Last night I was guest speaker at MUSTEL, a business forum in Cork, Ireland.

MUSTEL members come from many companies with suppliers, customers & shareholders from all over the world.  Even Apple was in the audience. 

I learned a lot about how to present "social media".  I presented to a group I’d never met before.  

I’d like to share with you my "learnings".  
Why? To make it easier for others to address this issue, especially in Ireland.  Here hardly anyone in business understands the social networking world that’s growing under our feet. [I asked if anyone had googled me to find out who I was.  One person had.]

There are loads of technical experts here.  Brilliant software designers. Hardly anyone who already behaving the message. People develop platforms for conversations, and then forget to walk the talk.

A summary of what I learned:

(1) Bring & use a digital recorder.  If you’ve a script & follow it carefully, you don’t need a recorder.  But if all you have is an intention to help your audience, who’s knows what you might say?Record your own performance.  That gives you material to share with others who weren’t there. You can broaden & deepen the conversation. So many meetings are never recorded…  So few people keep notes…  So many of us have lousy memories…  Don’t forget your digital recorder. [When I get my Apple iPhone, I’ll have all the technology I need.] 

(2) Don’t leave questions to the end.  Don’t talk at your audience about your passion - and exclude them.  While they sit waiting for you to stop, who know’s what they’re thinking.  They may be sitting there appearing to be at the presentation.  They may be tweeting away about football. When you’re in conversation with an individual, you can fairly easily tell when their mind is wandering, when they’re just being polite.  Don’t present from your little world.  Engage… Engage… Engage…  Never forget that every person in the audience wants you to engage with them.  And if the topic is "social media", they’ll judge the value of your words by your behaviour.

(3) Best conversations are when people trust each other.  As a presenter these days, you’re not trusted simply because you come with a powerpoint presentation.  There are so many powerpoints out there, I think people mistrust anyone who makes much use of powerpoint.  You have to make yourself naked.  Strip away the trappings, be incredibly honest with people in order to engage with them.  [It helped me last night that I’d had a really bad experience before coming, arrived late & was obviously not cool, calm and collected. Exposed as a bit of an ordinary guy, a bit like members of the audience.  No one told me that.  I simply suspect it.]  Best to remind yourself that this audience probably has no reason to trust you.  If you come from a business, they’re probably expecting you to try sell them something, to take advantage of them.

(4) Don’t sell. I told MUSTEL members I wasn’t willing to sell them my services as a consultant on social media. I do that for free.  The only thing I’d ever charge them for would be if they wanted to hire me as a writer.  I forgot to add I only do paid work for companies that I love.  We live in a world where selling has a bad name.  The skill we all need is ability to make it easy for others to consider whether to buy, or not to buy.  Selling gets in the way.

(5) Don’t ever leave after your presentation.  Hang around.  Be there when people relax.  People may give you the gift of a bit of direct feedback to your face.  Especially on social networking. Show you’re interested in the real world.  The audience last night contained one person who had a blog. Not one other person in the room had ever had their own blog. [I suggested they set one up for free  today.] Those of us "evangelists for the blog" know that everything hinges on the experience of blogging.  Unless you’ve had your own blog, you can’t work in social networking for your company.  I mean you can’t be any good at it.  Unless you have an extraordinary skill at empathy  with others. This is tricky to put across.

(6) Conversation is the name of the game.  People go back to a hotel because they had good conversation there.  People renew contracts because they enjoyed conversation about the old one. This is so radical a thought, it’s bound to be misunderstood.  I haven’t time to explain it now.  I offer it to you in the hope some of you will connect with the concept from your experience.  If I can help it, I only buy from those who offer me engaging conversation. [That doesn’t mean people who agree with me.]

Thank you MUSTEL.  
It was very good of you to invite me.  I’d bite your hand off if you invited me to come back in a year’s time for another conversation on the same topic.  It’ll be interesting to see how things have moved on in Ireland and wider world. If I wasn’t bothered about leaving a company out by mistake, I’d have publicly thanked each company in the room for such a kind reception.