I am off to the Social Media Tulsa Conference today and tomorrow. I drew this series originally right before going to Blog World in LA in 2011.  They fit perfectly once again as I network here in Oklahoma.

I am not a blogging superstar.  I am a blogger, and I do have plenty who read and follow the NDD but I am not a superstar in the national blogging community.  But I am going to be at Social Media Tulsa and in Tulsa I get a fair amount of publicity for myself.  Some people will know who I am and I won’t know who they are.  But there are some bigger names who will be there whom I follow on twitter and Facebook, read their blog and generally think are pretty awesome.  I will introduce myself to them and if I am lucky they might have noticed I like a lot of their photos or tend to say interesting things in their comment section. It’s just as likely they won’t know who I am at all.

In the world of networking it’s critical to realize that networking goes on about you even when you aren’t there.  Do you say dopey or belligerent things on people’s blogs?  Do you force transparent personal advertising on people?  Do you have an agenda for every conversation, every interaction?  Then guess what? People may indeed know you by knowing of you.  And what they know, well before they meet you in person, will not be favorable.

If you want to have people know and care you in the networking world you have to care about knowing them, not just having them know you. 

Drawing (originally posted Nov. 2012) and commentary by Marty Coleman