Tonight I connected with Joanna Lord for the first time.

It was funny because as we chatted we both admitted to having stalked each other for a few minutes before we talked.

Let’s see what I found when I stalked Joanna?

First, in the real world she had made a good impression.

Mark Knowles, who is very well liked and respected for who he is as a person, and what he has accomplished in the online world over the past decade, online software development and some cool stuff coming out soon! I trust Mark. Mark told me how cool she was, and that I needed to connect with her.

So imediately I trusted her before I even met her.

Then I have seen her on twitter, and that many people I know follow her.

Then I started following her.

I also saw she was friends with many people I am friends with on facebook.

But I had not friended her yet.

As I was getting ready to send out thinktank invites, I decided to follow up on getting her contact info.

I thought I had DM’d her on twitter before, (later I found out I had not).

So I sent her a DM on twitter, and asked her something like,

“Can I catch your attention?”

Her e-mail back.

“Attention caught”

We then IM’d for a good half hour, finding a bunch of common friends, and explaining the projects we were both working on.

While we chatted I Googled her.

Let’s see what I found!

Number one comes up joanna lord on twitter.

As you scroll down through her tweets you will see a very positive, upbeat person with nothing but nice things to say about everyone and everything.

The next site down is her new job search site. As I tested it, it worked! It gathers job listings from many (all?) of the main job listing sites.

Next up is her facebook page, where she got facebook.com/joanna.lord so she showed that she was on the ball to get her name as her facebook url.

(Later I expect that to be a quick check way we use to measure how long someone has been hip to social media, and later how old someone is!)

When I first hit her facebook page, it showed we have around 74 friends in common.

As we chatted she was quick, answering on IM instantly, funny (a tough skill to fake), polite, and bright.

It was around 30 minutes of non stop typing on both of our parts, dropping links, asking and answering each others questions simultaneously. At one point I even dropped a little controversial hook of someone who maybe is not too thrilled with me, and she just let that slip by without jumping into any negativity either way.

All in all, very, very impressive.

So now we have never spoken on the phone, only IM’d for about 30 minutes and I feel I know and trust her.

It is because she did her homework in advance, so when I did my quick search and reviewed what google delivered she shined.

So how do you do this?

1. Write nice stuff online about other people and things.

2. Do quality work so when other people look at it, it works and looks good.

3. Put in your time making friends so your twitter followers look o.k., and you have friends in common with others on facebook.

4. When someone reaches out to you, even if you don’t know them, take the time to research them, and if they seem quality, give them a chance to make friends.

5. Be nice when you meet someone new. Do the basics, be polite, compliment them, and find out how you can help.

You never know, after you do all those things you might just make a good enough impression for someone to write a blog about you!