Cold Calling

MSAE's Allied Networking Group met to discuss tips and best practices for cold calling.  Here are the top takeaways:

1. The definition of cold calling has changed throughout the years with the advancement of technology and new resources to research potential clients. The group's definition included making contact with a potential client who does not know who you are - may be a call, email or LinkedIn introduction and generally isn't cold as you've done some research on the prospect.  
2. When researching prospects, it's best to check more than one place for updated job/contact information - some people don't update their LinkedIn profile or online directory can be out of date.  
3. New resources to research potential clients include: 

• Data.com (formerly Jigsaw.com) - provides name, email and address at company
• My.InsideView.com - provides contact information from CEO to janitor
• LinkedIn - continues to be a good resource

 

Negotiation Tips & Distance Education for Meetings

Here are some of the best ideas and money saving tools generated from the Meeting Management Education Council meeting on 4.20.

• 35 Money Saving Meeting Tips
  
• Wufoo - use this free form builder for your meetings and events. Some uses include sending the form to speakers so they can upload session details (even speaker photos!), send to exhibitors to upload their logos and use to collect RFP's and speaker presentations. For more on Wufoo, visit the communications networking group blog post on Wufoo and Wufoo.com.
• Webinar Programs - if you're looking at hosting webinars for your members, here are a few programs to check out: GoToWebinar (MSAE members save with the Affiniscape Affinity Program), WebEx, Adobe Connect and AVEX's GoPortal (sign up for a free 30 day trial).
  

40% of Twitter Messages Pointless Babble

According to Pear Analytics, a San Antonio based market research firm, “pointless babble” accounted for 40% of the total number of messages sampled in a recent survey. If this comes as a shock to anyone, you haven’t dabbled in Twitter as of yet.

You can read the full article here on the Breitbart.Com website.

Given my evangelistic nature when it comes to social media, you’d think my reaction would be to defend Twitter. That's not what I'm going to do. People will use technology in whatever way they see fit, and I’m sure that there are people who just love to tweet about what they are doing at any given time (I’m sitting on the couch...I’m eating arugula salad). I would argue that if you look at your own e-mail inbox and/or just drift around the internet, many of the things you would run into are “pointless babble”.

The real lesson that can be learned here is how you can sort through the various social media tools and access those items that are of value to you and your members or clients.

Since this headline talks about Twitter, let’s talk about some Twitter Tools that can help you participate in the Twitterverse.

First thing you’re going to need is a free Twitter account. Set one up for yourself here on the Twitter website.

Next, you will need a free tool that will help you organize. There are hundreds of options, but I have tried these two and found each of the effective, so I can recommend them:

Hootsuite

Tweetdeck

Both of these tools will allow you to manage multiple Twitter accounts, search by topic, re-tweet messages, shorten URLS and send direct messages.

After that, you’re going to feel like you need an application on your smart phone so you can participate in the conversation if you are not near a computer . If you’re using a BlackBerry, you can get a free application called Twitter Berry. If you’re using an iPhone, a top rated free application is TwitterFon . Both are scaled down versions that will allow you to tweet from anywhere, follow your friends tweets, etc.

Finally, you can get an incredible amount of applications (capable of doing everything from Advertising and Analytics to Trends and Visual) here on the Twitter Fan Wiki Page.

These applications make using Twitter fun and interesting, and will allow you to make your own decision about potential uses of Twitter as a business and association tool. When you start tweeting, please feel free to follow me at http://www.twitter.com/plusdofo and I’ll follow you back – even if your posts are about sitting on the couch and eating arugula salad.