Have you read the book? Linchpin by Seth Godin. Reviews are collected here at Squidoo.

Are you a Linchpin? Do you aspire for more? Do you want to lead or create or connect or give back?

Linchpins are meeting in 700 cities world-wide. More than 4000 people. On June 14th, 2010. Are you going to be there?

There are many places to connect with Linchpins online. There is the Tribe. (Now with a blog everyone can read). There is a Linchpin NING. There are a few LinkedIn groups. Now there are over 600 MeetUps. There are probably groups local to you similar to the Tampa Creative Network or Brand Tampa.

But this is In-Person! Connect with another local Linchpin live! Maybe you will connect through Art or Genius. Maybe you will Inspire each other to Ship!

(Did you know that there is a Linchpin Manifesto?)

You can meet Seth live on his book tour (dates here; Boston on June 17th)

Linchpin Meetup June 14th

PS: There is another way to meet Linchpins in-person: events like BarCamp.

There isn’t a single I in Team. But there are 4 I’s in this group: INITIATE, INVITE, INFORM, and INSPIRE. (Thanks to Ed Brenegar).

A few other posts about being a Linchpin:  Mind Map, Tampa Linchpin MeetUp, and Are you a Linchpin?.

Tampa has 20 people attending its Linchpin Day at the Ideafield Offices. Details here.

What will people do that day? A little speed networking, talk about all the great ideas in Seth’s books, and maybe discuss the following: “How to advance “leadership” in Tampa Bay. In tech, culture, economy, urban living, and sustainability.”  Will you be there? Are You a Linchpin?

My strategy for LinkedIn was to network with the top performers in Telecom and some of the best marketing people in North America. For the most part, I have stuck to that strategy. I also use LI as a contact database. If I meet you, I look for you on LinkedIn and invite you to connect. That way I can keep track of folks. Top of mind kind of stuff.

I am willing to help anyone attain their goals, but I am stingy with the recommendations. Why? A recommendation has to be authentic. I have to have worked with you – really worked with you. How can I talk about your work ethic or your business attitude if I have not seen it? A few folks have asked me for a recommendation but this is the problem. I have not seen them work. And I’m not going to leave a quote about their attitude at a networking event. [Matt Baron has a little more about the anatomy of a recommendation here.]

So if you are on LinkedIn, work in Telecommunications, Web 2.0 or Marketing (PR, Sales, Advertising, New Media), drop me an invite.

But you need leads, right?

Well, you can buy leads, especially if you have a specific geographic area or niche.

What’s a SIC? Standard Industrial Classification. See here and here. There is also a North American Industry Classification System that the Census uses. These are both ways to tackle a vertical.

Email marketing can work if it is Permission based (Opt-in) and valuable, but you have to develop a subscriber list, which takes time.

ValuPak, Classified Ads, Craigslist, PR, seminars, webinars, white papers, BNI, industry associations, Chambers of Commerce, strategic partners, write blog/letters/comments, event marketing, 50-butt rule (network), Adwords, Landing Page Optimization, speaking (at Rotary/Lions/etc.), banner ads, podcasts, video / commercials.

Yes, that’s quite a list. It takes some work, but that’s what it takes today.

Cardscan is a brand of business card and receipt scanner with OCR software. Cradscan also has an online component that send out email to confirm contact info.

Fujistu has a mobile SnapSCan. My thought there was to upload everything to Plaxo and export the contact list for use with Thunderbird and Outlook. (Outlook so my PPC-6700 smartphone will have all my numbers).

NeatReceipts offers a similar scanner. I just don’t know if there is an online component. Or if you would need to use Plaxo for that as well.

What are you doing? Plaxo, LinkedIn, CardScan or other? Are you importing all cards into a CRM app? Let me know by posting a comment or emailing me at peter at marketingideaguy dot com

I see way too many DIY, print-it-yourself cards when I’m networking.  As soon as I see one of these I make a mental note not to do business with them or take them on as a client. If you don’t know that DIY business cards are bad, there’s a mess of other stuff you don’t know is bad.  And if you’re not embarrassed to present DIY cards to folks, there’s nothing I can do to help your sales and marketing. Believe it!

Seth doesn’t like DIY cards either. This is the most important marketing piece you deliver. It is your image, your billboard, your calling card. You want people to do a double take, to go Ooh!

And leave room for notes. Many networkers like to take notes about you on the card.

Jeffrey Gitomer has 17.5 Strategies, Guidelines and Rules for Connecting here.