Guy Kawasaki’s “Art of Social Media” – time to amp up your Developer Relations social media outreach
It was an honor and privilege to listen to Guy Kawasaki speak at the recent Santa Cruz New Tech Meetup on Wednesday, November 2 at the Hotel Paradox. Evans Data‘s offices are just down the street, so several of our team walked a few minutes to the hotel. Guy, who is now a Santa Cruz county resident, gave a great presentation, “The Art of Social Media” (co-authored with Peg Fitzpatrick) using his “10/20/30 rule of Powerpoint” format. The 10/20/30 rule is 10 slides, 20 minutes and 30 point font. While Guy went longer than 20 minutes, he finished soon enough that I had time to drive home and still catch the 10th inning of the World Series Game 7 Chicago Cubs win (thanks to the rain delay between the 9th and 10th inning).
Guy Kawasaki – Best Evangelist on the Planet
I first met Guy Kawasaki back in 1984 when he and Alain Rossman brought the first Macintosh computer down to the Softsel Computer Products (now Merisel) offices in Los Angeles. They gave us the Mac so that we could help get software into computer stores as fast as possible (Softsel was a major software distributor in the early days of the PC business). Who remembers that there were these brick and mortal stores that sold computers and software, some only sold software (Software Centers International, Egghead Software, etc). While I was at Borland, we had Guy Kawasaki give a keynote at one of our annual developer conferences (Guy noted that I was the first person wearing shorts and a tie dye t-shirt to introduce him) where he talked about his book “Rules for Revolutionaries” (co-authored with Michele Moreno). I have rule 5, “Make Evangelists and not Sales” on a slide in many of presentations (every developer evangelist should read and re-read this book periodically).
Guy’s “The Art of Social Media” includes the following topics (note: while Guy uses 10 slides in his presentations, there are 12 chapters in the book):
- How to Optimize your Profile
- How to Feed the Content Monster
- How to Perfect Your Posts
- How to Respond to Comments
- How to Integrate Social Media and Blogging
- How to Get More Followers
- How to Socialize Events
- How to Run Google+ Hangouts On Air
- How to Rock a Twitter Chat
- How to Avoid Looking Clueless
- How to Optimize for Individual Platforms
- How to Put Everything Together
A great companion resource for Developer Relations professionals and Social Media power users is available on Peg Fitzpatrick’s site – “The Art of Social Media Apps and Services Resource List“. There is also an awesome “Art of Social Media” presentation video by Guy and Peg that is linked from the Artof.social site.
Optimizing my Profile on my Social Sites
After the Cubs won the world series, I went to my computer and used Guy’s advice to update the images on my social sites. In his presentation he talked about “Building a Foundation” by optimizing your photo and profile. Step 1: Guy advises everyone to set your Avatar to a well lit picture and focus on your Face (look at the avatar and ask yourself if you think people will say this person is likable, trustworthy and competent), be Asymetrical (offset your face in the photo). Step 2: take a look at your cover photo (most social sites allow you to have a top of page background photo) and make sure it tells your story and not showcase pictures of your pets (for example). I did just what Guy advised and now my social sites have updated avatars and background photos. You can see my updated Facebook technology page at https://www.facebook.com/davidi99/ (where I post developer and development focused news and articles). Thanks for the tips Guy 😀
Developer Relations Professionals – Guy and David I can help You!
Guy gives presentations all over the planet. Guy speaks at developer, vendor and industry conferences. If you are interested in finding out more information, you can visit Guy’s web site. Check out his books. David I note: I am not Guy’s agent. I am just a fan!
I also present at many conferences and I am ready to help your developer relations program in every way.
David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99
