We are all acquiring a virtual portfolio of social media websites where we have our profiles displayed and are using for a variety of purposes. While we tend to use LinkedIn for professional networking, most professionals I meet use Facebook in a very private way. In my recent book Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing, I argued that it’s time for us all to create our “Public Persona,” and in doing so we can utilize LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter the exact same. Unfortunately, while Facebook has 900+ million users and would be ideal to use to complement LinkedIn …
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While LinkedIn is at present the most popular social media network for professionals with approximately 135 million users, Facebook’s base of 800 million users seems to offer some potential competition for professional networking. There are already several networking-related applications on Facebook, but none seem to be as powerful as BranchOut for helping you expand your professional network building. I get asked a lot about BranchOut and whether or not it give LinkedIn any serious competition or not, so I thought this was a good time to introduce this to my readers as well as give my opinion for those of you that …
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As we begin to close out this amazing year of growth (ubiquity?) of social media in 2011, it is time to take a look back and try to grasp at the true significance social media plays in our daily lives. Years ago, the masses were silent. As I often present in my speeches, up until just a little more than two decades ago mass communication was one way, and information was only served through television, radio and print. Today, with the vastness of the Internet and the rise of mobile technology, the masses have suddenly found themselves with virtual megaphones …
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This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Waatp.com. All opinions are 100% mine. With so much public information about us out there in social media and on the web, do you ever start to wonder what others can find out about you? On the other hand, if you are doing social recruiting or looking to do business with or even get back in touch with someone, wouldn’t you like to take advantage of the public information that exists out there so that you can do due diligence in a background check or have a higher chance …
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Whenever I speak to a large group or consult with a client on social media, I have a tendency to overwhelm my audience with the so many things that they could be using it for. That leads to a growing fear for those that aren’t active in social media that it will become a total time suck. On the other hand, for those that start to get active and see its professional and personal benefits, they can’t seem to find enough time to cover all of their online bases. Which leads to the question that I am often asked: How …
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Social media and your privacy is an intriguing topic that we should all be concerned about. On the one hand, Pete Cashmore of Mashable has already rightfully declared some time ago that Privacy is Dead. On the other hand, there are those who are actually still afraid to join a social networking site because of privacy concerns. It is these people that I want to address in this blog post. This week I got this question from my reader: I have always used alias names and blind emails everywhere online to protect my personal info from ID Theft. Because I …
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What is a Poken? To be honest, I first encountered Poken on a business trip to Japan in December of 2009 and assumed the technology was Japanese because of its “cute” factor. At first I didn’t really understand exactly what it was until I saw it in action before my own eyes. In essence, similar to the iPhone Bump application, Poken allows you to wirelessly exchange your contact information and social profiles with those that you meet instead of exchanging business cards. Their corporate homepage has an excellent overview of how Poken works. A detailed description of how it works …
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If you’ve been following my blog, you already know that I won a free ticket to fly to Toronto thanks to Virgin America’s #VXToronto Twitter campaign. I’ll write about the “Virgin” experience later. Right now I want to share with you all what I learned on this trip. I’ve had many people ask me, “Was the trip worth it?” My answer, of course, is “Of course!” Because what I was doing in Toronto is what I do in social media everyday: meet new people, have interesting conversations, share information, and learn a lot of new things, things that help advance …
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Image by @Photo . via Flickr If you’ve followed my Windmill Networking blog for awhile or read my LinkedIn book, you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of the LinkedIn Events Application. Seriously. I wrote an April Fools’s post back in 2009 complaining why Events wasn’t considered an application with a blog post rhetorically entitled, “What are LinkedIn Applications?” I was the first one to ask “What Happened to LinkedIn Events?” when they mysteriously disappeared for a day in October of 2009. So you can say that I have a personal relationship with Events, and when all of the “social …
read more![How Many LinkedIn Connections Should You Have? My Advice May Surprise You! [VIDEO]](http://windmillnetworking.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/4016026647_41d738b31b_m.jpg)
Image by annapmagistra via Flickr LinkedIn is a very interesting social networking site. Many users say they only want to connect with people in their closed network, but unless that network is big enough, the benefits of using LinkedIn to find and be found become minimal. On the other hand, I find many users who don’t care about acquiring LinkedIn connections often talk about how many they have as an indication of how active they are on the site. So how many LinkedIn connections should you have? I recently shot a video at a keynote speech on social media in …
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Have you heard of Business Exchange? It is an information-centric social networking site that is run by Bloomberg and sits on the same URL together with Business Week magazine. As you can already guess, it is a site that is extremely focused on business and the news. After reading a great blog post on Business Exchange by Larry Brauner, I have been experimenting with the site seeing how it fits into my daily social media routine. I am now at the point where the value of being on the site has become apparent, and now I want to share the …
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LinkedIn Introductions are an integral part of the social networking platform. After all, LinkedIn has given us the ability to search for someone and see how we are connected to them, and it is with this information that we can request an Introduction from our connection just as we request a referral from a friend in real life. Unfortunately, very few people actually ask for an Introduction on LinkedIn in the same manner that they ask for a introduction in a real-life. And this bothers me. Thus, I blog.
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Everytime someone invites me to connect with them, I always send out a reply thanking them and also asking them to contact me should they ever need any help with LinkedIn. I have had so many people, either directly or indirectly, help me that I thought I should give something back to the community. Well, not everyone asks me a question, but by far the question that I get the most is “How can I grow my network on LinkedIn?” As I have seen my network grow from a few hundred to a few thousand connections over the past several …
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