The inspiration for this blog post comes from someone I consider to be a true thought leader in social media, someone who I had a chance to finally meet in person recently: Jeremiah Owyang.  He wrote a blog post back in 2008 entitled “Stop Fondling the Hammer, and Focus on the House,” and I didn’t even read this obscure post until my friend who has taught me a great deal about social media, Roderick (@Fogfish), recently mentioned in a Twitter Direct Message that he “was fondling the hammer too much” and followed that with a link to Jeremiah’s blog post.

At first, when reading the article, I was confused as to the correlation between Jeremiah’s blog post and @Fogfish’s comment.  But then it hit me: a lot of the job seekers in transition that I meet at networking events, just like a lot of people in web marketing that Jeremiah is referring to, are infatuated by the latest tools in social media.  Instead of building the house, or using these tools to help themselves find a job, they instead concentrate on learning more about the tools themselves.  And I fear that in doing so, they sometimes forget why they are using the tools in the first place.

Continue reading Social Media for Job Search Advice: Stop Fondling the Hammer!

I am amazed by how many small businesses do not utilize social media to the maximum.  Think about it: social media, like the internet two decades ago, allows any business to compete with larger, more established entities.  Come on, what are you waiting for?

What further amazes me is how few small businesses maximize their presence on LinkedIn and instead just follow the trend of Facebook and Twitter.  Why would a niche B2B company establish a Facebook Fan Page when their potential customers may not be social on Facebook yet are already used to networking on LinkedIn?  I’m confused.

That’s why, as a social media strategist, I took the approach of first blogging and thereafter writing my first book on LinkedIn, not the other popular sites.  In fact, as I said in my recent speech at Gravity Summit at UCLA, “LinkedIn is Your Hub for B2B Social Media Marketing.”  And I meant it.

Keeping that theme in mind, and combined with a recent experience I had looking for a vendor on LinkedIn, I wanted to share advice with you small business owners of why you’re not getting inbound leads from your presence on the social networking site.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is free consulting, so please heed my advice!

Continue reading 12 Reasons Why Your Small Business Isn’t Getting Leads from LinkedIn

In the world of blogging, mommy bloggers are the talk of the town.  You hear stories about how corporations want them to blog about their products.  PR professionals want to know how to engage with them.  And if you haven’t thought about it before, there are some compelling statistics on mommy bloggers which reveal why they are so important:

• Women influence 85% of all consumer purchases in the US
• Mothers who blog have undoubtedly emerged as a trusted source of information for women
• Of the 42 million women taking part in social media, 1/2 of them have children and more than 1/4 of them are active in the blogosphere

Recently, my local freebie community magazine, OC Family, which rarely has much to say about social media, did a cover story on the mommy bloggers of Orange County.  After I saw this I thought, “If these women were so numerous, who exactly were they and why did I never have the chance to meet one?”  I must be hanging out with the wrong crowd!

Continue reading Who are the Mommy Bloggers?

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 will only be finding and recruiting people over social media, because they only want social media savvy users to work for them.

You think this is way off in the future?  Think again: this is already starting.  Here’s a case study to chew on for thought.

Continue reading Looking for a Job? Only Twitter Applicants Need Apply.

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 linked to your name into one?

Continue reading How Can I Merge Two LinkedIn Accounts into One?

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 the major Twitter mistake that a big Japanese company, UCC Coffee, recently did on Twitter.  What did they do wrong?  And what are the six important lessons that businesses and professionals can learn from it?

Continue reading Social Media Etiquette: 6 Important Lessons Learned from One Japanese Company’s Major Twitter Mistake

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

Continue reading When I Win, YOU Win: Giving Away FREE Social Media Books to Those Who Participate in Social Media!

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.

Continue reading Jobseekers: Start Thinking Like a Social Media Strategist

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 Bureau.

After the event, Christine approached Debbie to see if they could hold a similar networking event in the future in the lobby of the beautiful Hilton in Costa Mesa.  Debbie contacted the organizer of the social media event held for myself, Paul Tran.  And through the volunteer help of Paul, Debbie, Christine, Marieke Hensel, Courtney Thurman, Tanya Salcido,  Diana Wei, Justin Moore-Brown, Ted Nguyen and the OCTA, and yours truly, a new non-profit movement to bring businesses, non-profit organizations, government, and professional community together in Orange County, California through free networking events was born: “ConnectOC.”

The story doesn’t end here.

Continue reading HOW TO: Attract New Customers through Social Media Events

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 your website.  From my own analysis, most of these types of people either stop wasting their time or hire a Virtual Assistant to do the “Social Bookmarking” for them.

And you know what?  These people are missing out on so much that StumbleUpon offers.

Continue reading StumbleUpon: It’s NOT About the SEO! 4 Compelling Reasons to Become a Heavy StumbleUpon User.