks have with the women who try to invade their territory. Treat them with respect and genuinely act as one of them, and you get treated like Veronica Belmont or Cali Lewis. Fail to do this, and you get treated like Sarah Lacy.

There’s a whole category on Valleywag devoted to Valley Foxes — of whom Smoking Sarah Lacy is one. It’s easy to see that Sarah Lacy’s reputation as a “flirtational” reporter preceded her. Was this SXSWi keynote a disaster waiting to happen? Why did it catch anyone by surprise? And, if she really did get the goods from Zuckerberg, does it really matter how she did it?

I’ll leave the sexist subtext for another blogger to tease out of this story. (Exhibit A: Dig a Tech Girl). In the meantime, I await Sarah Lacy’s official, non-Twittered response.

Updated: Looks like Sarah’s BusinessWeek cohorts have her back: Facebook CEO Admits Missteps totally sidesteps the controversy. The lines separating journalism and PR just got a little blurrier…

Updated again: The video emerges. I haven’t watched it and probably won’t get to until much later in the day. I wonder if what I see will totally undermine this blog post.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending OMMA Behavioral, MediaPost’s one-day behavioral targeting conference. As I was telling a co-worker this morning, my brain is exploding with BT goodness! I took 20 pages of notes, so this will definitely not be the last Tech Affect blog post on this topic.

Before I dig in, I wanted to say hi to Stewart (no business card) from IC Group, for listening to me rant about how social networks used to be called online communities; to Elissa, from Revenue Science, who used to work as a censor at ABC (I still say it sounds like fun!); to Carolyn at TRUSTe, who has promised to upload a picture of the two of us to her Facebook profile; and to David and Shauna who work on the product development team at WhitePages.com.

Special thanks to Anna at [x+1] for introducing me not only to her friendly entourage of fellow [x+1]-ers, but also to the MediaPost event team — Jeremy, Jon, Carla and Lou.

It was a major coup for MediaPost to gather so many of the industry’s great minds in such an intimate format. And the baklava was so good, I almost didn’t mind being kicked out of the BlueLithium/Yahoo RSVP-only luncheon. Almost.

More to come! And thanks to panelist Jonathan Mendez from Optimize and Prophesize for making this OMMA Behavioral logo so I didn’t have to. (Google image search totally failed me.)

Panelists Penny Crosman, Senior Editor, Wall Street & Technology, John Falcone, Senior Editor, CNET.com, Peter Kafka, Managing Editor, Silicon Alley Insider, and David Lidsky, Senior Editor, Fast Company, all shared their insights and anecdotes on how PR professionals can get their attention and get some ink (or bytes) for their clients.

I am very grateful to the journalists for coming out to share their time and educate the PR folk about the inner workings of their publication, the editor’s credo and/or their personal proclivities.

John enlightened us on how to get our products reviewed on CNET - noting the all important factors of having a name, being able to explain what it does and how much it costs. David commented on the importance of knowing journalists and building relationships before you go in for the hard pitch. However, he cautioned practitioners not to exploit Facebook or other social media sites as an all access pass to reporters personal lives (it can creep them out, or anyone for that matter). Although he’s an advocate for professional purposes and has found LinkedIn useful in his own story research.

Penny reminded us not to call to confirm that we’ve sent a press release (do you leave a voicemail to confirm that someone received your email?) and to know the focus of a publication before pitching. Peter shared some of the challenges of a start-up publication/community/new business venture and how the accelerated pace moving from from print to online to blog can sometimes defy the space-time continuum.

Peter also introduced me to New York Tech MeetUp. Hope to see some of my tech enthusiast colleagues there at the next one in November.

So I approached my upcoming birthday party with relish. An event! That requires invitations! Once I foisted control away from my well-meaning sister, I was able to plan and execute the proceedings for the pickiest customer in town. Me.

Like any small marketing program I’d run for a client, I’m making a big splash on a small budget. Whether you’re planning your own, ahem, 29th birthday party, or creating a small gathering for friends, colleagues, or prospects, here’s how to do it without making your Amex cry.

1. Pick a name, and register the URL as fast as you can. Why invite people to a birthday party when you can call it something snazzier? Give your event a name. Then zip over to my preferred registrar, NameSecure, and lock in your URL for a mere $9.20 for the year. You’ll want the URL for many reasons. And even if you don’t end up creating a website, rsvp@thenameofyourparty.com will look great on your invitations.

2. Know your target audience. Being a Web geek, my original plan was to go totally paperless: create a website, shoot out an email, and be done with it. My clever sister talked me out of this idea. She reminded me that my target audience — aunts, uncles, former 8th grade basketball coaches, etc. — might not be as computer literate as I think they are. So true. I took her advice and opted for a combination of print invitation and website.

3. Keep it simple. I’m not a designer, and neither is my boyfriend, but between the two of us we had a concept, a pirated copy of Adobe Illustrator, and enough embarrassing photos of me for thousands of birthdays. After a lengthy courtship with an over-ornate font I considered purchasing for $24, we got back to basics. Two fonts: Cooper Black for the title, Georgia for the text, both readily available in Word. Add grayscale photo, snappy text, and, voila, instant invite.

4. Staples has everything you need. You could head to a fancy stationer’s for pretty paper. Or you could buy card stock, 6-up mailing labels and mini-brown paper envelopes at Staples and get the job done. If you’ve made it this far, you already have a great idea. Why hide behind Kate’s Paperie? For the price of a few pounds of “real” stationery, I bought everything I needed, plus a cropper. Done and done.

5. Printing from home? Make sure you’ve got the ink. In order to make sure my invitations came out crisp and professional-looking, I grabbed a new cartridge for my laser printer. Don’t skip this step — you’re scrimping on other stuff, and a fresh cartridge can make the difference between DIY and DI…oops. Do yourself a favor and order one online. There are so many makes and models out there, you won’t want to trek from store to store praying they have yours in stock.

6. Google Docs are your friend. First win: convincing your mom to turn her handwritten invitation list into an spreadsheet. Second win: setting up a spreadsheet in Google Docs and inviting her to be a collaborator. The big coup: Google Docs are so user-friendly, your mom doesn’t even ask you what to do — she just updates the spreadsheet and drops you an email to let you know her work is complete.

7. Call in for backup. Yes, it’s your party. But no one, repeat, no one should be forced to conduct a mail merge alone. My kind boyfriend gave me a hand printing, cropping and labeling. I think he may have missed his calling. Is anyone looking for a marketing intern? With his help, I was able to leave my apartment this morning with a bag of invitations lacking only in postage (which turned out to be 80 cents per piece).

8. Don’t forget about the URL! I designed my print piece to direct recipients to the party’s website. I set up a free Tumblr account, performed a quick IP-redirection by checking one box in NameSecure, and within 24 hours my website was up and running. The site will hold all of the details about the event that weren’t on the core invitation, with room to have a little fun, too. Since my party is back home in Louisiana, I’m including a Google map to the location, along with some behind-the-scenes gab and the requisite embarrassing party photos.

9. Know what you want — and don’t be afraid to ask for it. The line at the post office this morning was atrocious, as usual. But I didn’t want to send off my invitations without the proper stamps. I waited in line to ask for party-themed (“You know, something festive!”) ones. When the clerk saw I wasn’t impressed with the Polar Lights collectibles in her drawer, she made a special trip into the back office for the more appropriately jolly Celebrate stamps. They were just the finishing touch I was looking for.

10. Pass the baton. Remember when I mentioned that my party was in Louisiana? Well, that means I’m off the hook for the rest of the party planning. Even when you’re throwing a small corporate event, responsibilities can and should be shared. While I may bring my marketing expertise to the table, my chicken and sausage gumbo will never match Uncle Bud’s. My work is done — but he’ll be starting up his roux in about two weeks. As it should be.

Now that the invitations are in the mail, I admit, I’m a little nervous. They are going out much later that I had anticipated. But the beauty of having an event website is the benefit of extending the celebration beyond the night of the party. Friends who can’t make the trek from Brooklyn can still participate in the fun. They just won’t be able to taste the gumbo. Hey, more for us!