Yesterday I participated in “the shortest marketing conference ever”…The Influencer Project.  I was one of 60 people who discussed how to use social media to build relationships, develop influence and grow reputation.  You can register to receive a transcript and audio recording of the entire event.

The gist of my remarks were that the best way I’ve found to build influence online is to develop relationships offline.  In other words, solidify the relationships you’ve built online by making a “in real life” connection with those people.  Social media is excellent for building a broad network of friends and contacts.  But, in my view, real, genuine deep connections happen in real life.

Now, let me stop all the haters here: I’m not saying real relationships can’t be built online.  There are endless anecdotal stories of this happening, so I’m not going to assert that it’s impossible.  (Along these lines, Mark Pilgrim wrote recently on the notion of 25-year friends.)

I’m simply trying to make this point: if you want to increase your influence online, then the way to do it is offline.  Strong offline relationships will lead to even stronger ones online.

If you’d like to learn a little bit about what goes on inside Cheezburger, then listen to Episode 8 of the Naked Marketers podcast. [web | iTunes]

Pete Wright, Megan Strand, Dane Christensen and I discussed a variety of topics including

• our approach to launching new sites,
• the metrics we use to measure the success of a site,
• how we source ideas for new sites,
• and the occupational hazards of working in the happiest place on the interwebs!

I really enjoyed being on the show…Pete, Megan and Dane have a wonderful, relaxed vibe, so I hope I get to join them again in the future.

I presented at Web 2.0 Expo NYC today.  For those of you in the audience who asked for my slides, they are embedded below.  (For those of you not in the audience, these probably won’t make any sense.)

Below is my presentation (very brief…sadly, my time was cut short) at #140conf LA about Seven Things that Influence Whether or Not I Engage With You on Twitter (including a bonus 8th item from Robert Scoble!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Below are the videos from my presentations at WordCamp Portland and WordCamp Seattle.

In Portland, the first video, I talked primarily about our development philosophy at Cheezburger.  In the second video, Seattle, I spoke about how we use Wordpress at Cheezburger.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m very excited about several upcoming speaking engagements that I’ll be doing over the next two weeks.

• On Thursday, October 15th, I’ll be on a panel at the Grammy’s MusicTech Summit in Seattle about how musician’s can “build the perfect web site”.  My message: your web site is just a tool for building a stronger connection with your audience.  When you go about building your web site, think about if the things you’re doing are enriching that relationship for your fans, thereby making them stronger evangelists for your music.

• On Friday, I’ll be speaking at BlogWorld in Las Vegas (October 16-17) about LOLs, FAILs and Life at the Cheezburger Factory.  I plan to talk about how we’ve built Cheezburger, and lessons bloggers can learn and apply to their own sites.

• Next week, I’ll be presenting at UGCX in New York (October 21-22).  We have a lot of experience with user-generated content, but my message is going to be a little different.  First, I want the audience to understand that successful projects see UGC as a means, not an end.  And, second, I want the audience to understand that just because you aren’t paying UGC content creators doesn’t mean the content is free–there’s still a cost which is called filtering.

• And, finally, in the last week of October I’ll addressing the 140 Characters Conference in LA (October 27-28).  My message will be familiar to those of you who read this blog regularly: that Twitter is about community, connection, engagement and listening.  I haven’t finalized my remarks yet, but I’m going to talk about my recently popular post about what influences engagement on Twitter, and about how I believe the Twitter clients currently being produced are lacking in listening features.

I’m very excited about all these opportunities.  If you’re in Seattle, Las Vegas, New York or Los Angeles I would love the opportunity to connect face-to-face, so drop me a note and we’ll see if we can make something happen.

I know you’ve all been waiting for it, and after several long months, the video is finally out!  WordCamp San Francisco 2009 was probably the biggest audience I’ve ever spoken in front of, and you can watch below.

If you live in the Northwest and want to catch me in person, I’ll be speaking at WordCamp Seattle and WordCamp Portland in September.   And, I’ll be speaking at Web 2.0 Expo and UGCX in New York this fall.

Click here to view the embedded video.

#140conf Recap Week: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

I am very passionate about the message of the talk I gave at #140conf–that what separates Twitter from other social media, and how it presents a transformative opportunity is Twitter’s ability to create, connect and listen in the context of community.

However, I have been thinking a lot about the talk because, to be honest, I was not satisfied with myself and my presentation of that message.  I didn’t feel like I moved my audience much or made an impact.  To me, the delivery felt flat.

At first, I thought it was the format: a stage, with stationary microphone and podium.  I could not move casually and was uncomfortable.  But, the more I thought about it, I realized that wasn’t the issue.

At the same time, I’ve been reflecting on Seth Godin’s view on presentations:

The purpose of a presentation is to change minds. That’s the only reason I can think of to spend the time and resources. If your goal isn’t to change minds, perhaps you should consider a different approach.

and, but so I don’t feel like that was it either.

What I’ve concluded is an addendum to Seth’s view:

The key to changing the mind of an audience is to illustrate to them how doing so will make them better at what they do.

and, in my view, that’s where I fell flat.  In other words, I feel like I was effective at making my point about the nature of Twitter, but I didn’t back that up by showing the audience why adopting that point of view was in their best interest.

Effectively, this is the point that Kathy Sierra makes all the time about going beyond creating an awesome user experience to creating awesome users. In fact, as I was reviewing Kathy’s tweets for this post, I see that she’s made this point exactly:

Kathy Sierra Tweet on Presenting

It’s not enough just to make the experience good (i.e. to make the valid point), but to be truly effective you need to make the user better for the expeirence as well (i.e. better for adopting the point).

#140conf Recap Week: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

Anybody who knows me knows that I am a visual guy.  I am always drawing sketches to explain my ideas and half the time literally need a whiteboard to think straight.

At SXSW 2009 I serendipitously met Jonny Goldstein of envisualize.com.  We were walking toward the same session and struck up a conversation where he explained how he used animation to help businesses teach, train and explain.

Jonny has created the most amazing series of visual summaries for many of the talks at the #140conf.  I am completely flattered that Jonny included my talk.  The drawing is awesome!!

If you haven’t already, you can watch my #140conf talk here (it’s only a few minutes long).  You’ll see that Jonny’s drawing summarizes the talk perfectly!

#140conf Recap Week: Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

Recently, I gave a talk at Jeff Pulver’s 140 Characters Conference in New York about the importance of “tweeting in the context of community”.

In essence, my point was this: hashtags represent topics of conversations. Conversations equal communities in the sense that a group of people discussing a certain topic form a community. My view is that Twitter is more about listening than talking, so to use Twitter most effectively means being able to know where the conversations and communities are happening that you want to listen in on.

That being said, I asked the audience: if you are a tweeter, or a social media expert who advises others how to tweet, or an app developer who builds tools that enable others to tweet, how are you tweeting in the context of community?  As the community of people who care most about Twitter, we have an obligation to develop the conventions, training and tools to enable tweeting in the context of community.

The video of the talk is below; it’s only 9 minutes long.

Click here to view the embedded video.