How to digital schmoozing

Schmoozing
Schmoozing is to chat in a friendly and persuasive manner to make a social or business connection in order to gain a favor or to obtain an advantage.
Schmoozing takes long before it can effectively be used for getting the favor or the advantage.

Digital schmoozing
Digital schmoozing is similar but using the Internet as medium:
- Commenting on blogs of industry leaders or influencers – praising the writer
- Getting linked on LinkedIn, Xing, Viadeo, … with company leaders or influencers
- Answering questions on business social networks in order to be remarked
- Writing a blog that mainly summarizes and links to blog posts of industry leading bloggers
- Favor and comment published presentations or ebooks of industry leaders or influencers on social publishing sites
- Follow industry leaders and influencers on Twitter and send them direct Tweets

Getting remarked
The first goal is to:
- Build rapport supporting their content with the industry leaders or influencers
- Provide supporting or interesting links to their work
- Propagate their content on the Internet (this is more than just retweeting)
The problem is that all your efforts shouldn’t be to obvious but look natural and not on purpose as these people will spot fraudsters from far.

If you are sure they have noticed you, try to engage into a conversation by making a suited bold or daring statement to open the discussion using:
- The social websites
- A comment on their blog
- A comment on a industry leading blog
- A published presentation or paper that you suggest to them by a comment or tweet
Don’t send them a direct email as they will feel the intrusion.

Engage into a conversation
If they engage into a conversation with you, it signifies they find you important enough to spend time on you. This engagement can be using the social websites, but more likely they will address you directly by email – as your email is easily retrievable.

This is when you build your relation further in order to get to your real goal: get a favor or gain an advantage.
Try to increase your relation through a direct conversation by email, IM (Instant Messaging) or even calling using VOIP like Skype.

Asking the favor or advantage
As you communicate with them directly and you have gained their respect, then it is appropriate to ask for your favor or advantage.
It is a hard and long investment that is not always rewarding as the industry leaders or influencers can forget about you at any time or they can decrease in importance while schmoozing digitally with them.

Digital schmoozing is probably even more time consuming than schmoozing in real life.

Business social networks: LinkedIn, Go BIG Network, BizFriends, Biznik, Ecademy, Xing, Viadeo, Vator.tv, …

Social publishing sites Scribd, SlideShare, Authorstream or Docstoc

Have your ever tried digital schmoozing ?