Comments on: Blending In or Standing Out?

By: Too fat to fly? — Skinny Emmie

Too fat to fly? — Skinny Emmie — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:34:14 +0000

[...] to great social media cast study of Southwest from former SWA employee Paula Berg when I went to Social Fresh Nashville- another interesting fat experience), responded to Kevin Smith’s tweets and then responded with this blog [...]

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:20:29 +0000

Found your site while randomly browsing through Nashvegas Twitter posts… great stuff! Just wanted to share that you are definitely not the only one trying to blend in while wanting to stand out… and not doing a really good job of either!

Showing up is at least half the battle though, and though I've never been to a single conference here (yet), I'm sure there was at least some great info to be had.

By: Debbie Hildreth

Debbie Hildreth — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:19:11 +0000

You are doing it right, Emily. You have the knowledge, skills and networking savvy ... and you make good choices. You attended the conference and have now encouraged others, through this post, who needed to read about your feelings, thoughts and impressions.

I tend to shy away from social media networking events because of my age. There's always some excuse, right?

I love your blog.

By: Dan Sherman

Dan Sherman — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:54:10 +0000

You and I have talked about social anxiety before. I've got it up the ying yang. At least you went to Social Fresh. I just did what I do with all conferences I'd like to go to. I ignored it and came up with a bunch of reasons I couldn't go.

One thing I'm finding that helps me a lot is an anecdote about a public speaker whose name I cannot recall. Someone asked him if he was always super-confident. He said he was extremely nervous when he started out and confessed that the feeling never went away. But he started interpreting it differently. He decided that nervous energy and confident energy were the same things viewed differently. So now he reads those feelings as him feeling energized and excited to get on stage.

I would argue that everyone who goes to big events like that are experiencing strong emotional responses to being around so many people. They're just all dealing with it differently. Trying to "be confident" is sort of a trap. Just view what you're feeling as fuel.

As far as standing out, go ahead. Whatever the reason people notice you while you're networking at those events, the impression you'll leave them with is one of a consummate marketing professional they would be smart to pay attention to and keep track of.