A social media enthusiastic life can sometimes be overwhelming to others. This story illustrates that social networking should complement, not replace, traditional physical networking for personal branding and job search.

1. by Denny McCorkle

2. He had passed its lonely street many times while on his daily
walk near lower downtown Denver. It was a busier than usual
and warm August day at work. A sudden thirst and a need to
catch up with email overwhelmed his desire to walk further.
With the first step thru the door he hesitated as his ears
adjusted to a loud chorus from Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in
the Wall" and his eyes quickly adjusted to the subdued lighting
framing a dark hardwood textured interior.
He unholstered his iPhone with the finesse of a Wild West
gunslinger, smiled when he found an unsecured Wi-Fi signal,
and quickly checked-in on Google+ and Facebook.
After a few minutes of pause, he walked toward the back of
the near empty bar while looking at his iPhone 5 and muttering
to himself: "Why can't Siri do that?" When he finally looked up,
there stood an aging man with a thick head of

3. hair, friendly smile, bar towel across his shoulder, and a face
full of advice.
"What's your passion?" asked the bartender.
With minimal hesitation, the new customer responded with the
zeal of the double rainbow guy: "I just love technology. I blog
about it. I Tweet about it. I even work with it every day, almost
every hour. Have you heard the news that Facebook closed
the deal on Oculus Rift? That's mad cool!"
"No, I mean, what are you drinking?" interrupted the barkeep,
motioning to sit at one of many empty bar stools framing a
dark oversized wooded bar rarely seen in modern day
watering holes.
"Ah, yes. I gotcha. Just a moment," he said while pulling his
iPad Air from his faux leather messenger bag. "I want to see if

4. any of my friends on Facebook have any new drink
recommendations. We challenge each other like
that. Perhaps I should also check Urbanspoon to see what's
most recommended here. Are you on the Zagat app?" he
spoke without a pause or a second breath.
"I make a great daiquiri with fresh fruit. And, we have a new
India Pale Ale on tap from New Belgium Brewing in Ft.
Collins," said the bartender with a roll of his eyes and a wish
for a few more customers.
"Hmm . . . WWGD? What would Guy do?” he muttered to
himself.
"Well, I guess I could crowdsource a quick poll in my LinkedIn
craft beer lovers group."

5. "But, if I plus one New Belgium Brewing and attach a native
photo of their beer, they may circle me."
"Perhaps I should just Google a comparison. I usually drink
Sam Adams Light. Before I drink a heavier beer I should see
how far I would need to walk to burn off the extra calories
consumed. Aha, I have a wicked brilliant idea! I could use my
FitBit to monitor this and toss the big data into a spreadsheet
and make some wicked graphs to tweet about later. I just love
this wearable tech," he said while holding his adorned wrist to
eye level.
"iWatch, where are you?" he sang as any recently graduated
Theatre major might do. Again, the bartender turned his head
and rolled his eyes with a wish for a break time.
After a quick browse and calculation, the new customer looked
up and declared: "Perhaps not today, my Weather.com app

6. just notified me of a weather change on this less than sunny
August day in this mile high city. If it rains, I may not have the
time to walk off the extra calories. Just give me a light beer
and a glass of water."
While the bartender was getting his beer, the enthusiastic
young man began to browse his email. He was so focused on
his task that he did not notice that a cute girl of similar age had
quietly sat near the other end of the bar. She, too, pulled out
an iPhone and basically remained physically unsocial.
“Here's your Coors Light and Rocky Mountain water. Enjoy!
By the way, I'm John. I've not seen you in here before. Are
you a local? What's your name?”
"Hiya John. Just relocated here from Boston. Wicked happy to
graduate. Happy to breathe this fresh mountain air. Not so
muggy here. Though I do miss the Square. And the Cape. And

7. chowdah. And grinders. Oh, yeah. Almost forgot. Me. Me. Me.
Sorry about that. I'm TechGuruBob, your millennial answer
man," he said as he thrust forward for a handshake, their eyes
met directly for the first time, and he recognized the confused
expression on the bartender’s face.
"Oh, you mean my real name? Not my social media persona."
"I'm Robert Gobsnap. You gotta tagline, John?"
"What do you mean by tagline?" asked John, while wiping the
bar top.
"You know, your personal branding tagline? Your mini
elevator pitch? Your signature statement? Your profile
positioning? Guy's a social media evangelist. Pam's a
marketing nut. Dave’s the Likeable guy. Jay’s the Youtility
marketer. Brian’s the Copyblogger. Viveka’s the LinkedIn
Expert. And, Dan's the PB&J man. He's all about personal

8. branding and job search, you know. And, from Boston, you
know.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. A tagline is what you want others
to know about you, all summed up in short few words or a
phrase," he said with a deep breath.
"Oh, okay. I'll play along. Let's see. I'm John. Ah. The
proprietor. Ah. Digitally disabled. An analog kind of guy,” he
responded with a smirk and a well-honed bartender's quick
wit.
Robert feigned a smile. "Uh-huh. "Whateva. I gotcha. Epic
fail," he said with the realization that the bartender was a
digital Luddite much like his dad who still refused to use
Facebook or follow him on Twitter.

9. "Okay, John the proprietor, I would Like to start a tab," he said
with a thumbs up and minimal effort for further conversation.
"Robert, since you are not a regular and not one of my
grandchildren on Facebook, I need your ID to start a tab," said
John. Robert quickly pulled out his iPad and showed the
bartender his Gravatar based About Me page with photo on
his WordPress blog. He then pressed a tab in his
Chrome browser for a quick Google search and said: "See I
have Google Authorship."
“What do you mean?”
"Oh, you want to see my verified ID?" Robert again quickly
pressed a tab in his Chrome browser and showed the
bartender his Google+ profile with a verified name.

10. "No, I need to see your driver’s license. You look old enough,
but I am still required to check, Robert the millennial guru."
"Okay, I get it, two-step authentication. Wicked smart. I use
it, too. On all my social media and as a plugin on my
WordPress blog."
After a cursory glance at Robert’s new Colorado driver’s
license, the bartender remarked that his driver's license photo
looked nothing like the photo on his blog.
"That's because I used Photoshop for better color saturation,
to remove a few blemishes, and a darker hair color. No
unadorned selfie on my blog," Robert said proudly.
He added: "You know, the DMV is really missing the digital
speed boat. Why, if given the chance I could so white hat
SEO a WordPress blog for them. A little HTML here. A little

11. CSS there. Mobile responsive design. And some primo
wicked plugins. Yeah, and I could curate lots of mad cool viral
stuff about cars and driving and tech gadgets and safety.”
“With Panda and Penguin and Hummingbird, good content is
what it is all about. Can't black hat game the Google, or risk a
Google slap. Good content, that’s the secret sauce. Along with
keyword strategies and organic backlinks I could get more
traffic than the Mass Pike. That's the long tail for inbound and
social media marketing," he concluded with yet another deep
breath.
Since Robert rarely looked up and seemed to enjoy talking to
himself, John the bartender rolled his eyes as if he had heard
it before, assumed Robert wanted to be alone, and walked
toward the girl sitting at a bar stool near his half read
newspaper.

12. Robert continued to frantically browse his iPad, dipping into
his Feedly folders and Buffering a few articles, leaving
comments on his favorite tech blogs, answering tech
questions on Quora to enhance his personal branding
visibility, and scrolling thru his favorite Twitter lists about
technology.
After a few minutes of randomly jumping around in Flipboard
and reading the day's post titles on Mashable and saving a
few in his Pocket app, Robert motioned for the bartender to
come over from his lonely newspaper reading stance at the
end of the bar. For the first time, he noticed the girl sitting
alone at the bar and had a quick daydream about walking over
to her and saying hello.
The bartender interrupted his fantasy with a: "How can I
help?"

13. Robert replied: "Sorry to bother you. I would have sent you a
Yo if only you were in my network. But, I need a reshare, I
mean a refill."
"Another Light?" asked the bartender.
"Yes," said Robert.
About two minutes passed as Robert again pulled out his
iPhone and snapped a picture just as the bartender set his
beer within arm’s reach. "John, you're a wicked plus one in
my Facebook," said Robert with his index finger in the air.
"And, by the way, just email me the receipt. Even though I am
not driving, I'll check out of here with two."
"Sorry, only paper receipts,” said John. “Aa . . . do you take
pictures of everything you drink?"

14. "Nope, I just had an idea for a new blog post about how
drinking is a lot like playing phone tag with tech reps. I learned
of the importance of drawing blogging inspiration from
everyday life from Mark Schaefer's blog and wanted to take a
photo of my inspiration so I can edit and filter it in Instagram
before pinning it on Pinterest and then embedding it in my
WordPress self-hosted blog. Do you want to see?" Robert
asked while holding up a photo from his iPhone's Photo
Stream. "Aha! I could also hashtag it across my platforms and
get some new followers."
"Ah, no thanks. What do you do in real life, Robert?" asked
John.
"I am an advanced tech troubleshooter at Dish," said Robert.
"Oh, that's Sirius on Dish Network you're hearing now," said
John with a smile as "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" by the

15. Rolling Stones played in the background and he thought that
perhaps he had finally found something in common with his
newest customer.
"So you troubleshoot on the phone for your day job, and bury
your eyes in those hand computers for the rest of the day and
night?" asked John.
"I prefer some face time, myself. That's the only way to truly
get to know someone," John said with an eyebrow nudge
toward the nearby pretty girl still focusing on her iPhone.
"Oh, yes," Robert replied sheepishly upon taking the hint and
as a quick dodge then added: "That reminds me, I need to
reply to some emails," as he focused his eyes on his Gmail
app.

16. Fifteen minutes passed and Robert was nowhere near
achieving inbox zero, even though he loved the new tabs in
Gmail. Suddenly, he stopped abruptly and slammed his fist
atop of the bar and said a NSFW word, without realizing that
all eyes were now upon him.
The bartender quickly dropped his newspaper and dashed
over to ask: "Is something wrong?"
Robert looked up and mumbled that he had just received a
notification from his Klout app that his score had gone down
again. He slowly looked up with the eyes of the sad Keanu
meme, and more loudly and seriously asked: "John, do you
know anything about social engagement? Err . . ah . . I mean,
interacting with others?"
The bartender frowned, shrugged his shoulder, and said: "I
once did," as he walked away to continue reading his

17. newspaper.
###
A Social Media Enthusiast Walked into a Bar by Denny
McCorkle is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License.

18. Connect with Denny McCorkle at:
Blog: Digital Self Marketing Advantage
LinkedIn: Denny McCorkle
Twitter: @DennyMcCorkle
Google+: +DennyMcCorkle
Email: DennyMcCorkle@gmail.com
Denny McCorkle ★ Digital Marketing Professor
at UNCo ★ Personal Branding & Social Media
Marketing Strategist ★ Blogger ★ Speaker ★
Geek for Creativity & Ideation ★ #AhaLessons
★ #DigitalSMA