And yet, also a little apprehensive. Early on I learned that conferences are alternate realities. All kinds of things happen there that wouldn’t happen in typical workaday life. As I commented on Conversation Agent Valeria Maltoni’s blog recently:

You meet people and have great, deep conversations, you brainstorm all kinds of possibilities. But when you go back to the normal schedule, after you’re all caught up and looking for a little of that ‘spark’ you found in a different time and place… you’re still constrained by schedules, responsibilities, expectations that temporarily didn’t exist at the conference.”

Valeria wrote an excellent post, “30 Connective Things You Can Do at a Conference,” about how best to manage that alternate reality, to network the way you want and need to. Because conferences and networking are so important to the DFIR community, I’d like to riff off her original post and talk about 20 connective things you can do after a conference.

1. On your day of departure—in your hotel room the night before you leave, in the airport, on the plane or train or in a coffee shop during a driving break—take the time to reconstruct your sessions, meetups, after-hours conversations, etc.

• What did you learn, and from whom?
• What ideas did you and others come up with?
• What did you observe, what did you overhear?
• What patterns do you see?

Write all this down to come back to in a week or so, after you’re caught up at work.

2. Share what you learned with your team. Remember that you’re coloring the information with your own perspective, so if possible, share the slide deck and/or handouts with them and invite their feedback.

3. Revisit your notes. Together with your team’s feedback, decide if there’s enough for new research, a new paper, blog article or podcast. Be sure to set aside time daily or weekly to work on the project (depending on how in-depth it is); when you publish it, be sure to refer to the conference, people and ideas that led you to complete it.

4. Didn’t get a chance to provide feedback to speakers? Make a point of emailing one or two speakers per day after you get back to the office. Be specific about the takeaways you gleaned. Leave the door open for further discussion.

5. Share what you learned about products and vendors with your team. Collect their questions and needs—not just about what the product(s) can do, but what they need to do their jobs better. Follow up with the vendor(s) to ask those questions and see how well they respond to your team’s needs. That response will be an important part of your purchase decision.

6. Take time to think about things you wish could’ve been different:

• More time meeting new people?
• Hanging out with old friends and colleagues?
• Lecture track you would’ve wanted to attend for yourself, rather than work?

Decide to make those changes at the next conference you attend.

7. Start a Twitter, LinkedIn group, forum/listserv or blog conversation about something you learned. (Sometimes conferences have their own LinkedIn groups.)

8. Identify the 3-5 people you connected with most strongly. Make a point of calling or emailing them every so often with things you believe they’d benefit from:

• an article that recalls your conversations
• a speaking opportunity at another conference or with the media
• a congratulations on one of their accomplishments. Comment on their blog; tweet @them; find them on Google+ Hangouts.

9. While you’re at it, think about the things that made you click.

• Particular ideas?
• Core themes that connected your conversations and ideas?
• Shared values?

Again, see if there are patterns—finding them can help you work out where you can benefit the community the most.

10. Set a goal for yourself to speak at next year’s conference, especially if your topic is based on the ideas you heard at this one.

11. Did you meet someone you thought would benefit from knowing a friend or colleague? Make sure you email-introduce them (and perhaps even conference call) the week following the conference. And be clear about the value they would have to each other.

12. Find a way to invite the best speaker(s) to your local area. A Security B-sides event, HTCIA or other association chapter meeting, or one-day training session can be ideal. See whom you can partner with to make it happen. Or, hold a virtual event. Your employer may be amenable to a webinar, or you might suggest the speaker to an event like #DFIROnline.

13. Pace yourself while reconnecting. Follow up immediately after the conference, but then let your relationship build naturally. Remember: conferences are alternate realities. Remind the other people who you are, then let the dust settle so that the ideas you built can stand by themselves for further building.

14. Who organized the event? If you can, volunteer to do something at next year’s conference, or encourage your employer to support it in some way (if they aren’t already) by sponsoring a giveaway or networking session.

15. Between this event and next year’s, you’ll network with more professionals. How might they benefit from coming to next year’s event—especially if they’re based in other countries? Invite them based on what you’d like to learn from them, and tell them you’ll be glad to introduce them to your connections.

16. Did anything you learn at the event change your mind, or send you in a new direction? Use a blog post to write not just about what, but also about how it happened—the old idea you’d never heard expressed that way before, or the unexpected angle. Did it help you solve a problem, or are you still mulling how to apply it in your own professional life? Either way, share it with the community.

17. Join a social network that’s new to you:

• Well-traveled ones like Twitter, or underrated ones like SlideShare.
• Volunteer for the SANS blog (if you’re qualified).
• Create a new Google+ Circle and spend time there daily.
• Guest blog for your favorite DFIR bloggers.

18. Publicly acknowledge the conference and what you thought was great about it. Mention by name those who made it great: organizers, speakers, people you connected with. A video testimonial can be especially powerful.

19. Traveling to where a speaker or conference connection is based? Let them know ahead of time, and tell them you’d love to get together if they’re available. Use your notes from your conversation(s) or their lecture to drive your conversation.

20. Think beyond your constraints. We get so caught up in our day to day responsibilities, we forget the things that made conferences spark for us. Make the time to recapture it, if not in conversation (that’s not always possible), then for yourself, in your own mind, from your own notes and memories.

“…follow through is key,” Valeria wrote. “Closing the gap between promises made and promises kept builds a solid reputation, and helps you make stuff happen, too.” It takes practice for sure, but the DFIR community is forgiving as long as you’re trying your best, and values face-to-face as much as virtual relationship-building.

What are some things you do to follow through with people you’ve met at a conference?

photo credit: kenteegardin

That’s why his recent post about (pseudo?) reporter Judith Miller struck a professional nerve. Having moved from trade journalism to public relations, I was especially struck by this point:

When there is a real danger people need to know about, you have to report it. That’s when people need to hear the scary truth. But I do mind, because the fear she threw around was not based on truth… if you are the writer, you should care about how people will react.

Then again, if you’re willing to write lies, you’re not really going to care about that, are you?

I have faced a lot of skepticism over my motivations in the past 10 years. To cops, I was “the media,” even if I was writing for their publications. Newsroom journalists on listservs made snide comments about “PR fluff.”

These days, I worry when journalists don’t get back to me. Did my article suggestion not meet their needs, or do they think the story I just pitched them is a cover for a sales pitch? And it always makes me cringe a little when I see the occasional tweet about marketing manipulation and PR spin.

The business of inspiring (re)action

The skeptical are right to be. The spin machine can be ugly, especially in the face of a crisis. The problem isn’t that we don’t care how people will react. The problem is that we’re paid to care about making them react a certain way.

Sometimes the two converge, and that’s when you get great PR and great journalism. But sometimes we care more about making readers and viewers react, than we do about how they actually feel.

Journalism, just as much as any PR client, is in business. Journalists sell newspapers and magazines, or pull in ratings, on the strength of their storytelling and how well it adheres to editorial guidelines. Both types of messaging are about building and sustaining a brand, which every good businessperson knows is about trust.

Judith Miller and her ilk take shortcuts, go for short-term reaction rather than long-term trust. On a lesser scale, but no better at trust-building, are those who are chronically too overworked or lazy or demotivated to spend time getting every fact right.

Some might say this makes them a perfect fit for PR. How many times have you read a white paper that referred vaguely to “statistics say…” without citing the actual research, a name and date if not a link to go with it?

But for one problem: in the last few years, since the economy coupled with social networking broadsided the media industry, the PR-journalism symbiosis has changed. We still depend on one another, but we also compete with each other.

Consider: fewer journalists at struggling publications means more PR pros are competing to provide the content. That makes it harder for us to get our clients’ stories told. Conveniently, social media provides an alternative outlet, but needs a constant stream of content to stay in followers’ minds. Therefore, we encourage our clients to become publishers of their own content.

Brand journalism requires high standards

That’s because ideally, our clients’ content provides better context for media as well as buyers. When we pitch a reporter who likes what we’ve had to say, s/he can come back to our website with its blog and videos and white papers and infographics, and use them for the article s/he’s working on. Or s/he can find them via search, including social media monitoring, and be the one to make first contact.

That’s why it’s incumbent on us to hold our content, which some call “brand journalism,” to the same high editorial standards as journalism does. Truth, as everyone knows, is subjective, based on human interpretation. Good PR is about helping our clients and their customers understand each other’s truths, and adjusting our messages accordingly, with the end goal in mind of inspiring action — sales.

Making it easier on them is a form of building trust. At some point, buyers and journalists alike take a leap of faith: they choose to believe what they’ve researched, and go forward with the purchase or the story. Shortening that leap is what will keep them coming back. Here are some ideas:

• Research, whether from a vendor or from academia, is constantly being tested, refined, even disproved. We need to be transparent about showing what has changed and how, whether we are referring to someone else’s research, or promoting our client’s own.
• The phrase “statistics show” is condescending when it stands by itself. Treat white papers like blogs long enough to link to the research that shows the point you’re trying to make. Let your reader draw his or her own conclusions. It will make for better story-telling.
• It’s the job of a good journalist to find opposing as well as complementary points of view to balance what our clients present as truth. Use these as opportunities to drive future research, content and business forward.
• Much as been written about the power of social media in correcting reporters’ errors, which can be important to reputation management both in and outside of a crisis. Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and your company blog are all good places for this.
• Use journalists’ own fact-checking tools for content — and remember that fact-checking still carries with it a certain degree of bias, as you look for facts that support your argument.

“Brandwashing” is alive and well, unfortunately. But if we want our content to build trust with prospects and customers, only taking the time to get our facts as right as we can — and to engage in discussion when people disagree — will keep our relationships in balance and both our businesses in the black.

photo credit: Marquis Lewis

Do you reflect the image you want to?

Last week I attended the Techno Security/Mobile Forensics Conferences in Myrtle Beach, SC. Because this year, as last year, I was there to represent a client, I spent the bulk of my time in and around the exhibit hall.

At one point I wandered past the spot where, last year, I’d been set up in my client’s booth. I noticed that across from the spot was a different vendor from last year’s. Then I realized the vendor I’d seen last year was nowhere in sight.

This was a bit of a surprise. The vendor was one of the larger companies, so while the economy is tough for everyone right now, what had made them decide not to spend money on attending this conference — even though it’s one of the largest in the industry?

Usually vendors tie their event decisions to the number of leads they can get from face-to-face interactions. Looking back on last year, I remembered that I couldn’t recall a time when I had seen the two booth attendants actually interacting with anyone. They’d spent the bulk of their time, noses down, typing away on their laptops.

Whether they intended to or not, they’d sent a clear message: “Don’t bother us. We’re busy doing more important things.” People had walked right by their booth, even after interacting with booth reps beside and across from them.

If the company really did opt out of this year’s Techno because their cost-to-lead ratio was too high, it’s a shame they didn’t realize that the solution was completely within their control.

Communicating your place in community

Conferences are, arguably, a microcosm of PR. Your customers show up. Media show up. You may have multiple company representatives there. And you interact with other vendors. All represent facets of your public relations efforts.

How you interact with them may be one of the most important gauges the participants have of your company’s values. This is a critical factor in their decision about whether to do business with you — it is part of your branding, to a much greater extent than product or value proposition.

In the digital forensics and information security industry, the highest premium is placed on community. Information is important, but it can’t be shared without emotional and intellectual connections. Therefore, disengaging from any part of the community (as the vendor I described did last year) shows your company doesn’t really value that community.

This goes for the other vendors, too — even your competitors. No one wants to see uncles or in-laws at each other’s throats during a family dinner, so why should this be okay at a conference? Yet this year, a competitor of one of the event’s sponsors went too far in positioning itself apart from the sponsor:

• Their team stayed clear of hosted events (even one involving free food. Gasp!) At one point, they clustered in the hotel lobby as if circling the wagons while everyone else gathered to socialize.
• Their sales representative had changed out the sponsor-branded nametag lanyard for a lanyard from a previous conference — that his company had sponsored.
• They didn’t come over to the sponsor’s booth to socialize, as I’d seen them do at previous events.

I was not alone in noticing their choices. Trickiest: although at least one (the lanyard) was a conscious choice, the others may not have been. The sales team may have decided to go out to dinner rather than attend the social event, simply because they wanted more robust fare. Still, it would have been wise for them to consider how that choice looked from the outside in. That’s because while choices may not affect sales to any measurable effect, every action ripples, many times in ways we don’t see.

Match conscious with unconscious

To communicate a consistent brand message, all the pieces have to come together, not just consciously — what you are telling customers and others — but also unconsciously: what you are showing them through your actions.

If the “tell” and the “show” don’t match, it may not cost you short-term sales, but the longer the mismatch goes on, the less equity you’ll have… and the more ground you’ll lose to competitors who are consistent in word and deed. In other words, don’t risk ego — corporate or individual — against community.

Does your approach, conscious and unconscious, communicate what you want customers to believe about you and your organization? If not, what will it take to fix it?

photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

Kellye Crane, founder of the Solo PR Pros community, graciously asked me to write a guest post about what I learned. I invite you to head over and read it, and hope you will take the time to comment!

Honesty builds toward the reputation you want

“Reputation management” is a concept that makes sense for organizations trying to maintain their brands. Whether they have a strong online presence or not, companies’ and agencies’ reputations are made or broken on the actions of managers or employees, products or services, tragedy or the everyday.

When it comes to individuals, however, “reputation management” starts to sound a bit shady. Reputation and character, after all, are two separate things. If you are managing the thing everyone sees, that implies the underlying character itself must be managed.

Of course, an organization has much less control over its reputation than an individual does over his or hers. An individual, at that point, shouldn’t need to manage anything; it should be second nature.

Second nature online

The problem with online reputation management isn’t the reputation or the person behind it; frequently, it’s the tools. People to whom blogging, tweeting, or status-updating does not come easily find themselves at a disadvantage: people who do it daily may get, and offer, more attention. Which might even translate into more business.

Making reputation management second nature involves making choices, and I don’t mean hiring a company like ReputationDefender or committing social media suicide. (You could, I suppose. But because social media amplify rather than create, consider whether you have an offline reputation you need to work on first.)

As I said on CyberSpeak, reputation management for an individual means honesty. This can take one of a few forms:

Honesty about stupid decisions

So your Facebook account shows incriminating evidence of—well, more than girls gone wild. This post (and accompanying comments) at Shel Holtz’ blog shows how conflicted many people are about whether employers and others have any right to make hiring decisions based on what they see on Facebook.

Note that it’s not about the behavior itself. As many pointed out, partying happens anyway. That it’s now both more documented and more accessible is the issue. Some believe that just because it’s documented doesn’t mean people should be fired or removed from consideration.

Others think if prospective employees are dumb enough to post it publicly, what other poor judgment will they display? (Think about this in terms of information security.)

Best of all: the employee or prospect who comes clean about going wild. No, it won’t guarantee job security. Only the employer can say that. But there is no better way to build character and reputation simultaneously than to own mistakes made. If you do lose a job? Then it’s an opportunity to move and continue to grow.

Honesty about what you know and what you don’t

Reputation for individuals is frequently about knowledge. Whether boss or expert, the person who can admit they don’t know something—and ask for enlightenment from the best qualified person to provide it—wins more respect than the person who tries to hide their insecurity by blaming, posturing, or anything else that makes it painfully obvious they don’t know.

Again, it’s about ownership. And, as with mistake-making, courage to learn. That can be much more difficult when you are in a leadership position. It involves giving up a certain amount of control, making yourself vulnerable to possibly less noble-minded people in your organization or outside of it. Worst of all: if this happens during a crisis.

There are many complicated variables in play here. Making yourself vulnerable through honesty means trusting your team, sometimes the public. What if you can’t trust your team? Well… sometimes that’s about them, but other times it’s about you.

The balance really lies in desire for personal growth vs. job security… but keep in mind, job security is very often flimsier than you think. Posturing and honesty may both get you to the same place, but if you’re fired for being honest, at least you can build your reputation on a positive quality rather than a negative.

Honesty about what you can and can’t manage

It doesn’t make sense to run out and get an account on every social network imaginable, because of the hundreds that exist. Even those of us with fewer than half a dozen accounts have trouble “scaling,” or adjusting the ratio of social networking to our regular work.

You might admire the way other professionals blog their thoughts three times a week, but if you only want to blog because you think you “should,” think about your real reasons. Are you afraid they’re getting business you want? That they appear to know more than you do? Blogging may not be for you. Think, instead, about Facebook pages—they frequently take less work to maintain—or networking via LinkedIn groups or even Twitter.

If, however, you have something to say about a topic no one else is covering, then blogging (or its siblings podcasting and vlogging) is something to consider. And, because it allows for a depth of thought not enabled by quick-fix status update services, it’s a good way to give others a feel for how you think and seek to be perceived in public.

Starting fresh

Trying to wipe out your checkered past is too obvious. As shown in the comments about this judge, attempts just tarnish one’s reputation further.

It would be refreshing to see the dishonest own their troubles rather than try to cover them up or destroy them outright. And I do mean own, not make public apologies no one will take seriously.

The truly repentant act it. That means forming new habits, challenging yourself to push past the more convenient ways of doing things. Unless you’re a sociopath, that kind of challenge can only give you the reputation you so desire.

Image: OliBac via Flickr

I’ve heard this before, just never seen it on the front bumper of a public vehicle. But I want to discuss it in light of how I’m building my business.

Personal branding?

In my blogroll is Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog, a blog I read regularly because it does have good career advice for young people in particular. But I have never been fond of the term “personal branding.” Dan himself theorized why people feel this way: “Could another term downplay the marketing connotation that risks reducing human beings to commodities?”

His answer to that particular concern:

Human beings start off as commodities and by way of personal branding, they can stand for something, achieve greatness and become visible to their audience.

He’s got a point about humans starting as commodities. People young and old do need to learn how to stand out from the rest of the labor force.

Still: branding? Do we have to put people on a par with Pepsi or J. Crew? Kami Huyse writes an even better explanation for those of us uncomfortable with the term: “…it leads to an undue focus on the self rather than developing and communicating character.”

Character as part of a team

Implicitly, what this means is that “personal branding” doesn’t do enough to support “team branding.” When you’re focused on reputation—what you do when others are watching—you’re not working with those others. You’re not part of a unit. You’re doing what you think is the right thing without considering whether it really is the right thing, whether it works for the team. You’re doing the right thing for you.

This is a crucial point when dealing with law enforcement and allied professions like digital forensics. Many of these professionals have the kind of character that deflects individual praise. They’d rather support team efforts. That’s because they know they wouldn’t be where they are without strong community support.

And yet they have great ideas, great talent, which deserves to be noticed so that they can help the wider community. Sometimes professionals know this; they want to go beyond where they’re already known, from law enforcement to the private sector, or focused on a new aspect of their careers.

Others are content just to help their team members and friends via training, doing favors, and such. They wouldn’t mind putting their expertise out there for more to see. It just isn’t a high priority. And that’s character.

Thus, good reputations. Even at times when they thought no one would be watching, someone was. They went the extra mile for a colleague or client, thinking it would stay just between them. And maybe it did. Except that even when loyal friends and fans don’t talk, people pay attention to loyalty.

Promote the mission

Writes Kami Huyse, “A better model is for the company (or individual) to develop strong values that they can live into and put all of their focus on that.” Values are related to missions. The best “personal brands” are those who have missions like, “Find the bad guys and put them in jail.”

Because when there’s a solid mission, and a person who’s devoted to it, they will do whatever they need to to make it happen. They’re not thinking a whit about what’s in it for them. They’re thinking about what they can do to strengthen the team to move as a cohesive goal toward completing the mission.

Professionals don’t just need to be scared into realizing that the Internet is as wide and as public as Times Square. They also need to be inspired to make that square their own digital billboard. Yes, this will be uncomfortable. No one likes to self-promote. Promoting the mission, though, is a whole different story.

What mission can you promote in the online square?

Image: striatic via Flickr

When the spotlight hits you, how will you look?

It’s not easy to find out about most investigators via Google search, and I’m sure they like it that way. The less information “out there” about them, the better; criminals won’t be able to find them (or their families) as easily, and defense attorneys won’t be able to damage their credibility in court. If they keep their heads down, their work will speak for itself among the people who matter most.

Well… maybe. But online reputations are beginning to be made without a person’s involvement or even knowledge. People increasingly go to sites like Twitter, their own blogs, or newspaper sites’ comment sections to share and, yes, vent their experiences with businesses and people and government agencies.

Consider this blog entry about Toronto Police Services Constable Scott Mills. It’s overwhelmingly positive; no surprise. I haven’t followed Scott for long, but his passion for his work is plain. He’s a Crime Stoppers youth coordinator, active in supporting graffiti art, and regularly seeks assistance from the public in solving crimes.

Even if he did not choose to be online, the Cop Gossip blog likely would’ve covered him anyway, as would Toronto news media. In other words, his reputation would be established for him. But if his influence was not so positive?

Then you’d have what happened to a friend of a friend.

Who’s in control of your reputation?

Researching a story, I was referred to a potential source by a friend. I wanted to find out whether this detective had written or spoken about the topic I was working on; my friend wasn’t sure, so to Google I turned.

What I found frankly shocked me. I trust my friend, and I knew he wouldn’t send me to someone I couldn’t likewise trust. But here was a detective who’d been brought up on an infraction: supplying alcohol to a minor. He’d pleaded no contest, paid a fine, and resigned from his position at the police department he worked for.

Google turned up another search result: a defense attorney who was using the media reports against the detective, insinuating during a separate trial that an inappropriate relationship existed between the detective and the minor, a police Explorer in the same department.

According to my friend, the detective and the Explorer had participated in a sting which resulted in the arrest of a liquor store proprietor. When it was over, the detective bought her something to drink. She picked an energy drink—one that contained alcohol.

This was before the demand to repackage alcoholic energy drinks, so neither of them noticed the problem. In the ensuing investigation, however, “energy drink” became “beer,” and the detective’s union rep gave him what my friend called bad advice: to resign before he was fired (given his record, probably unlikely).

The detective went to another agency, had no problem getting hired. Offline, his reputation had preceded him, and he apparently felt no need to try and improve his Google standing. “Why bother?” he may have thought, yet attention spans nowadays are not as long as they were when he started in law enforcement and traditional media made or broke a reputation.

In other words, had he started a blog or had articles published or worked to get positive press of the same kind that our mutual friend has, Google and other search engines would pay more attention to optimized, more recent mentions of his name. The other stuff wouldn’t disappear, but it would be harder for defense attorneys to cast reasonable doubt.

The new resume

Public relations/social media consultant Brian Solis quoted journalist Kevin Donline as saying:

It’s been said that Google is the new resume. Truth be told, any search engine, whether social or traditional, is the resume – it’s the Wikipedia entry for the rest of us. It’s no longer what we decide to curate onto a piece of paper or onto one traditional one-page digital resume. It really is moot in a world when anyone can practically piece together your story without the help of a document designed to shape and steer our perception.

Solis then went on to say: “Indeed, there are many stories that fuel the urgency for everyone to take control of their online persona.”

Back to Scott Mills. He doesn’t have to be online (though I’m sure he’d disagree), and any attention he were to get solely from Toronto media would be positive in itself.

But by having his Facebook and Twitter and other profiles, Scott has done what a lot of law enforcement professionals are not comfortable or used to doing: rather than react to something, he’s proactively “branded” both his work and his agency. And that’s something more public safety professionals need to strive for.

How can you be proactive about the way your work is reflected online?

Image: sashafatcat via Flickr