Access. It’s what everyone wants.  Access to the best events, access to the famous people.  If the adage “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is true (and, it is) then access is what gets you to the “who” that can make a difference.  But, more often than not, meeting the “who” that matter is a pipe dream – and any interaction is often little more than a passing handshake in the hall of a conference or a feeble “great panel” comment as you stand in a sea of others all clamoring to meet the person you really want to know.

Gaining access is an art. An art that they don’t teach you in business school, but one that changes everything, from the events you attend to the people that you meet to the jobs that you get.  It is the secret to getting to wherever it is you’re going.

Here are the key principles in gaining access:

Pre-Gaming

If you’re not pre-gaming conferences and events you’re killing your chances at gaining access.  You or your company have spent hundreds or thousands of dollars to get you to an event (say, South By Southwest); you can’t simply walk-in without doing any prep work and expect to successfully connect with the people you want to meet.  These people have schedules at these events that are booked weeks in advance and your chances of just “running into” these people are zero. Do your homework.

• Identify who will be at the event ahead of time
• Make a “hit list” of people you want to meet
• Mine Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to learn about the events outside of the conference (often unofficial) that will provide better settings to have a meaningful interaction
• For your hit list: read their blog posts, twitter stream and articles so that you can talk intelligently to these people about topics that are important to them

Create a Platform

The people you want to meet are the same people that everyone else wants to meet.  Typically, you and everyone are not the people they want to meet, they want to meet with their friends and business associates.  Bottom line: they are busy.  In order to break through the noise and get a meaningful interaction with them you need to bring value.  And this is not about what your company does for its customers.  It’s about how you can help promote and advance the interests of the individual you want to meet.

You can do this by creating a platform that can help distribute their message and further their own goals.  For example at SXSW we created a platform called 100 interviews.  We went around and asked the top 100 social media and technology people if they would be willing to be interviewed on video as a part of this “experiment” at SXSW.  It took 4 days and we met and had meaningful interactions with people that you can only dream of.

Why did it work?

• We created a platform – 100 interviews – that gave us a coherent and easily understandable value proposition for the participants.  Get your message out, be involved with 99 other luminaries, be part of the project.
• We created value for them – a distribution network across all online video sites tied to a big, recognizable event (SXSW)
• We played off of SXSW’s theme – by calling the project an experiment we played to the collaborative nature of SXSW.  People want to be a part of a cutting-edge way of doing things and participating in something novel.
• We used social proof

Using Social Proof

Social proof is essential to gaining access.  It is the proof that gives the people you want access to confidence that you’re worth their time.  It is also the engine that drives the momentum of your access.  The concept is simple.  You get one notable person to say yes to get the next, and so on, until you’ve lined up meetings or interviews with everyone else you want to meet.  And it’s just like bowling pins – get one key individual and you can leverage that agreement to connect with the next person.

How to use social proof:

• Make yourself look bigger than you are – If we had randomly asked people to interview them, they would want to know who we were and for what purpose.  Instead we created a powerful hook “100 interviews” that instantly created an easy-to-understand premise.
• Create a presence – We instantly launched a web site, Twitter account and YouTube channels. By having these concrete elements people could validate what we were doing.
• Use commitments to gain other commitments – We publicly announced when we secured big commitments. By Twittering and posting those commitments on our site we were able to validate our project and get more people involved.

Create Buzz

Promote. Promote. Promote.  We promoted 100 interviews like crazy in the days leading up to the event.  We asked our friends to Tweet about it on Twitter, we posted our commitment updates on our blog and tweeted them out.  By generating buzz we created additional credibility to what we were doing.  After a few days the people we contacted said “oh, you’re the 100 interviews guys!” Having the buzz gave us credibility and helped us gain even more commitments.

How to create buzz:

• Create a brand – 100 interviews had a nice ring to it. We supported it with a logo, web site, Twitter handle and YouTube channel.
• Cash in your Whuffie – Whuffie is social currency, the goodwill you accumulate with people you’ve helped in the past. It’s time to cash some in and ask people you know to help spread the word. Reach out on Twitter, email, Facebook, whatever, to ask them to help get the word out.
• Leverage online tools – Create Facebook fan pages, event pages, a WordPress blog, a Twitter account, and more. Give people every possible way to interact and promote what you’re doing.

Make it Count

Look, even with a great platform and buzz you still have just one interaction with a person you want to meet.  Sure – it’s a more meaningful interaction than just shaking hands after a panel, but it is just one.  And one does not make a relationship.  The best way to move from interaction to relationship is to follow up afterwards. And follow up quickly and personally.

Write a personal thank you note to every person you met and interviewed.  Make it handwritten, and get it out the door in a week.  This will make you stand out from the rest of the folks who simply drop emails or Twitter direct messages.  Then, follow the person on Twitter, interact when appropriate and keep in-touch with them periodically.  Then when you see them at the next event you’ll have another reason to say hi and chat for a few minutes.

Guess what?  You now have access.  Welcome to your new world.