Tag: advice you didn’t ask for

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The Secret to Networking. (Hint: It’s not really so secret).

Phone Me

Up front, I should say: I am not a great networker. Not yet. This goes back a long way, but the short version is: Sometime around the 6th grade, I realized that I was terrifyingly shy. Calling a friend to ask, “Hey, you wanna play basketball up at school?” was a Herculean ordeal. I remember riding the bus to school and hoping that it’d be late. It wasn’t that I wanted to miss class; I was more afraid of standing around before school with my own friends and trying to contribute to the conversation.

I was really, really shy, and people who know me now find it tough to believe that Dan Oshinsky — the guy who won’t shut up, the guy who won’t use four words where forty will do — was once quiet.

I eventually grew out of my shyness. I learned how to talk to people on the phone. I learned how to shake somebody’s hand and look them in the eye. I learned how to hide my awkwardness in awkward situations.

And the networking skills are coming along. But I’m discovering here at Missouri that the young j-schoolers on campus aren’t master networkers yet. In fact, some of them are rather worried about their networking skills.

They’re convinced that networking is some special skill that some people have and some people don’t. And they’re worried that they don’t have it.

That’s just not true. Everyone can be a great networker. Here’s the problem: Nobody’s ever given these students permission to be great networkers. And they’ve been waiting for permission.

So here’s what I know, guys. It’s four simple steps. Here’s your permission:

1. Show up.

Yes, this is a ‘duh’ kind of thing to say. But here at Mizzou, there are infinite networking opportunities: Meetups, speeches, brown bag lunches, even office hours. The first step is showing up.

The dirty secret is, most students don’t take advantage of opportunities like these. And they’re missing out.

Showing up is half the battle, the idiom goes. It was also, as Aaron Sorkin once wrote, Napoleon’s battle plan:

Casey: Technically, I have a plan.
Dan: What’s the plan?
Casey: It’s Napoleon’s plan.
Dan: Who’s Napoleon?
Casey: A 19th century French emperor.
Dan: You’re cracking wise with me now?
Casey: Yes.
Dan: Thanks.
Casey: He had a two-part plan.
Dan: What was it?
Casey: First we show up, then we see what happens.
Dan: That was his plan?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: Against the Russian army?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: First we show up, then we see what happens.
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: Almost hard to believe he lost.

And yeah, it didn’t work for Napoleon. But he was trying to defeat the Russians.

You’re just trying to make some new contacts in the journalism world.

So show up.

2. Get business cards. Get numbers. Hustle.
If you’re at a busy event — say, a conference — you might get a lot of cards. So on the back of a card, write down something about the person. Something you want to remember about him/her, something you want to follow up on.

And if you’re not comfortable with business cards, use a cool mobile tool like Bump to exchange contact information.

3. Follow up. Buy them coffee. Lunch. No one turns down free food.
I’m not kidding. If a student emails me and asks if they can buy me coffee, I will say yes. If they offer to buy me lunch, I will say yes. I will cancel important meetings and say yes. I have a journalism degree, and people with journalism degrees will do almost anything for free food.

Want access to smart, powerful people? Ask to buy them coffee. Ask to buy them lunch.

They will say yes.

(And here’s a take from an experienced networker: If they’re really busy, offer to bring coffee to their office.)

4. Keep following up.
Send your contacts links. Friend them on Facebook and like their posts from time to time. Tweet at them every few weeks. It doesn’t have to be often. A little thing every so often is just enough to keep you top of mind.

Modern relationships are built one click at a time.

Start clicking.

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From the Dept. of Things I Want: The Kid’s Menu of Wine Lists.

I went out to dinner last night with this girl. She was about my age. From upstate New York. We met via kickball, and I asked her out. Nothing too formal. Kickball romances typically aren’t, I’m told.

But we were on this patio, and it was a nice night, and she had gone through the post-work motions of getting all dressed up, and I suggested we get a bottle of wine. The waiter brought us the wine list.

It was, front to back, no fewer than 15 pages. It must’ve featured 200 wines. Maybe more.

We were lost.

Both of us like wine. Both of us wanted a red wine. And neither of us could figure out if any of the hundred-something red wines available were right for us.

We asked the waiter for help. He spent a full 60 seconds looking through the list before getting flustered and calling in some backup. To find a red wine that wouldn’t max out my credit card, we needed the assistance of the restaurant’s sommelier.

Shouldn’t there have been an easier way?

❡❡❡

What we really needed were fewer choices. We needed a list tailored to the needs of the wine-drinking 24-year-old on a semi-fixed income.

Here’s what a young wine drinker wants:

1. Red or white
2. For under $40

That’s the entire list of characteristics[1. And no screw off tops — it makes us feel like we’re buying a $5 bottle.].

So that eliminates half the wines from last night’s menu. But don’t stop there. I don’t need six malbecs on the menu. I don’t need three pages of cabernet sauvignons.

I want the Kid’s Menu of Wine Lists.

❡❡❡

Wine Pairings

Here’s what I’m offering you, sommeliers of America: the chance to make a customer for life.

Because I don’t understand wine. I don’t appreciate its subtleties. I like wine, and I’ll happily pay $25 or $30 at a restaurant for nice bottle to share with a date. But when I’m at the liquor store, I buy wine based on how colorful the bottle is. I don’t remember names or tastes or blends.

I remember that I tried the wine with the penguin on the bottle.

But there’s an opportunity here. Because there are lots of young people like me who simply do not know how to order wine. We don’t drink it that often. But we like to seem cultured, and, ideally, there will come a time when I’m on a date and I’d like to be able to point to the menu and say, “Oh, yes! This one! I had this a few months back at _______! This is the one we want.” And she’ll be impressed, and I’ll be happy, and we’ll both end up drunk, and that’s all I can really ask for from a bottle of wine.

So give me limited choices. Offer two wine menus: the Full Menu, and the Limited Selection[2. Please don’t insult us and call it the Young Drinker’s Selection, or the Kid’s Wine List. We do like being treated like semi-competent humans.]. Make it 10 wines. Make every bottle on the menu the same price — $30, $35, whatever. Otherwise, we’ll always choose the cheapest one. Eliminate that distraction.

Make the menu one page, and only one. Give us a full description of each wine. Offer tastings, if we’d like.

And at the end of the night, on the receipt, ask us if we’d like to leave our email addresses, so that you can shoot us details about what we’ve just enjoyed and where we can find it in our neighborhood. A coupon wouldn’t hurt, either.

Point is: Limit our options and make us fans of something new. We 20somethings are loyal. If we like something, we’ll stick with it. And we’ll come back to your restaurant and tell our friends about you, because we’ll have found a place that invited us to experience something new. We like feeling welcome, and we love it when people treat us seriously[3. This isn’t necessarily breaking news, but you’d be surprised at how many adults treat 24-year-olds like we’re 12.].

All we’re asking is for you to help us. We won’t be insulted by a limited wine menu. Hell, we’d probably order more wine if you presented it to us that way. The full menu can be intimidating.

Because I saw the 15-page-long wine menu last night. And on the back jacket cover, I saw the beer selection. There were four beers on it. I knew all their names.

That seemed like something that I could handle.

❡❡❡

You know what ended up happening last night? The sommelier came. He spent 45 seconds deliberating about his selection of red wines. He pointed to a wine on the menu. We ordered it.

It was, to be fair, delicious.

But today, I was relaying this story to my mother. And she asked me a simple question:

“So what wine did you end up getting?”

And I realized: I had absolutely no idea.

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My Sister, the Graduate.

My little sister graduated from college this week. We went down to celebrate graduation with her. We filed into the school’s basketball arena on Thursday. We sat and watch the processional. An orchestra played. A Dean spoke. Hands clapped, and parents ‘Woo-Hoo!’-ed, and mostly, we just sat, unbelievably proud of my little sister.

Now, she didn’t think much of her graduation. We’re Jewish kids from the suburbs who get to go on week-long ski trips — we’re not exactly the kind of college graduates who’ve had to overcome long odds. I said it when I graduated, and my sister said the same thing after hers.

But I remember a conversation we had three years ago. My sister called me, in tears. She was having a tough semester. She’d felt resistance — from her classes, from her peers. She felt isolated and lost, and she called asking for help.

I remember feeling a tremendous responsibility. I’d been called upon for brotherly support, and I remember reaching back to a place I didn’t know I could go to give her the only advice I think I’ve ever really believed:

Go out and find the things you love and the people you love, and be with them as much as you can.

Fast forward to the close of the graduation ceremony on Thursday. I was holding the camera, and my sister started dragging me through the crowd. She wanted a photo with this friend, and that friend, and this family. Hugs and kisses. Some English, and some Spanish, and even a bit of Swahili. Enough moments to put a Kodak executive’s family through college.

My mother looked at me — my mother, the lady who knows everyone, the lady who can, has and will start conversations with complete strangers in the bathroom — and said, “Your sister knows everyone.”

I was about as proud as a brother could be. We started hearing stories about how my sister had met all these people. Turns out my sister had thrown herself into everything — clubs and sports and classes, and she’d made some incredible friends.

She’d figured out college.

Because there’s a little secret about undergraduate life. They don’t tell you this when you’re reaching for the Ivies, or when you’re cramming for SATs, or when you’re being schooled in the differences between early action and early decision.

College isn’t about the classes. If you’re lucky, for four years, it’s a place to try. College is four years to try things that you won’t have time to try once you’re old, four years to experiment, four years to grow. Four years to find the stuff you love and the people you love.

You’re right, El. We don’t have the Hollywood story. You’re right: we expected you to graduate from college.

But you found something else at college, El. And for finding it, we couldn’t be prouder.

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Lessons From My (Attempted) Week Without Twitter.


I took the week off from Twitter last week. Not with any real purpose in mind, really. I just didn’t want to tweet, and I thought that maybe, it’d open up some free time for me to read the paper or be productive.

But it didn’t.

I kept checking Twitter — habitually. I keep reading stories on the Internet — habitually. And when I sat down for breakfast, I did so with my laptop in tow.

And habit isn’t really the right word here. It’s ritual now. I have a routine for checking news, and something like last week’s spontaneous break isn’t going to change that.

For proof, see this. And this. And this.

Which is where I started thinking about how we can apply this information to newsrooms.

What news organizations need to do is create stories that demand attention. So much of our media is just noise in the background: TVs on mute, tweets ignored.

It’s why, in the launch of Stry, we put this line in our mission statement: “We’re a news organization that’s not easily distracted.” We’re focused on building a team of reporters who’ll focus on the important issues, not the headlines, and we hope it shows in our stories.

And the lesson for publishers: invest in well-reported, original content. Your readers/viewers/listeners can tell the difference.

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When Your Newspaper Wishes You ‘Good Morning.’

I’ve been spending most of my time this week looking at the front pages of newspapers. It’s a strange thing, almost, to see so many dailies still printing. Two years ago, after the Rocky Mountain News closed, the prediction was that dozens of daily papers would be gone by now.

But they’re not.

Still, having now sorted through hundreds of front pages lately, I’ve seen an unusual thing happening out in a few small papers out in California, including the Lodi News-Sentinel. Here’s what their front page looked like yesterday.

But let’s zoom in a bit closer, to the bottom left corner of the page:

It’s quirky, yes. But why stop with a little blurb? Why not blow this out into a weekly feature: Readers’ Lives, with profiles of their businesses and families?

What I’m really saying is: Why does a news outlet have to limit itself to quirky stuff like this in order to cultivate the best stories from its community?

I’ve said it before: engage everywhere.

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An Open Letter to the PR Firm That Represents AT&T Regarding Potential Dunk Tank Promotional Opportunities.

Dear Fleishman-Hillard,

You’re the PR agency that represents AT&T. They’re one of your biggest clients. They’re also one of the largest companies on the planet, and for the last few years, I have been among the millions of AT&T customers who have come to decide that they are totally screwing me over.

I pay AT&T for both my cellular and Internet service, and I dislike both. Every time my phone loses service, and every time the wireless router at my apartment has a random, unexplained outage, I find myself quietly coveting Verizon, the AT&T competitor who may be just as evil.

I try not to take out my frustrations on AT&T’s customer care representatives. It’s tough to get mad at a kid in a call center on another continent. Sanjay, for anything I’ve said before: I didn’t mean it.

But I would like to vent to someone. And for you, the PR team behind AT&T: I think I’ve got a way for you to offer customer catharsis and win the Internet for a day.

Two words: dunk tank.

Go rent a park, say, the one next to the Golden Gate Bridge. Fly out 10 of your most dissatisfied customers. The ones who’ve said things to Sanjay that they cannot merely repent for on Yom Kippur. The ones who blame AT&T for running their business or their marriage or their lives. The ones who’d rather lick an oil-soaked pelican than say something nice about their iPhone service.

Find those guys. Fly them out to the park, and line them up in front of a dunk tank. Get the AT&T board of directors, and have them sit their turns in it. Let the angry customers finally get our collective revenge on someone within the AT&T family.

Consider the dunk tank a peace offering from AT&T to all of us who feel wronged. The rest of us will thank you for it.

And if you’re looking for someone to cast the first ball, let me know. I might have some dropped-call issues to work out.

Thanks,
Dan

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Five Things to Rethink the Newsroom: Partner and Grow.

This is the shortest of these posts, if only because it’s more of a pep talk than anything, and because it deserves to be brief.

Your newsroom is shrinking. Your newsroom cannot deliver all the news it wants to deliver.

So find a partner. Make it an exclusive deal or use the Publish2 newswire to bring someone else’s free content in. Decide what kind of content you’re lacking and find someone else who’s delivering it. And then get that content into your users’ hands.

This is an opportunity for you to define what it is you do and then deliver exclusively that. To focus in on that one thing. And to be great again.

Get going.

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Five Things to Rethink the Newsroom: Prove It.

When I was in elementary school, I spent a lot of time watching infomercials. This wasn’t by choice; my family had yet to subscribe to cable, and Saturday morning cartoons always came on after infomercials.

So I’ve been well-schooled in the nature of the TV pitch: the Total Gym, the Ronco Rotisserie, the Unbreakable Auto-Lock. All of them were variations on a single theme: whatever it is we’re selling, you need.

Why can’t news organizations buy into this type of pitch?

I’m tired of ads that dance around the point. The sell for news organizations is simple: There are just some things you can’t live without. News is one of them.

You cannot live without water, or light bulbs, or a decent roll of toilet paper. These are the essentials. And a newspaper, a radio station, a TV news show: these are just as essential.

Or: a free press is an essential part of a healthy democracy. Believe in the democratic process? Then you have to watch/listen/read.

Here’s a personal favorite, from London’s The Sun:

News isn’t a product that sells itself. Good stories require time and thought to digest, and consumers don’t give those things up easily. It’s up to news organizations to launch campaigns to remind consumers why news is essential.

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Five Things to Rethink the Newsroom: Engage Now.

There’s this funny little joke going around right now that there’s such a thing as a social media expert. These are people who boast advanced skills in the way of Twitter. They’ll teach you how to DM and build a fan page with the best of them.

But what’s so funny is that technically, there’s no such thing as social media.

So we’re in agreement here: there’s such a thing as media, which I’ll define as any platform through which you can distribute information. A newspaper, a TV station and a Facebook profile all fit this description. So does a chalkboard out in the open. So does a TED talk.

But social media? Any platform in which you engage the public could be social media.

So let’s get rid of the title now and get to the heart of the idea: if you’re rethinking your news organization, you need to be thinking about how you work with and talk with your readers, viewers and listeners.

And you can start by considering a few options.

Online

-Commenting forums: Allowing consumers from around the globe to chime in on an issue is a wonderful thing. It brings additional perspectives and ideas to a story. It can also bring unpleasantries; modern commenting forums have taken over where early Internet message boards started. So now’s a good time to ask: are these forums working?

Here’s something to consider: what is it you’d like to get out of commenting forums? Are you really looking to give readers a chance to debate? Because if you are, you’ll first have to set the rules of debate for readers. Or are you looking for reader tips on other similar stories in the community? Because there might be other, more user-friendly forums for readers to suggest story ideas.

My personal favorite use of commenting forums: as a place for reporters to answer additional questions or comments about a story. Sometimes, reporters do this in a live chat that happens after the story is published. But why not put it all in one place, where readers can find it for posterity?

Or, better yet: why not just make consumer engagement part of the reporting process in the first place?

-Twitter and Facebook: Use them. Respond. Reply. Be active. Before/during/after the reporting of a story. It’s okay if your readers help you be the assignment editor. It’s even okay if you open up a forum to actually allow readers to do so.  It could actually open your newsroom up to new ideas.

Offline

The next step is to actually get back into the community and be engaged offline. I’d recommend one of two methods:

-Weekly chats in the community: In the form of MeetUps/TweetUps/FacebookUps[1. F-Ups?] to discuss issues or stories being discussed in the news. Instead of having readers merely email in their thoughts, invite them to regular forums in which they can discuss and debate their ideas.

-Lecture Series: Make it a monthly event. Pick a lecture hall. Pick a topic. Publish a few stories leading up to the lecture about that topic, and then invite experts or interesting thinkers to discuss it. [2. And while you’re at it, make it a package deal: subscribe to our news outlet and you’ll get first pick/discounts on tickets for our lecture series.]

Either way, it’s essential that you offer some sort of in-person experience with your readers. It’s a great way to get feedback on stories, make new contacts and – best yet – to remind readers of the actual humans they’re supporting when they buy your news.

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