Guerrilla Blogging: Go Make Some Friends

What if I told you the way to increase you online presence was by going offline?

In fact, what would you do if were banned from email, instant messenger and oh yes Twitter for life right now? If you said go to Facebook you missed the point.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” – John Donne

Human beings thrived because of relationships, alliances and communities they built long before the internet existed. The internet removed the need for face to face time and made it easier to talk to virtual friends in your underwear.

Online social watering holes have somehow clouded our thinking and made it ok to exclusively meet people virtually. I know people who have thousands of followers on Twitter and they tell me “I have no idea who they are or why they follow me on Twitter.”

Let’s Meet Bob, he is “virtually challenged”

Bob is a fictional character from the 10 Ways In 10 Days: Guide to Free Traffic Building, which by the way is free and still available for download!

Bob is a smart guy, not to ugly and has a pretty charming personality. He is trying to build his online presence and is having trouble getting any traffic to his site. He tries Twitter, YouTube, blogging and several ebooks. Spending all his spare time online nothing seems to work. Until…

One day Bob decides to attend a search conference. Sure it costs a bit of money so he saves up. He does a bit of homework and makes a quick list of the people he would like to meet face to face and ask questions to. After all he is paying money and wants to make sure he walks away better than he started.

At the conference Bob meets several Rockstar Bloggers and several people who he never heard of that are also successful online. He buys drinks asks all his questions and makes sure to hand out his contact info to keep in touch.

Bob comes home realizing he should have gone to conferences sooner. Not so much for the sessions but for the face to face time he experienced with knowledgeable people. He also made a few friends who have linked to his site. The more Bob attends conferences, the more he becomes confident and creates a network of personal connections that help him leaps and bounds over any previous virtual connections.

Bob makes a list of some great conferences to go to:

SMX Advanced
SMX West
SMX East
Pubcon
SES San Jose
Affiliate Summit East & West

Bob can’t go to all of them as cash is a bit tight at the moment. Doing some surfing on the net he finds MeetUp.com and quickly joins several groups in his area. Bob is well on his way to increasing his online presence by going offline and making personal and not virtual friendships.

Guerrilla Blogging

Staying in line with the Guerrilla Blogging series. Let’s take a look at how the above story about Bob breaks down to Objectives, Strategies and Tactics. If you need a quick brush up, you can read the Objective, Strategies an Tactics post in the Guerrilla Blogging series.

The Objective defined above was:

Increase Online Presence (a.k.a Letting people know I exist, have a website that sells a product or service and or have a blog)

Strategies:

Attend Conferences
Go to MeetUp groups

Tactics:

- Making a list of people to meet and questions to ask
- Engaging in conversation
- Handing out business cards
- Handing out swag (ie. shirts, stickers, etc…)
- Paying for drinks or dinner
- Show up early and stay out late
- Exchange contact information

Final Thoughts

Go have something new happen to you! Put yourself in a group of people and belong to a community offline to help improve your online efforts.

Check out the conferences listed above also visit MeetUp.com and see what’s going on in your area. Make real connections!

Do you go to Conferences or a MeetUp group? If you have gone to Conferences which ones worked best for you?