A Great Time With Chuck Hester

I had the pleasure of hosting Chuck Hester from iContact yesterday at my company, Pace Communications, and also a Tweet up here in Greensboro, NC. Chuck and I know each other from the Society of New Communications Research. I'm a founding Fellow with SNCR.org and Chuck is a Fellow and advisory board member.

I remember when Chuck told me a few years ago that he had just joined iContant, an email marketing company in Durham, North Carolina. Chuck's worked for over 25 years in PR, and he became the company's new Head of Communications, he was employee 27. Now in 2010, iContact has over 200 employees and has grown rapidly from a combination of internet marketing and social media. The company uses, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and different websites to build relationships, solve customer service issues and growth their business. From just a few posts a weeks to several posts a day on their blog. iContact is a great success story of how to use web marketing and social media to talk directly with clients using the web.

Chuck also described how he has built up his personal network on social media by asking everyone who joins his network on LinkedIn how he can help them. And he gave a lot of great tips on how to use LinkedIn and social media in general for personal networking or business. Chuck writes a daily pun on his social networks and when ever he does not write the pun, people wondered why he stopped, he used that as example of doing something that's personally distinguishable and personal with your network.

Chuck spoke at the #GSO4 tweet up at the Rioja Wine Bar in Greensboro. Rebecca Cochran and I both host the event, as an informal gathering and tweet up around the topic of social media and business.

Thanks to everyone who attended, and special thanks to Chuck for doing such a great job during all of the day's events.