Yesterday Chris Brogan and I got to meet for a few moments at Social Media Camp 2012. It was an honor. He is a top blogger as judged by the Ad Age Power 150.
At the conference I spoke about Marketing On Pinterest in the morning session, then he did the keynote at 1:00. He spoke about Google+ For Business, social media, customer service and email marketing.
Here are 6 Lessons I learned From Chris:
1. Use humor in your presentations to keep the audience with you, and then drive home key points right after you make them laugh. His speaking rhythm is back and forth between humor and sage comments.
2. Groupon needs to offer more light sabers & batman belts. His take on Groupon is that it offers a lot of Mani-pedis, but they don’t offer a lot of stuff for guys who like guy stuff. (Good point).
3. We should be on Google+. I went into his presentation thinking, I can resist the idea of Google+, resistance is not futile, but by the end of the session, I was hooked. On the walk back to the [awesome] hotel SMC put us up at, Cinnamon and I talked about his presentation & how our business would benefit from Google+. Dang it! Resistance was futile.
4. Be Honestly Interested In Other People. In his presentation he said it took him 8 years to get to 100 blog followers. And that was because he was writing about himself. But when he switched to writing about other people, and focusing on them, things took off. Then after his presentation I wanted to get this great picture with him so I could write this blog post, so I got in line to have him sign his new book, Google+ For Business, but I didn’t have a copy. They were selling them at the table, so I was like, “cool, I’ll just buy one & have him sign it”. So we get to the front of the line, and I realized I only had U.S. money, and they were only taking Canadian. So the lady standing next to him sad, “Um, I’m not sure we can take U.S.” and they could all see I was sorta mortified. So he reached into his pocket and pulled out $25 Canadian and handed it to her. How cool is that? Chris Brogan bought me a copy of his book. Of course, he might have just wanted to get me out of the line as quickly as possible because I was clearly a chump, but I don’t think so. It was actually just a kind gesture.
5. He’s not much of a Pinterest guy, (Yet). So we get back to the hotel room, and unpack our junk, and I pulled the copy of his book out of my bag and read his inscription to me. Here is what he said,
Jason – I’m not very much a Pinterest guy, but you, sir, are in a hot space “
– Chris Brogan
What a cool guy. As it turns out, Chris sat down in February with Entrepreneur Magazine and discussed Pinterest. Here is the video interview:
6. Inbox Magic. His final business tip came during his presentation. He said people always ask him what he’s personally intrigued by in the internet marketing space currently, and he said currently (sorta surprising) email marketing is fascinating to him. He talked about how social is cool, but there is real magic in the inbox. Getting into the inbox was his current obsession. I love that.
Please remember to…
marketingonpinterest.com 