As social media begins to envelop every part of a corporate organization, it becomes important that every employee begins to have a certain level of literacy in using social media tools. This becomes even more important in outward-facing rules where “social business” is changing the way companies engage with present and potential customers over Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs. At some point, just as companies emerged that used the Internet as their platform (Amazon, Netflix, etc.), we will see new companies arise that purely use social media as their platform. And when that happens, it is a natural that they …
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LinkedIn has been around for many years now, and maybe some of you created an account in the early days of 2004 like I did and just forgot about it, including the password. Then, later on you created a second account. Or maybe you used your business email as your primary email address and no longer work at that company. Either way, I am always hearing stories of people desperate to merge two LinkedIn accounts into one for various reasons, the most common being that they just can’t access one of their accounts anymore. How can you merge two accounts …
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Social media is a fascinating and new medium for businesses. If done right, social media can be an incredibly viral way of spreading the word about your company, brand, or product. However, because of its “viral” nature, companies are learning the hard way that social media can amplify the good, and the bad, about your company and/or products. All it takes is one mistake in social media etiquette to damage your brand and have bloggers and tweeters from around the world spreading the message about what you did wrong. That harm can be tremendous and should not be underestimated. Today we look at …
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Yesterday, I issued a press release talking about how my LinkedIn book, “Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn” won and Honorable Mention for Best Non-Fiction Book of 2009. To say that I am happy about this is an understatement: as someone who risked all credibility with publishers by going the self-published route, it is extremely satisfying. But social media is about you, not about me, so I want to share in the victory by offering you some free social media books. What do you need to do? Just participate! Keep reading for details
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In 2010, the landscape for jobseekers continues to change as the world around us changes. As social media begins to envelop almost every part of a corporate organization, and as more corporate employees are required to use it as part of their professional jobs, the impact it has on the jobseeker is tremendous. However, most companies are still trying to figure out how to use social media, and initial planning usually starts with the social media marketing strategy. What hints for the jobseeker might social media strategies that businesses implement have? A lot.
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It all started with a secret social media event that was actually held for the publication of my LinkedIn book: the “Hush-Hush Surprise — Networking Mixer, Charity Event & Book Release Party.” 157 people came out for a networking event to celebrate, well, networking! I stood amidst a crowd of people, many of whom I knew, but all of them I met purely through engaging in social media itself. It was at this event that Christine Weijland, Sales & E-Commerce Manager of Hilton Orange County Costa Mesa met Debbie Miller, Information Systems Coordinator for the Costa Mesa Conference & Visitor …
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O.K., I am going to admit that I first joined StumbleUpon as part of a strategy that the “SEO [Search Engine Optimization] Gurus” recommend to create backlinks to your blog content from social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit. The idea being that the more links you have from other sites, the higher your SEO will be. And, as anyone who has ever used StumbleUpon just for this reason will tell you, you quickly realize that you are just wasting your time because just by thumbing up your own blog posts you are not gaining any significant additional traffic to …
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A few days ago I wrote a guest blog post entitled “Social Media Was Not Created for Business…So Stop Selling to Us!” With all of the talk about how companies need to get more “social,” all I see are a barrage of new “Follow Us on Twitter” or “Join Our Facebook Fan Page” advertisements. As someone who uses Social Media for 1) keeping in contact with old friends and colleagues, 2) professional networking and meeting new people, and 3) finding valuable information and learning, I really have no reason to be joining Facebook Fan Pages of businesses unless they satisfy …
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