I just came back from a visit to Japan, where i was impressed with the growth of Twitter in the mainstream of Japanese society. No, not everyone is using the realtime social networking platform, but considering that Japan is a society that both does its social networking primarily on the cellphone and are avid readers of the latest information through the plethora of printed magazine and newspapers that exist, the stage was set for Twitter to be successful in Japan. And the numbers are already showing that the growth is impressive. The interesting aspect is that its growth seems to …
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Are you a Foursquare user yet? If not, you should be. If you believe in the power of Windmill Networking and being able to physically meet contacts in your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter networks, Foursquare helps facilitate this in real-time at a physical location. iPhone, Android and Blackberry users should be especially keen on joining and utilizing the real-time-real-location social networking platform because of the phone applications that exists for these popular smartphone platforms. Foursquare is a simple way to “check in” to a location and to broadcast to the world that you are there. Other users can then see …
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The following is a true story. It was late at night when I arrived at my hotel, a little past midnight. It was a long day and I had a morning meeting with a client scheduled for the next day, so I was looking forward to getting to sleep as soon as I could. Unfortunately, circumstances would not allow me to do so: after asking for my name, the hotel, which is part of an American hotel chain with a very well-respected brand image, told me that they had an overbooked situation and had no room for me. This was …
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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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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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I have given many presentations on social media and your job search. Everybody is finally “getting” LinkedIn, but few are looking at Twitter or even Facebook as platforms which could aid those in transition in their job search. Today I want to talk about one strategy that I discuss on Twitter and your job search, and a story of how one Windmill Networker found success through thinking outside of the box and integrating the people he meets on Twitter with LinkedIn with real-life! Personal branding is important in your job search to help differentiate yourself from all the other job …
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2009 was, without doubt, the year of Twitter. Whether it was the massive hacker attacks that created a massive outage and reminded us of how it has now become an important part of our lives, the interest in both Fortune 500 companies as well as small businesses to utilize it as part of their social media marketing strategy, or the phenomenal growth in membership, tweets are now part of our mainstream culture and are the default real-time search results for the likes of Google, Bing, and Yahoo. I expect Twitter to continue to transform itself into a more useful platform for …
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It is no secret that 2009 saw the dawning of the new era of consumers using social media to find deals and product information. If you didn’t hear, Toys R Us symbolized this new movement by releasing their new catalog on their Facebook Fan Page, and in doing so picked up between 40,000 to 95,000 new fans per day over the week before Thanksgiving. The Toys R Us Facebook Fan Page has now grown to 430,000 members almost overnight as I write this. Wow! But this is not out of the ordinary and only a sign of things to come …
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This is a continuation of my previous post, where I wrote about 7 useful tips for those getting started on Twitter. Assuming that you have just signed up on Twitter and don’t know where to go from here, instead of following everyone from your email address book that is already on Twitter by selecting “Find People” from the top of Twitter, begin your Twitter experience by following Lists before you follow People. The rationale is simple: Twitter gets a bad rap because of the “babble” that a lot of people are said to be tweeting. That is why you should …
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Yesterday I presented on the topic of Social Media and Your Job Search in front of a large group of executives, many of whom were in transition. As with any professional crowd, nearly everyone was already comfortable with LinkedIn, but less than half of the attendees had ventured out onto Twitter yet. I sensed some confusion about Twitter, so today instead of blogging about Twitter and Personal Branding or Twitter and the Job Search, I felt it was time to write a blog post to help hand-hold those that are still confused by Twitter but really want to give it …
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