Tag Archives: Affiliate Summit East

Photo-A-Day

Are You Approachable?

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Are You Approachable?
Photo-A-Day #1593

This is the big season for conferences for me and I know that I’m going to meet many people. The reason I know this is that I don’t mind going up to someone and talking to them and I’ve noticed that people come up and talk to me. So what makes one person be approached over another?

Here are some tips to be more approachable.

1. Be Aware of Your Body Language. At a conference you are out and about away from your computer and in the real world so your body language is a huge factor. Are you smiling, do you look people in the eye? Are you fidgeting? Are you clenched up and tense? As someone connected online so much you might find that you are going to see something on the Twitter screen and want to tweet about it and you’re going to be tempted to whip out your phone and do that even while you are talking to someone. Bloggers often let that go but you should be aware that it can be a major turn off for people talking to you. If it is something that you really want to tweet say to the people that you are talking with, “Did you see that tweet? What do you think of that?” Instead of talking to everyone who isn’t in the room talk to the person right in front of you.

2. Use Your Eyes. Are you looking all around the room and not looking at the people that you are talking to? Do you keep your eyes down, are you glued to your computer, hiding behind a camera or a book? Use those eyes to look into the eyes of the other people in the room. Give them the time and attention that you do your Tweetdeck and Facebook. These are living breathing people who have knowledge that you do not. Every single person you meet have expertise in something that you do not, try and find what that expertise is.

3. Talk Less About Yourself. Listen More About Others Ask questions of the people that you meet. What is your blog? Why did you start it? Probe and really find out who the person is. I did not ask enough questions of everyone that I met at Affiliate Summit and I think I missed out. I tried really hard to do it but I wasn’t always successful. But those times when I was successful it was great and I made some fantastic friends.

4. Smile

5. Approach Others Even if you are not Being Approached. If you are headed to IZEAFest you are really in for a treat because this is a smaller event with a cut off of attendees in the 100s. This means that you should be able to meet at least 1/5 if not more people who are in attendance. But not everyone is going to approach you. You might even think that you are a small fish in a big pond and someone is a big fish that you cannot approach. That is crap, you can approach and talk to everyone because as I stated earlier you can learn something from everyone int he room which means that everyone in the room can learn something from YOU too.

6. Have Fun. These events should not be hard or scary. Everyone I’ve met in affiliate marketing or blogging so far has been so willing to help me out and if you are going to treat everyone as a person and be cool then you are going to have fun.

BONUS – Have You Met Ted? No not the charismatic Ted Murphy, I mean the tactic that Barney uses on How I Met Your Mother. Introduce people and help make those social connections with other people, help out those friends who might be shyer and need a moment for some help. If you are talking to someone who is a blogging about photography and you know another person in the room who is a good photographer then introduce them. Build up quality people and that can help build your credibility.

Do you have any tips for being more approachable?

Contest

Winners of the Ultimate IZEAFest Prize Pack Contest

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Pondering

Today MarketLeverageTV becomes the MarketLeverage TV Network with multiple shows. And during the debut episode of WrapUp the winners of BenSpark’s Ultimate IZEAFest Prize Pack Contest was Revealed.

The Winners are:

Ultimate IZEAFEst Prize Pack Winner – MommaDJane!!! (@MommaDJane)

Her winning video and Blog post – IZEAFest 2009 with BenSpark

Runner up winners were Randomly chosen. Those two winners are:

Buck “Daddy” (@BuckDaddy)
– Blog Post – http://www.buckdaddyblog.com/2009/08/my-entry-into-bensparkcom-ultimate.html
– Video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7qx6mEwsGw

Melinda (@LkWhtMomFound)
– Blog Post – http://www.lookwhatmomfound.com/2009/08/izeafest-2009-here-we-come-thanks-to.html

This contest sprang forth from mt mind after writing my list of 10 Essential items to bring with you to IZEAFest. While writing that post I was thinking about all the conferences that I’ve attended over the years and the things that were essential to me at each event. My dream was to be able to provide those items as prizes to a lucky blogger who will be attending IZEAFest 2009. That along with my 10 Reasons to Attend IZEAFest 2009 gave me inspiration to ask for help in making this dream of giving a great prize pack to some lucky bloggers a reality.

So I went out and asked multiple sponsors for help. I am an IZEA Insider for the “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” Crew and as such I was provided with tickets to IZEAFest. So prize number one was taken care of. You can’t have an Ultimate IZEAFest Prize Pack without a ticket to IZEAFest. From there I recruited the generous help of Dina Riccobono (@MLDina) and MarketLeverage (@MarketLeverage) who provided me with major prizes of an Asus Eee PC 1000HA and a Flip Mino HD that is Co-Branded BenSpark.com and MarketLeverage!

Early on when I started his search for prizes I made a request of ZINK Imaging who gave me two Polaroid Pogos and 200 sheets of ZINK Paper. I use one of them to create unique Business cards. When I meet you I’ll ask you to take a photo with me using my Xshot. I then print out an instant photo with my Polaroid Pogo on ZINK paper and stick it to the back of my business card. I is donating one of his Polaroid PoGos to the winner. I also secured An Xshot for each winner because there are two runner up winners who not only get IZEAFest Tickets (A fantastic and valuable prize in its own right) but they will each get a smaller prize pack.

My friend Michael at Xshot hooked me up with a business contact in the Flipbac Innovations Company and they kicked in some Flipbac (@flipbac) angled viewfinders and LCD screen protectors for digital cameras as prizes. Each Runner up gets one of those and I have a few extra to give away at IZEAFest.

To keep people going all weekend long I was able to get a case of BluFrog Wildly Healthy Energy Drink donated by Martha Decker (@MarDeck). I am also including energy drink packets from EBOOST (@EBOOST). I will have close to 100 packets to give away at IZEAFest 2009, come find me for one. Runner up winners also get an EBOOST prize pack.

Continuing to fill out my Ultimate IZEAFest Prize Pack I sought out help from one of my “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” crew members, Jennifer Leet (@jentifa. Jennifer is the queen of contests and she connected with one of her sponsors, BriteView, (@BriteView to get a Cinema Cube to add to the Ultimate IZEAFest Prize Pack.

Still not quite sure that I had the Ultimate Prize Pack for an IZEAFest attendee I sought out something innovative and cool that would reflect the fun open spirit of learning and networking of IZEAFest. I found the perfect prize in the Poken. Drew asked a question on Twitter about whether the Poken was worth the money and the call was answered by @PokenGirl. PokenGirl explained that the Poken is a device that one can use to connect with other people physically by slapping a “High 4” with that other person’s Poken. What that does is exchange a digital business card that contains your online social media profiles. Since IZEAFest is all about learning, having fun and making connections with other people a Poken is a great prize that will be going to each of the winners. They even get to choose which of the cute little Pokens they want.

With the Prize Pack Assembled I only needed to find some willing judges and I did at Affiliate Summit East. First I recruited Famous Blogger Murray Newlands (@MurrayNewlands), then “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” crew member Tim Jones (@Timothy_Jones) or rather The Real Tim Jones. He also recruited Eric Schechter @ericschechter of ClickBooth and last but not least he recruited Kim Ann Curtin (@KimAnnCurtin, Life Coach to the Affiliates.

The Judges had a difficult task ahead of them. There were four bloggers who went that extra mile to try for the Ultimate IZEAFest Prize Pack. Those folks along with the many others who entered the random drawing were waiting on the edge of their seats until WrapUp airs on the MarketLeverage TV Network Monday Morning 10:30am EST.

The show was a good one and I was so excited to see the winners revealed on the show! I can’t wait to hang with MommaDJane, Buck Daddy and Melinda. I may even be able to get them a few MORE surprises for their time at IZEAFest!