I’d like you to meet social media’s new identifier. How do you introduce yourself in professional situations? Your well-honed 30-second elevator spiel could well be redundant. The new way to introduce yourself is a powerful window into your online social presence. You most powerful business card is now the @ symbol.
“Hi. I’m @cool-name-goes-here.”
Earlier this month I attended the South by South West Interactive festival in Austin Texas. The annual festival features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events and insightful lectures on what is new and different in media, publishing and technology (and soooo much more). A common structure at all the sessions is for a Q&A session to follow a presentation or panel discussion. I noticed this year that something had changed about the way people introduced themselves before asking a question. A person would walk up to a microphone and rather than say
“Hi, I’m Mary Smith from Fabulous Frocks…..”
she’d say something like:
“Hi. I’m @fabulousfrocks….”
It happened time and again that people identified themselves as their Twitter handle, their digital profile. I think this says a lot. If I introduce myself as my @ symbol then I’m saying that if you went to @me and took a look at what I say and share, if you connect to me via my social network presence, you’d know what you need to know about me to determine if you want to stay in touch, do business, network etc. I love this concept. It calls for us to:
- be congruent in our online profiles (What you see (read) is what you get.)
- let our online profiles ‘do the talking’ when it comes to introducing our products and services
- be better communicators
Exciting times, people!
