As a consultant or public speaker, your incentive is to “touch” as many people as possible while you travel, right? You want to fill the room at your speaking gigs, or schedule quality in-person meetings/coffees/get-togethers if you’re a consultant.

Your followers are on Twitter, or are likely connected to you on Facebook in some ways. They might even subscribe to your email list.

These people want to see you, meet with you, and know what you are up to. They really do, they chose to connect via social media once because they are interested.

But that doesn’t mean they want to hear about your events in other parts of the country, repeatedly and via multiple channels.

So, how do you reach the right people, at the right time?

You can of course blast your email list; but then you risk alienating a large chunk of your list with information completely irrelevant to them. Though most email services have a geo-filter built in, these are unreliable because of the difficult of auto geo-location technology—unless they specifically set their location your geo-filter is likely inaccurate. Plus, beyond inaccuracies, those services do not solve dynamic travel scenarios (and never will).

I can tell you for a fact that I’ve unsubscribed to multiple lists as a result of getting irrelevant emails happening across the country (or even world). I’ve also unfollowed people on Twitter who broadcast events and travel plans too often. The point being, if you “touch” your network too often with irrelevant information or messages, they stop listening entirely.

With this situation in mind, we are building Oh Hey World as a way for your network to easily geo-locate themselves to you, follow your plans and only receive relevant information.

What’s coming to make this more useful to you:

• Email notifications when people you are following show up nearby—meaning your clients and fans will be able to automatically receive notifications via text or email when you show up in their town (or when you plan an upcoming trip).
• Using a specific tag (much like a hashtag on Twitter), your clients, readers, and network can find others nearby who share an interest in your work—this makes creating an integrated community among your followers a lot easier.

Questions? Ideas? Leave them in the comments, por favor!

[Photo via http://limpehft.blogspot.com/]

Drew Meyers

Drew Meyers is the co-founder of Horizon & Oh Hey World. He worked for Zillow from September of 2005 to January of 2010 on the marketing team managing Zillow’s API program and various online partnerships. Founder of Geek Estate Blog, a multi-author blog focused on real estate technology for real estate professionals, and myKRO.org, a blog devoted to exploring the world of microfinance. As passionate as you get about travel.

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