Davina K. Brewer

I was at a networking thingy the other night, one of those business card swap meets with everyone trolling for new customers. Yes that includes myself as, shockingly enough, Apple and Coke aren’t beating down my door, wanting to give me piles of cash.

I met someone who had a new business venture and I gave her some ideas. Lots of them.  Good ones. She liked them, she wrote them down and took my card.

Also in the conversation was an SEO marketer who was, based upon my five-minute impression:

• A hack.
• A scourge preying upon small business owners.
• A blight upon smart social media marketing and PR professionals.

The elevator pitch:

“I’ll do local for $300, state for $500. Totally AUTOMATED tweets and Facebook and YouTube. You never have to get involved or do a thing yourself. We’ll push out your stuff, blow up the Internet with your presence,…” Word vomit.

I wanted to run away, before someone noticed the blood dripping from my ears.

I wanted to scream “NOOOOOO! That’s wrong,” at a glass-shattering volume.

I wanted to help the person hearing this crap, thinking this is how it’s really done.

A taste for shoe leather

The more comfortable I am around you, the more I speak my mind. (Hostess with the mostess Gini Dietrich can speak for that, much to her regret.) I’ve started calling it my WYSIWYG marketing approach, and it hurts as much as it helps.

“Open mouth, insert foot” is my go-to move, but I was going for impressive.

Do you tell someone they got some bad advice? Pull them aside and politely redirect them to better sources on marketing integration and social media strategy?

For the hack, I professionally mentioned that my approach is different, casually dropping the obligatory “strategic, organic, authentic engagement, inbound marketing” buzzwords. I made sure the small business owner had my card, wished her well with my suggestions.

Then like a chicken, I crossed over to a conversation well on the other side of the room.

Time or Place?

I am the first to quip all blah blah “TEHO; more than one way to better mousetrap a skinned cat; if it works for you, then it works” blah.

As I read horror stories of sucky PR pitches or terrible tool-based social efforts void of any strategy, I’m also apt to point out via blogs and comments that there are ways that are right and ways very, very wrong.

But it didn’t seem the proper time or place.

What would you have done? Let me have it.

Davina K. Brewer is doing solo PR as 3Hats Communications, helping Atlanta small businesses with marketing, design, dog washing or whatever hat she wears that day. She blogs, she tweets, and she works to support her addiction to shiny, new Apple products.

Guy #1: What do you do?

Guy #2: Business process investigation.

Guy #1: I see.

Guy #2: What do you do?

Guy #1: I am part-owner in one company and full owner in another. We do disinfecting and decontamination of large businesses.

Guy #2: That’s very interesting.

Are you kidding me?! Business process investigation? Disinfecting and decontamination of large businesses?

Does anyone know what either of these guys do for a living?

One of the things we work on with clients, especially in today’s age of text messaging and social media, is how to deliver their elevator pitch so they quickly gain interest from their audience – reporters, customers, prospects, candidates, even someone just checking out your Twitter bio, trying to decide if they’re interesting enough to dive deeper.

Can you imagine if these guys were on the news? What if this is what their Twitter profile said?  Would you have any inclination of wanting to learn more?

What if, instead, the conversation went like this?

Guy #1: What do you do?

Guy #2: I go into businesses to help them streamline the processes they use for operations and sales so their people are able to go home and have dinner with their families every night.

What are you compelled to do if the guy sitting next to you says that? Do you want to learn more? Ask questions about what it is he does and how he can make sure you’re home with your family every night in time for dinner?

Turns out that’s what business process investigation means.

Guy #2: What do you do?

Guy #1: We go into locker rooms before and after every game to disinfect the floor, the lockers, the showers, and the walls in order to keep germs and viruses at bay. One of our clients is the NFL and, as you can imagine, it’s really important the players not get sick. It’s our job to make sure they don’t.

I know, if the guy sitting next to me says that, I want to learn more about which locker rooms he’s been in and which teams he works with. Likely I’m not going to hire him, but I am interested enough to have a conversation and, perhaps, refer him to businesses I know who would use his services.

Keep this in mind not only when you’re networking at in-person events, but also in the way you present yourself in everything from your Twitter profile to the “about us” on your Web site. The name of the game is to encourage people to want to learn more, not use vague sentences and large vocabulary because you think it makes you sound smart.

Some people are master networkers and use even plane time to prospect for new business. If either of these guys changed the way they introduced what they do for a living, they likely would have exchanged business cards at the end of the flight.

How can you become a master networker, both offline and on?