I’m An Introvert and Conferences Scare the Crap Out of Me

I have a confession to make that may seem odd to you: I’m an introvert.

“Heh, good luck being a community manager gig, kid,” is what some are going to think.

“May want to re-think that marketing career,” is what some are going to think.

And that’s fine. Trust me, I’ll find my way. I always do.

I never fancied myself an introvert until recently. First, I love one-on-one conversations. I love deep conversations. I’m an open book, not hesitant to freely and comfortably share what’s good and what’s not so good with me. I also like public speaking and Powerpoint presentations. I feel natural in leadership roles where I am standing in the front of a room and running a group discussion.

I would say I was a fast adopter of Twitter, a platform inherently different from Facebook and Myspace, which are based on networking with shared connections, vs. communicating with strangers. But I discount this as evidence of extrovertism, as the safety of a computer screen and my openness on Twitter possibly proves myself as an example of the opposite.
 

The oddest aspect of my supposed introvertism is that I’d describe myself as bubbly, spunky, sassy… I like making people laugh. It doesn’t take me long to feel comfortable acting that way around people.

There’s the middle space of human interaction that scares the shit out of me, between one-on-one conversations, hanging with people I know and public speaking enlies the thing I really suck at: mingling. 

I hate mingling! God, UGH! a;lwekra[0inag This is just one of those things I am terrible at.

Mingling makes me really nervous, and one would think that by 23 I would have this down, right? After college parties and weekends at bars I’d have this together, right? Well, no. I’m a chick. Usually chicks just show up at bars with their groups of girlfriends, get a vodka diet and people mingle their way over to you. 

It doesn’t work that way at conferences. You have to just hang out and meet people. I’m so bad at this. I get really nervous and self-conscious. I don’t know what to say, how to introduce myself, how to approach people… But it’s weird: if you want to specifically meet for coffee or lunch or just chat one-on-one somewhere away from the crowd – I’m down! 

I’m worried my crappy networking skills will hold me back. It’s not arrogance, just raw passion and drive that speaks when I say things like “I’m getting a hammer” and busting through the glass ceiling that still exists in PR, marketing, entrepreneurism and tech. I really want to do something with this life.

I’m a dreamer. I spend a ton of my free time – my beloved Janet time (which I thrive on, I’m serious, I’m an introvert) – thinking about stuff. I think about the intersections of the internet, law and social media, contemplating the tragic experiences of Tyler Clementi, the Catsouras family and others. I think a lot about how we can use social media to find missing children. I’m just a dreamer off in my own world, contemplating what’s next. Don’t interrupt me with a phone call, because if I’m able to find my damn phone and answer it, I’ll probably be awkward on the phone. (I had a well-meaning boss tell me that once.) 

So what do I do from here? First, I’m giving up on mingling. 

Seriously. I’m not forcing myself to do this anymore. Every time I try, I’m just awkward, nervous, and I feel worse about myself because of it. I’m worried I make a bad impression. Screw mingling. I’m networking my way.

I need to make more coffee dates. I need to plan ahead before I go to these conferences and see who’s going to be there and make a plan to meet up with people for lunch on those days. When I can’t do that and there is absolutely no way around “mingling” type situations, I need to do use my “buddy system” and bring a friend to mingle in the crowd with, to ease the pain if you will.

At the end of the day, of course I have to mingle. Sort of. I’m a community manager. Part of my job is to love the crap out of my brand in public. Fake it til you make it, so the saying goes. Fake that confidence until it becomes real I suppose. 

But really, truly, I think my networking story is going to be about quality vs. quantity. Maybe I won’t meet ten new people at Inbound Marketing Summit – I’ll have coffee with two. And that’s fine. I don’t need to make a collage of business cards on my bedroom wall of people who’s faces I can’t remember. I’m building that inner circle. Those people I IM in the middle of the day on Gchat just to Gchat. Those people I grab drinks with. Those LinkedIn contacts I’ll actually contact if I or someone I know is looking for a job or advice. But I don’t email them – I text them. The thing is, those two people know ten other people, one of whom may want to meet for coffee at the next minglefest.

Most of Twitter Is Un-ReTweetable Crap. Well, Okay, But…

Do you Retweet every Tweet that interests you? Do you @reply someone every time you have a reaction to something he or she Tweets?

Recent statistics from social media analytics firm Sysomos report that 71% of Tweets garner no reaction whatsoever. This means no Retweets and no @replies. Sysomos’ statistics are the findings after studying 1.2 billion over the course of two months. The report also reveals that of the 23% of Tweets that do produce an @reply, 85% of those only produce a single @reply.  Just 6% of Tweets get a Retweet.

Mashable jumped on the story, and one of the commenters summarized much of my reaction: No @reply or Retweet does not imply falling on deaf ears. Not all information warrents a share or a response.

I know that Sysomos is just crunching the numbers as they saw them, but I don’t think the research paints a picture of what is really going on on Twitter. A few things:

• What about direct messages?

Sometimes, I’ll get into a conversation about making specific plans to meet up with someone on Twitter. I stop @replying that person and I send a direct message.

Sometimes, I just don’t feel that whatever I have to say is educational, informative, generic, or funny enough to share with the 1,800 or so people who follow me. Those Tweets people were sending didn’t go unnoticed or unreplied to, they were just private interactions via direct message.

• @replies and Retweets aren’t the only means for impact

Did you know you can favorite Tweets? Not that many people do this, but I do know some people who use the “favoriting” option as a way to bookmark Tweets for later. They do this with Tweets of articles they want to read later, for example, and keep track of it using a tool like Favstar.fm. Paper.li allows you to read Tweets in a newspaper-like format. Ever see those Tweets like “the Janet Aronica daily is out”? That’s someone publishing the links they found from their friend’s Tweets that day. Now, they may not have directly Retweeted that individual’s specific Tweet that hour or replied to that person’s Tweet right then.

My point is that just because it’s not in the form of an @reply or a Retweet, that doesn’t mean someone didn’t find a Tweet useful, funny, informative, etc. Also, how many times a day do you see a Tweet and just think “wow” but you are too busy at the time to actually type out a reaction to it? Again, that Tweet didn’t fall on deaf ears, it just didn’t garner a public reaction out of you.

• There’s a lot of “pointless” babble out there

I wonder how much of the 1.2 billion Tweets were just garbage. There’s a lot of junk on Twitter. My company has an “OH” account that’s just Tweets of funny things we say at the office. We’re the only ones who follow it. It’s basically an inside joke to us. (I’m sorry, social media gods, it’s pointless crap but it’s funny to us. ) It’s not meant to be @replied or Retweeted, but the 50 or so Tweets we’ve sent from it could’ve been a part of that 1.2 billion Tweets. I recently saw someone Tweeting about how she had started an anonymous Twitter “diet” account so she could Tweet about everything she ate and how she felt about it to help herself keep on track.

It’s 2010 and we still have that itch we had in high school when all we wanted was to put up a really great away message on AIM. We want to rant, snark and cry. We want to be heard but we don’t want to be held accountable, and I actually think there are a lot of Twitter accounts out reflecting this, but they’re anonymous. It’s your Live Journal, served up 140 characters at a time. Is it pointless? Well, it’s not supposed to garner an @reply or a Retweet, they are just thoughts.

I suppose the argument can be made that in order for a Tweet to really have legs, in order for it to resonate it needs to be shared publicly. However, I think that if you’re a marketer and you’re looking at this stuff, don’t read it as “Twitter is a waste if almost 3/4 doesn’t produce a public reaction.” What I’m going to look at is, how do my company’s account’s followers want to interact with me and share my content other than @replies and Retweets? How are you going to apply this to your marketing?