Image by Transguyjay via Flickr Every time I present at a professional association, I am reminded by some of my attendees that they cannot access LinkedIn or other social media sites at their work. And it always surprises me. I always end up teaming up with those wanting to convince their superiors that, with the proper rules, they should be embracing selective social media sites. And the root of the problem seems to be the same: their superiors just don’t seem to fully understand the various sites that are out there or are taking knee-jerk responses to something reported in …
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As social networking sites grow and try to better monetize their services, “new features” aren’t necessarily free (LinkedIn’s new Profile Organizer) and “new enhancements” aren’t necessarily better than their previous functionality. In fact, sometimes these new features aren’t even accessible to everyone! (LinkedIn Features: Does Everyone Have Equal Access?) That’s why it is such a breath of fresh air to see Twitter adding a new feature which was truly needed: one-click, anonymous reporting of spam! And it works like a charm!
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I recently wrote about LinkedIn’s new restriction on invitation text. What I didn’t realize at the time but has become clear is that there is now a 200-character limit on the text you include with your invitation. That is not a lot of text to play around with. In fact, the first two sentences of this blog post are a combined 200+ characters. For a social networking site that is trying to foster “trusted relationships” amongst professionals, forcing everyone to send very brief and therefore impersonal invitations seems extremely contradictory to me. Whatever new restriction LinkedIn throws at me I …
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Image by Ann Douglas via Flickr We need to start watching our manners on LinkedIn. There are a lot of people who are clearly irritated by the actions of some of us LinkedIn users. You may not be guilty of “poor etiquette,” but keep reading to make sure! A few months ago I blogged about what my favorite LinkedIn pet peeves were. The post received its fair share of comments, but more than that it created a series of conversations on the LinkedIn Group “Executive Suite”‘s Discussion Board that are still continuing to this day. Not only did people touch …
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[Note: Approximately 24 hours after I wrote this blog post, LinkedIn Events reappeared on LinkedIn as mysteriously as it had disappeared. Other than a tweet or a response to a customer service request, there was never any "official" word from LinkedIn as to what happened...] Poor old LinkedIn Events. I wrote back on April Fool’s Day how LinkedIn was very mysterious in how they branded and placed their Applications in their user interface. For instance, Events was the Application that was never accessible by selecting “Applications” from the left-hand navigation bar. Which raised the question, is LinkedIn Events a LinkedIn …
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Image via CrunchBase When I was in the Bay Area recently I had the good fortune to find my way into attending my first Tweetup that was organized by a company. A Tweetup organized by a company? Yes, I know it sounds weird, especially considering how organic and spontaneous Tweetups can be. But, just as with any other Tweetup, I found out about this one through word-of-mouth and made my way down to a downtown San Francisco hotel to see what the scoop was. We normally look at case studies of B2C brands and how they want to maintain their …
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I spent last week in the Bay Area, attending networking events and speaking at the Cool Twitter Conference. I always love going to San Francisco because there is something inherently networking-friendly to the place and its people. I always tell friends how different cities seem to have their own unique “networking culture,” and San Francisco is truly a networker’s paradise with multiple events happening on a nightly business and a social networking-savvy populace. A very different scene than my native Los Angeles, where the networking seems to be more industry-specific. In fact, it’s almost comparable to the difference that I …
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Before I could issue my official press release, and much to my surprise, Amazon this week suddenly started shipping my book on utilizing LinkedIn, “Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging and Maximizing LinkedIn.” So without any fanfare, thank you for your patience and I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it! To help you gain further insight on the book and Windmill Networking, I wanted to give you some background as to why I decided to write a book about LinkedIn. I am not an author by profession, and I began embracing LinkedIn back in February of …
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LinkedIn continues to be flooded by the unemployed and executive job seekers. This is not a new phenomenon, as everyone knows that all of the headhunters and recruiters are active on LinkedIn: establishing an intelligent LinkedIn presence with a consistent brand is free and invaluable career insurance that you can never have enough of. I’d like to write today on the new tactics that I see being taken by some aggressive job seekers and comment on their effectiveness (or lack thereof).
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I got sick of Twitter spam, and I decided to do something creative about it. And I think it’s working. You can help join the fight too. I don’t know if you have noticed recently, but Twitter spam has now gone beyond the mere obnoxious automated Direct Message. There has been a sudden uptick in spammers mentioning your name, along with a few others, together with a few words and a link. “Build a list bigger than Oprah’s!,” “New Affiliate Program,” etc. are usually the text with an affiliate link to try to sell you something. You will notice these …
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I was at a networking event last night where someone asked me if I was seeing more “spam” on LinkedIn. If you have been utilizing LinkedIn or Twitter for the last several weeks, you probably have noticed an uptick in the spam in any of the following ways:
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I developed the concept of Windmill Networking to help both professionals and businesses understand and leverage social media. Windmill Networking is a concept that, at the heart of it, is based on social networking. But because social media revolves around social networking sites, businesses really do need to understand the social aspects of how users use these sites in order to adapt and be successful in business. With that as the background, I offer some simple advice in today’s post revolving around understanding the five basic “S” concepts of social media marketing: Share, Support, Social, Strategy, and Sales.
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In my one of my first blog posts, I wrote about what a LinkedIn IDK is and why you should know. You have the ability to block people on Twitter and Facebook, and LinkedIn gives you a similar ability to block someone by disconnecting with someone, although in the case of LinkedIn you have to connect with them before you can block them (yes, I know, it sounds strange). But the policy on penalizing someone without either the sender or recipient knowing it, which is the case of replying to a LinkedIn Invitation with an “I Don’t Know” or IDK, …
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(This is the second in a two-part blog post on how to utilize LinkedIn for Executive Job Search. This first part looked at using LinkedIn in the “traditional” manner of utilizing Jobs Boards and searching out Hiring Managers. This second part will take a Windmill Networking approach to utilizing LinkedIn for Executive Job Search through a deeper understanding of social networking.) LinkedIn itself advertises that “Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.” But it is not enough to just sign up for the service and wait for things to happen. LinkedIn is, at its heart, a social networking …
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(This is the first in a two-part blog post on how to utilize LinkedIn for Executive Job Search. This first part will look at using LinkedIn in the “traditional” manner of utilizing Jobs Boards and searching out Hiring Managers, while the second part will take a Windmill Networking approach to utilizing LinkedIn for Executive Job Search through a deeper understanding of social networking and personal branding.) As a sales and business development executive who has personally experienced being in transition during this recession, I can relate to other executives and their current job search in this dismal economy. Not only …
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