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 my business as well as my career.  What is there not to like about that?

I wanted to share with you all what I learned or confirmed on this trip for your future reference.  It is just one example of what is possible if, when you go on a business trip, you schedule your own tweetup or meetup and go out there and Windmill Network!  All this happened primarily over a 2-hour tweetup, so if you have never gone to a tweetup before, this is a preview of the types of people you could be meeting and conversations you could be having!

1) Partner Up for Successful Windmill Networking

Earlier this year I hosted good Windmill Networking events on business trips to Jacksonville, New York City, and Portland.  But each time I was a lone soldier, doing almost all of the inviting and legwork in finding a venue by myself.  This time I had the help of a local in Toronto, Judy Gombita, someone I had never met before but gotten to know through Twitter.  Judy took on the event as if it were her own, spreading the word through her network and Twitter and helping me secure a venue for the event.  In fact, it was someone who listened in to our Twitter conversation, Candice Best, who ended up partnering with the two of us and executing on the final venue selection and logistics.  From Judy’s and Candice’s efforts we were able to get 40+ people to attend a tweetup at a coffee bar on a Thursday night.  By far my most successful Windmill Networking event…thanks to the help of my partners Judy and Candice!

Advice: When going to another city and trying to organize a networking event, try to find at least one local contact in your network who can help you on the venue selection as well as spreading the word.  Your networking event will be the more successful for it!

2) Twitter Relationships are REAL

As the above illustrates, these two people who partnered with me I met through Twitter.  I had never met them before in real life, and yet they treated me like family going out of there way to make sure that I had a pleasant stay in the “T-dot.”  And it wasn’t just them.  There was @Animal, the famous recruiter who has a raucous, entertaining yet educational Recruiting Animal Internet radio show about recruiters and jobseekers, who I had a chance to meet in real life and get to know over coffee at Tim Horton’s.  There were people seeing my tweets from the Virgin flight who lived in Toronto and came out to meet me the next night.  There were countless other tweeps that I met that were drawn into conversations from Judy on Twitter.  In fact, most of the people that I met in Toronto I had met, not through the 300+ LinkedIn connections I had living in Toronto, but in one way or another through Twitter.  Twitter has helped enrich my life in countless ways, and I realize this even more as I write my 2nd book, which will be on Twitter of course!  Some people give Twitter a bad rap, talking about the automated bots that exist and the Direct Message spam.  If you can look beyond that there is a golden group of real people out there to meet and develop relationships with.

Advice: Part of the problem of starting out on Twitter is not finding relevant people to follow.  Do yourself a favor: go to the Twitter Yellow Pages Twellow as well as the Twitter List Directory Site Listorious, enter some keywords of things you have an interest in or the name of your local city, and look for people that might be interesting to follow.  You’re bound to find someone…and then take it from there!

3) Social Media Events are Not Just about Freebies

Through Candice’s help, we were able to secure not only free coffee tastings from our sponsor Crafted, but also some free beer (Mill Street Brewery), pizza (Pizzeria Libretto), and chocolate (Nestle…in the picture).  But we weren’t able to advertise these things until the last minute.  It had no affect on the turnout.  Those coming to a networking event were coming for the networking and meeting people, not the freebies.  Sure, it was nice to know that local businesses were supporting the event and, don’t get me wrong, the food and drink was awesome and greatly appreciated!  But if you think freebies are enough to draw a large crowd for networking, think again: it’s all about the networking!

Advice: Businesses often think they need to give something away to provide “value” to their social media audience.  While providing free products does get your product talked about in social media and are appreciated by attendees, try going beyond that by thinking outside of the box in terms of other ways of providing value and becoming participants in social media events, which could draw more potential future customers to the event!

4) Businesses are Starting to Realize the Value of Content Curation

Whenever I speak with clients about social media strategy, the subject of content curation always comes up.  Still understood by relatively few, the art of sharing content about your line of business, if done right over time and combined with your own compelling content, can help elevate you to a subject matter expert or even a thought leader status.  Imagine how surprised I was when members of a start-up company from Toronto, ConnectedN, were excitedly talking about their software platform which helps businesses automatically curate and publish content.  Here’s a video of an interview I had at my #VXToronto tweetup with the co-founder, Brad Milne:

Advice: If you want to know how content curation can be utilized as part of a comprehensive social media strategy for your business, please contact me.  If you’re ready to invest in a platform to help automate the content curation process, contact ConnectedN!

5) Think Social Media?  Think Canada!

Whenever I think of areas of the world that foster the growth of social media companies, I always think of the Bay Area.  Think about it: Within a small area of California one can visit the headquarters of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn!  The existence of these companies in close proximity has spurred countless social media startups in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and surrounding areas.  But this trip made me realize how many of the leading social media companies are located in Canada, not the Bay Area:

The leading social media monitoring software company?  Many would say Radian6, and they are located in the beautiful Canadian province of New Brunswick, northeast of Maine.

Up-and-coming social media monitoring software company?  We were blessed by the presence of Sheldon Levine, the community manager for Toronto-based Sysomos, who are apparently working with a lot of big brands and are gaining major traction in the market.

The leading integrated social media client platform?  Look no further than HootSuite, hailing from Vancouver.

Although there are many excellent social media agencies that exist worldwide, one that has gotten recognition as one of the top 15 social media agencies worldwide and is also famous for its relationship with Ford, is the Social Media Group which hails from Toronto.

Advice: Be on the lookout for exciting social media startups to spring up in Canada in the next 6 to 12 months.

6) The Zen of SlideShare

I’ve been talking a lot about SlideShare recently, primarily from a B2B social media marketing perspective.  But there’s another side of SlideShare, something concerning the “Sharing” of content through social media and developing your personal brand.  I always talk about blogging being a great way to share your expertise with the world.  Why not take it one step further and repurpose your content into a Powerpoint presentation and upload it to SlideShare?  If you’ve ever spoken on a subject, why not upload your presentation to SlideShare to share with those that might not have had a chance to hear you speak?  A presentation is a powerful way to package and share something in a format that is easy-to-read and professional looking.  Furthermore the demographic that is active on SlideShare is overwhelmingly professional.

It was a conversation with Sacha Chua, an Enterprise 2.0 consultant working for IBM, tech evangelist, and Toronto rockstar that helped me see the light.  She has uploaded 25+ presentations to her SlideShare account, and she has shared information on topics ranging from “The Shy Connector” to “A Teacher’s Guide to Web 2.0 at School.”  In fact, her most popular presentation, “The Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0 @Work,” has more than 50,000 views!  That is more views than a lot of blogs get in one year!

Here is one of Sacha’s presentation where she has off-the-cuff calculations of the ROI of sharing your content throughout social media:

Pretty powerful, huh?

Advice: Knowledge is not power.  Knowledge is there for you to share with the world, and in doing so display your expertise.  Get on the bandwagon…share…and you shall reap the benefits!

7) Social Networking: No Person Left Behind

My concept about social networking vis a vis hosting events was that the event had to be larger than I was.  In other words, even if I didn’t get a chance to speak to everyone who came, if the people I didn’t speak to were able to meet others and had a good time, I would consider it a successful networking event.  I learned of a totally different perspective on social networking from the Networking Queen of Toronto, Dennie Theodore.  Dennie runs a popular networking group in Toronto called Similar Circles that periodically meets and often has a waiting list in order to attend one of their popular events.  The secret of her networking success?  She personally makes sure that every person that comes to a networking event is meeting new people.  Instead of herself networking at her event, she is looking for people that are not networking or speaking with others.  If she finds them, she will make sure they are not “left behind” and get them socializing with others.  Isn’t that a great idea and refreshing approach, that someone is providing a personal touch in leading the event and ensuring that no person gets left behind?

Advice: If you host networking events and are looking for ways to get people to talk to each other, here’s some advice that Dennie gave me.  Go to a 99 cent store and buy small ornamental objects that you can give out for free at your next event.  When you meet someone, you exchange your unique objects.  In such a way, your “object” should be traveling the room as you and others meet new people.  The catch?  You can’t leave home until you get your “object” back by meeting other people!

Is 6 Degrees of Separation Still Valid?

As we network and meet more people, the world around us becomes smaller.  Sometimes really small.  After chatting with Judy, I don’t remember where, but the fact that I had a Jewish and a Japanese connection came up and Judy had asked me if I had heard of a book called Hana’s Suitcase, which is actually the true story of one Japanese woman’s search for details on the whereabouts of a girl (Hana) who owned a suitcase that was installed at a Holocaust Museum in Tokyo.  Thanks to the efforts of this woman from Japan, the story of Hana, another innocent victim who was all-but-forgotten, was brought to life and now helps children around the world learn about that dark period of history.  Judy had mentioned that the book was written by a Canadian, but both Judy and I were surprised that @40deuce, the Community Manager over at the previously mentioned social media monitoring company Sysomos, was the book author’s 1st cousin!  Coincidence?  Maybe.  But the more I network around the world, both offline and virtually, I am realizing that we are all a lot closer than we think…

Advice: I learned of this magical story just from having a conversation with someone I met on Twitter.  Social media is full of real people that can enrich your life.  They are waiting to engage with you.  It’s not about the tools: it’s about the engagement.  Go for it, and see for yourself how our world is becoming smaller…and how meeting new people can truly enrich your life.

Today’s blog post was contributed by my guest, Ann Smarty, who I have gotten to know through her managing the LinkedIn Subgroup “The Guest Blogger.”   Her post is about my preferred Twitter tool which I am also passionate about and use in my own social media consulting and implementation, Hootsuite, which just today released new Social CRM features allowing you to filter tweets by Klout score or keyword.  Ann is also currently Director of Media for BlueGlass.

Business power Tweeters can rejoice – the tool you need is finally here. Any business who has a social media policy and uses Twitter or Facebook extensively to reach out to customers now can fully manage their social activities through this site.

Hootsuite is an evolution of Twitter management that started out as “Brightkit” in 2008. While Brightkit began with potential, the creators found that the name was not in line with their services.  Subsequently, the company updated their service features, changed the name to Hootsuite, and developed a winning product that is more than suitable for business and personal social media activities.

Hootsuite offers numerous features that result in maximum benefits to business mini-bloggers. Here is a look at a few of the best ones:

Manage Multiple Social Networks

Hootsuite allows a user to integrate multiple social networking sites into one manageable location. The first and main network is Twitter, giving you the ability to manage multiple Twitter accounts. And alongside Twitter, Hootsuite helps you manage accounts with Facebook, LinkedIn, and the ability to update a host of other social networks through Ping.fm.

Create and Manage Team Workflow

Hootsuite allows accounts to add as many users as they want. New users can be added from around the country and be given editorial permissions to update certain feeds and share tweeting responsibilities.

Create Twitter Lists

If you follow any number of Twitter accounts, managing and reading all the feeds can be nearly impossible. Hootsuite allows you to create lists of Twitter followers so you can more easily read their updates.

Customize URLs and Upload Files

Your tweets or other updates with links or files are a breeze with Hootsuite tools. It uses its own URL shortening function that allows you to customize URL parameters. If you want to share a file with your tweets or other updates like a photo, Hootsuite instantly converts the file into a shortened ow.ly link embedded into your update.

Schedule Tweets

Scheduling tweets is a feature that many businesses have demanded, but few have provided. Hootsuite allows a business to pre-write a number of tweet updates and schedule them for later posting onto Twitter. This allows you to provide new and fresh Twitter content any time of day.

New iPhone and Droid App

Hootsuite works with the iPhone and Droid mobile devices. Now your Hootsuite team can perform their social media duties anywhere.

Tracking Statistics

Hootsuite tracking provides you with comprehensive data about how many clicks your tweets are getting, where they are located geographically,

So what does all this mean for your business? The Hootsuite social management tool gives you many benefits:

·       Manage your brand – Through Hootsuite, you can find out what people are saying about your company. Track backlinks and retweets, and follow how your tweets are circulating.

·       Increased Productivity – Hootsuite gives your business added productivity with easy team workflow, tweet scheduling, stat tracking, all in one place.

·       Better Social Policy Communication – Your business can more easily manage how it executes its social media policy through unified interaction with all social media team members.

Indeed, HootSuite makes tweeting for businesses more productive, intuitive, and effective.

As I consult with companies on their social media strategies, which often means discussing options when considering social media campaigns, I was ecstatic that I was recently chosen for a free flight on Virgin America’s Twitter campaign to help spread the word about their new Los Angeles and San Francisco to Toronto non-stop flights (click here for full disclosure).  I am obviously excited to be able to participate in a social media campaign as a participant so that I can utilize this experience to better advise my clients in the future.  Another plus for me is that it will make me physically inaccessible for awhile while I am in the air, which may help me get caught up on my book writing (yes, I am working on my 2nd book…and don’t even think about Skyping me while I’m flying while utilizing Virgin America’s free WiFi service!).  Plus I get to create a LinkedIn event and network in a new city, physically meeting some great tweeps and LinkedIn connections that I have had various conversations with through social media.

A social media campaign, while seemingly looking like a smart move for any company, can come back to haunt you if your infrastructure is not prepared.  Any campaign advertised through social media will suffer the fate of having its good and potentially not-so-good qualities broadcasted through the same social media channels by the same “Infleuncers.”  Before you embark on that social media campaign, please look your company in the mirror and ask yourself: is your customer service ready for social media?  And do you have a capable social media community manager in place to handle any potential negative issues?

Note:  The purpose of this blog post is by no means to neither advertise nor criticize Virgin America.  The objective is to share my experiences as a social media campaign participant to help educate businesses on the potential risks associated with using social media marketing as well as the importance of having a capable social media community manager in place to help navigate any potential negative issues that arise.

So here’s my story: Virgin America decided to micro-target a select number of people to receive these free tickets in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Toronto.  Rather than open up the campaign to all, they utilized a 3rd party service, Klout, to invite only those people that Virgin America and Klout felt were “Influencers.”  To be honest with you, there was a lot of public outcry on Twitter as to why certain people were picked and others weren’t, an obvious negative side-effect of any such campaign.  But by utilizing a 3rd party service (Klout), Virgin America could shield itself from any potential public outcry, and Klout themselves wrote a blog post clearly explaining the methodology of how Klout picked “Influencers” for the Virgin America campaign to show that they had a logical and impartial system for this.  Case closed, and although there still are some disgruntled tweeps, all in all it was an interesting concept that certainly got the Twitter communities of Toronto, San Francisco and Los Angeles tweeting and blogging about Virgin America!  At this point I give thumbs up to the campaign, as I think using a respected and impartial 3rd party like Klout was a clever idea.  I can see more companies utilizing Klout similarly in the future.

The problem, however, is regarding the logistics of how the campaign works.  Everyone who received the email from Klout congratulating them had to select a link to go to a site where their “campaign code” was revealed.  This promotional code was to be entered on the Virgin America website and tickets bought directly from there online.  Fine.  Since the email said that tickets were available on a first-come first-serve basis, I decided to quickly pick a date in July or August where there was a social media-related event going on in Toronto that I could both learn from and network at.  My favorite source of social media events information at the moment is Mashable’s 25+ Upcoming Social Media & Tech Events, and voila!  There I found the only social media-related event in Toronto in this time period: Cross Media TO.  I decided to pick optimum flights that would allow me to attend this event as well as spend a day Windmill Networking in Toronto.  But although the correct prices displayed on the flights I wanted to choose, I couldn’t choose them.  Strange, I thought.  Better call up Virgin to see what the scoop is.  And this is where the saga begins…  Note, if I was able to successfully book my tickets online at that point in time, my blog post would have ended here…

So I called Virgin America.  Everyone I will be referring to after this I label “customer service representatives,” although internally they may be considered reservations desk employees.  Just like consumers in social media don’t care what internal department a Facebook Page is representing, if a company only has one toll-free number on their corporate website it will be assumed that that is their customer service number.

Just like most American corporate customer service toll-free numbers, it was not easy to get a live person on the phone.  I wanted to buy tickets but I wanted help with my reservation, which I didn’t have yet, so which department should I speak with?  Could an automated system handle my question?  Probably not.  I just kept pressing zero until I found the magical pipe music and then I was in line waiting for the next operator.  Unfortunately, the customer service representative that I spoke with couldn’t help me.  In fact, he thought it was an issue with my browser, as I was using Safari (side note: why are Mac users always picked on…Safari works on 100% of the sites I use!).  So I boot up Firefox and again, I couldn’t choose the specific flights that I wanted.  Strange the operator thought.  He asked me to give him the promotional code, and after he tried it on the Virgin America computers he realized it didn’t work either!  So it wasn’t a browser issue after all.  But because “Headquarters” was closed they would look into the issue and get back to me in the next 24 hours.  He did reserve the seats for me, but here’s the Catch 22:

• Virgin America only allows you to book tickets with a promotional code directly by the consumer entering it online. Customer service representatives could not book these tickets on my behalf.
• The Virgin America website, on the other hand, would not allow me to book the flight that I wanted.

In other words, my promised ticket was out there in no man’s land…

It took a few more phone calls, but finally the situation was rectified.  An interesting side-note is that no customer service representative that I spoke to was familiar with the Twitter campaign to begin with.  This made it more difficult to explain to each person I spoke to why I got this special promotional campaign and why I claimed that the price should be next to free.  After all, how many customer service professionals are on Twitter?

There is no need to go into the details here as to how the situation was rectified, as this could have happened to any company.  But this story took an interesting turn after I dropped a hint to one of my Toronto tweeps on Twitter about the frustration that I was having.  Guess what?  The Virgin America Twitter Account quickly sent me a Direct Message and asked for any feedback that I have.  As I wrote in how to deal with an angry customer on Twitter, just knowing that they were listening and wanted to hear my feedback was sufficient to appease me.

Virgin America was listening, and in fact, it help transformed this blog post into a positive feeling towards Virgin America because of it.  Here’s what happened:

• The Virgin America Twitter account contacted me asking for my feedback in a very humble way.
• They then asked me to give them detailed feedback by providing me the Twitter manager’s email address.  This actually was a very personable approach which made me feel like I was talking to a person, not a company.
• The Twitter representative then became the interface between me and Virgin America.  She took the responsibility to contact individuals spread out across a few departments and get back to me with exactly what happened.  There was ownership and responsibility, and because of the professional communication and excellent response that happened all because of Twitter, I ended up completely revising this post and deleting out the gory details of what happened with customer service.  It just didn’t feel right to do anymore.

In fact, Virgin America told me that it was people like myself who tweeted about our frustration that actually helped them gain visibility into the situation and help resolve this issue quickly.  A great example of how social media can help customer service.

As Americans get more active on social media and both positive and negative customer experiences become more public, companies will realize that any social media marketing activities need to be counter-balanced with fixing the way that they deal with these issues and, at the end of the day, treat their customers.  Any consumer can become an “Influencer” by having a bad experience and having their tweet go viral, so companies need to be prepared for the “social media effect” on the front-end with the organization that deals with customer complaints: Customer Service.  It also helps to have social media community managers who understand their business operations and have access to key management throughout their company to help quickly resolve these issues where the conversations start: in social media.  In fact, in this case study, the positive actions of that social media community manager who managed the Twitter account more than compensated for the negative customer service issues that I faced.

I will continue to blog about the hopefully good as well as the potentially not-so-good regarding this social media campaign so as to make the experience as educational as possible for all, but now that my tickets have been reserved and positive communication has been achieved, I am confident that there won’t be any other surprises going forward.

Have you had similar experiences in social media campaigns or situations where companies tried to engage in social media but their customer service truly wasn’t prepared for whatever reason?  What about experiences where the social media community manager took control and helped you out like I was helped? Please share your experiences, both good and bad, with us!

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• Measure your social networking Klout (money.cnn.com)

There are many reasons why people use hashtags (#) on Twitter: categorizing a tweet, joining a trending topic conversation, or tweeting about a live event while virtually networking with attendees.  Without your knowing it, some of those using hashtags may even be engaging in Twitter Chats: You can safely assume that anyone using a hashtag that ends in “chat” is doing so.  Last week I announced that Perri Gorman and myself would be starting a new #JobChat every Tuesday from 5 to 6 PST, so for those of you who are still new to the concept, I have created a video to show you how you can easily join and engage in this new type of real-time group conversation.

But before I even show you the video, what exactly is a Twitter Chat?

Twitter has been compared to many things, but I always refer to it as a huge global and open chat room.  Remember the old AOL chat rooms?  [Oops...did I just give away my age?]  Sort of like that, but there are no categories, just people with usernames.  What happens if a number of people want to have a conversation on Twitter and use it just like one of the old chat rooms?  They merely use the same hashtag, which allows them to both easily follow each other as well as allow others to easily join in the conversation.  This is, in essence, what a Twitter Chat is.

Why join a Twitter Chat?  There are many reasons to join one that could help you in meeting your social media objectives, including:

• To learn something new
• To share something you know
• To make new friends
• To be found by others
• To establish your personal branding
• To display your subject matter expertise

Now that you know what a Twitter Chat is and what the advantages are of participating, how do you exactly join one?

The software client that I personally use is TweetGrid, which anyone can use just as I will show you in the video below.  It should be noted that you can join a Twitter Chat from the comfort of your own client, such as HootSuite or TweetDeck, just by adding a new Search column using “#JobChat” or whatever “#chat” you might be joining.  Even though I personally use HootSuite, I still enjoy using TweetGrid because the updates are in real-time and it allows me to concentrate on the chat.  So without further adieu here’s the how-to video!

By the way, if you are interested in learning about what other scheduled conversations are out there to join, please take a look at this excellent list of Twitter Chats.

What is #JobChat?  JobChat was created by Perri Gorman (@BeTheButterfly) and Neal Schaffer (@NealSchaffer) to serve the need of professionals and job seekers looking for advice on professional networking as well as how professionals can better utilize social media as part of their career management, personal branding and job search. Perri and Neal bring a unique combination of contrasting yet similar skills to the table to host the live chat sessions on Twitter: Perri is a former financial services recruiter and Neal a former technology sales and business development executive who also played the role of a hiring manager. Both are currently social media consultants helping both professionals and businesses on their strategies and implementation of marketing activities through social media channels. Perri is organizer of the Hong Kong Twestival and is known in Hong Kong for her Twitter workshops. Neal is the author of the award-winning and best-selling book on LinkedIn, “Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn.” The two bring a wealth of diverse and rich experiences to the table to help facilitate real-time conversations through Twitter to help answer questions and generate discussions between professionals, including job seeker participants and thought leaders in the world of recruitment, personal branding, job seeking, and social media.

Part of what I preach about Windmill Networking is Paying It Forward to others in the belief that something, some piece of very trivial information or experience to you could be a godsend to others.  It is also about connecting with others and helping them because you never know when you may be able to help each other out in the future.  Even though my business takes me down the road of working more with businesses and helping them utilize social media, I always try to find time to help others in transition through blogging and speaking to local churches, groups and associations.  How can I help more people in transition that want to use social media as part of their job search strategy?

Meet Perri Gorman, also known as Be The Butterfly on Twitter.  I met her over Twitter, the way I have met many incredible people that have enriched my life, and although she was living in Hong Kong at the time we had a chance to meet recently in Orange County, California.  We realized that we both had similar views on the importance of social media in our lives and set out to collaborate to do something that would provide value to people on a global basis.  Our answer: #JobChat!

Perri is not only extremely active on the social media scene on Twitter and blogging, she is also the organizer of the Hong Kong Twestival as well as the creator of many Twitter workshops for professionals.  She is also a former recruiter, so she can see things from the recruiting side.  I bring a lot of experience of using sites like LinkedIn and blogging and speaking about social media as a strategic tool for your job search.  Why don’t we come together and offer a weekly chat on Twitter to help as many people as we can with their job search?  And so #JobChat was born!

If you are unfamiliar with Twitter and #s (called “hashtags”), by placing “#JobChat” somewhere in a tweet, it will be trackable by those searching for #JobChat.  So long as we are all on Twitter at the same time and include “#JobChat” in all of our tweets, an open and global chat room has been formed!  If you haven’t started using Twitter, please read my post on getting started on Twitter.  If you’re already on Twitter and have never joined a #Chat, do not fear!  It is really easy to do, and I plan to create a video to show you soon.  In the meantime, check out TweetGrid, a service that allows you to create a grid of tweets to follow and also provides a way for you to tweet directly from the site.  If you create a 1×2 grid, placing “@yourname” as a search term on one column and “#JobChat” as the search term on the second column, you will be able to keep track of all public and private conversations.  It’s that simple!

JobChat, hosted by Perri Gorman and Neal Schaffer, will be held every Tuesday from 5 to 6 P.M. PST or 8 to 9 P.M. EST.  The first JobChat will be held on Tuesday, June 22 in coordination with the Gravity Summit Social Media for Executives summit at UCLA.  If you’d like to be a special guest on a future #JobChat, please contact Neal or Perri on Twitter.  If you have any questions that you’d like us to cover on future #JobChats, please list them in the comments below!  If you are a career expert, recruiter, or have other advice for job seekers, I hope that you will also join us and help in the conversation.  We want to make JobChat as inclusive as possible for everyone to share their expertise and help as many as possible!

Looking forward to seeing you on #JobChat!

In January of 2008 Twitter announced that the Japanese company Digital Garage had invested in them and would create an official Twitter Japan presence.  In October of 2009 Twitter announced the new release of a localized application for the Japanese cell phone market.  From January to June of 2009 it was reported that the number of users in Japan grew from about 200,000 to almost 800,000.  In March, 2010 that number jumped up to 7.52 million users and it was reported that 14% of global tweets are now originating from Japan.  But it’s more than just that: The Japanese are revolutionizing the way they use the platform by beginning to truly integrating it with their society, and in doing so starting to take a global lead on its usage.  Don’t believe me?  Here are 6 proof points that show that Japan is already leading the US:

Politics

Back in late 2009, one of the two leading Japanese political parties, the LDP, announced that all of their elected officials should have Twitter accounts.  This is equivalent to Michael Steele of the Republican Party telling all elected Republican officials that they need to have active Twitter accounts!  In reality, not every LDP official has signed on, but reading the tweets of active government officials is one reason (another one being the growth of celebrities) that explains the growth of Twitter.  It also shows how more ubiquitous the use of Twitter in Japan has become.

Television

What would you think if I told you that a major TV broadcaster liked Fox created a weekly drama based solely around a group of young people who met and created relationships from Twitter.  You’d say I was crazy?  Well, that show already exists in Japan: “Sunao ni Naranakute,” has been broadcasting on one of the major networks in Japan since April.

Telecommunications

Do you think Twitter is an application that should be pre-installed on every cell phone from your major carrier similar to applications like an email client or web browser?  Masayoshi Son recently said “If it doesn’t come with Twitter, it’s not a cellphone.”  Think he’s some crazy early adopter techie?  Nope.  He’s the CEO of Softbank, one of Japan’s largest cell phone carriers and exclusive distributor for the iPhone in Japan.  Chairman Son recently announced that a Twitter client would be available on all new cell phones distributed by Softbank, not just the iPhone.  AT&T and Verizon, are you listening?

Advertising

In the United States a lot of print ads are appearing with the Facebook or Twitter logos on them asking fans to “follow them.”  A few months ago Coca-Cola Japan took this one step further.  Traditionally Japanese TV commercials have ended with a “search for us on the Internet” text overlay in lieu of a long URL to promote campaigns or to engage with their viewers on their websites.  Coca-Cola Japan replaced the “search for us on the Internet” with “search for us on Twitter” with a keyword to lead its users to a landing page link for its campaign.  Sure, there have been targeted Twitter campaigns in the US before, but as part of a TV commercial from a Fortune 500 brand? [It's actually a funny TV Commercial so watch below if you are interested!]

Services

When a communication platform like Twitter becomes ubiquitous, new services that didn’t exist before arise to the challenge by integrating tweets into their standard service infrastructure.  This week the Japan Weather Association (JWA), the public foundation that provides weather-reporting services in Japan, announced that they would integrate tweets with their weather maps.  Because of the location-based option of tweeting, the JWA is linking tweets concerning the weather and compiling them for each region where they show the temperature.  This gives someone a unique, real-time report on the actual weather conditions in a given city without being there.  Clever idea.  Unfortunately the tweets are in Japanese, but click here to see the “Everyone’s Feelings Weather Map.”

Popular Culture

When Disney announces a Mickey Mouse application for Twitter I’ll be amazed.  But until that happens, all of the cutesy people will have to buy the Twitter application branded by that popular icon of Japanese culture, Hello Kitty.  Hello Kitty on Tappit was recently released to meet the increased demand from Japan.  FYI, yes, an English version is available from iTunes as well!

As a social media consultant who also lived in Japan for 15 years and still speaks Japanese fluently, I am personally and professionally excited about how quickly and revolutionary the trends continue to be for Twitter and Japan.  I look forward to reporting back to you periodically on the latest developments from Japan and what both businesses and professional can learn from the Japanese.

Anything here surprise you?  Learn something new?  Any other country that you know that is a global leader in using Twitter in a unique way?  Please share!

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I often get asked about whether it makes sense to completely integrate Twitter Tweets with your LinkedIn Status Update, so that every tweet shows up on LinkedIn.  Obviously there is no one correct answer for this as it depends on your objective and LinkedIn Brand.  However, the question brings to mind a greater issue:

How often should you update your social media status on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Your Blog?

Each social media site has its own functionality, demographics, history, and culture.  And you may have one or multiple objectives for using these sites.  I won’t go into detail on how varying objectives may warrant different frequencies in which you update your status on each of the social media channels, but on average I would make the following recommendations:

Twitter

Because there are so many tweets out there (there are more tweets than people now!) and the culture is one that accepts people who tweet a lot (this is explained by the fact that you could tweet a lot and go unnoticed), it is accepted to tweet several times a day.  I tell people, when they start out, to aim for 4 to 5 tweets a day.  I personally aim for 8 to 10, although I rarely achieve this goal.  When I say tweets, I’m talking about sharing some type of relevant and valuable information, not just chit-chat.  I do not preach automating in social media, but if there were one automation tip I recommend, it would be to schedule your tweets in advance with a tool like HootSuite so that they appear spread out throughout the day.

LinkedIn

Before Twitter became as mainstream as it is today, LinkedIn had its own replication of the tweet with its “Status Update.”  A lot of people used to wonder what to use their LinkedIn Status Update for.  Now that LinkedIn is integrated with Twitter, and more LinkedIn members are on Facebook, people get the idea of what they could put on their Linkedin Status Update.  That being said, because LinkedIn doesn’t have the same “Timeline of Tweets” like Twitter or “News Feed” like Facebook, it doesn’t make sense to post more than once a day on LinkedIn.  I personally wouldn’t post anything if I didn’t have anything of value to say that wasn’t aligned with my objective.  Furthermore, if you repeatedly show up multiple times in Network Updates on someone’s Home Page in the same day, it begins to look spammy, that you are trying too hard to “gain mindshare.”  There are other and better ways of doing that on LinkedIn.  And do remember that LinkedIn is also a Professional environment, so some personal tweets and Facebook posting content might not be appropriate here…

Facebook

Facebook is a tough one.  Similar to Twitter, there are so many people on Facebook competing for space on your News Feed that if you don’t post a lot you may not get noticed.  However, I do see a lot of people who only post once a day, and when I have gone over that in the past, I have received word from Facebook friends that I posted too much!  People definitely get most personal on Facebook.  Certainly Twitter is not Facebook, so I personally don’t think that you should be posting every tweet here.  On the other hand, if you have a lot going on, it may make sense to post multiple times in a single day.  If I could compare the frequency of updating your status on Facebook compared with LinkedIn and Twitter, it would look something like this:

LinkedIn Status Updates < Facebook Posts < Twitter Tweets

Blogging

You really need someone to tell you how often to update your blog?  As often as you can, of course!  Seriously speaking, if you are going to blog, I do recommend that you do your best to blog at least one a week.  Consistency is also important, but even if you are not consistent on the days of the week or how many times you post each week, I think you should try to publish one blog post on a weekly basis.  Want to blog more?  You can never blog too often. I dream of having the time to blog on a daily basis…and envy those who do!

On a final note, it is impossible to do all of the above using a tool like Ping.fm or even a client like HootSuite (although they are fantastic products) unless you are really disciplined.  Just as it does not make sense to integrate all of your tweets into your LinkedIn profile, it also doesn’t make sense to overly automate your engagement with others by blasting the same message to all of the various social media platforms simultaneously.  Yes, there may be an occasional post, like a new blog article that you wrote, that it may make sense to post on all platforms at once.  That should be the exception, however, and not the rule.

What do you think?  What are the social media status updates frequency guidelines that you use?  Please comment and share your experiences with us!

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Almost a year ago I wrote about my favorite LinkedIn pet peeves, which spurned a great list of 25 LinkedIn etiquette tips that arose from a discussion on the LinkedIn Executive Suite Group.  As I tend to spend more time on Twitter than LinkedIn these days, I think it’s time to focus on that social networking platform and talk about what drives me, and others, crazy about what users are doing on it.

Just as with LinkedIn, Twitter has its own unique sets of functionalities which creates the potential for different types of behavior.  With Twitter, the root of most of my pet peeves stems from the fact that there is a lot that you can automate on the platform.  Want to auto-followback those who follow you?  There’s an application for that.  Automatically send a Direct Message to your new Followers?  No problem!  Want to schedule the same tweet to repeat itself every 24 hours?  Can do!  I am all for automation if it allows me to spend more time on creating content and interacting with others.  But on the flip side, social interaction cannot be automated!

To create this post, I actually shot a video of a regular meeting that I have with two other social media bloggers here in Orange County, California discussing this topic.  These two gentlemen are on my blogroll, but you should also be checking out their blogs as they come both highly recommended: Tim Tyrell-Smith and his Tim’s Strategy blog on Career Management and Kevin Liebl‘s blog on Leadership.  I hope to post future videos from our chats, and we are open to chatting about what you want to hear, so please comment as you wish!

As you can see from our conversation, automation seems to be the root of all evil.  If I had to list my 10 favorite Twitter pet peeves, they would be:

1. Only self-promoted tweets…using Twitter as a broadcasting channel.
2. Automated Direct Messages
3. Self-promoting Direct Messages
4. No profile photo…who are you?
5. Putting more than one location in your profile…where are you?
6. Using a brand name for your Twitter handle.  How can you claim to be who you are?
7. Only tweeting automated RSS feeds…using Twitter as a broadcasting channel.
8. @Reply spam…I block these tweeps and report for spam every time.
9. Following way too many people in comparison to the number of followers you have.
10. Too many quotes.  Do that many people really enjoy all of those quotes from famous people?

What are your favorite Twitter pet peeves?

Twitter books line the shelves at the famous Japanese electronics store Yodobashi Camera.

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 be spawned by a wide professional demographic, not just early adopters.  In fact, while I was in Japan, Diamond Magazine, a well-respected business magazine that also represents the Harvard Business Review, did a cover story on Twitter that declared that ２０１０年は「使えない」ではすまされない, which roughly translates to mean that in 2010 you can’t say that you can’t “use” Twitter anymore.

The growth of Twitter in Japan, just like as in the United States, has been explosive.  However, as growth of Twitter in the United States seems to be slowing, it is predicted that Japan users of Twitter will grow from the 5 million users that was announced in February of this year to a goal of 10 million users by the end of the year, according to this article by the Japanese Twitter book author Masato Kogure.  This is an aggressive goal to say the least, but seeing that it is estimated that other foreign social networking sites LinkedIn and Facebook have under 1 million users in Japan, Twitter has broken out of the “foreign” mold and is taking on a distinctly Japanese flavor.  In fact, the Diamond magazine gave details on the popular social networking platform that took up 31 pages of their 150 page magazine, details in itself that would probably make a best-selling book here in the United States.

I look forward to reporting on this distinctly “Japanese” flavor of Twitter and what American businesses and professionals can learn from it into the future.  In the meantime, although the user numbers in Japan are far less than in the United States, one of the leading social media consultants in Japan, Toru Saito, pointed me to an article which showed that Japanese tweets represented 14% of all tweets worldwide.   Since Twitter worldwide users are estimated to be 75 million users, 6.7% of Japanese users creating 14% of all tweets worldwide hints that the Japanese are more active users than their average counterparts.

Moving on to the promised video in the title, I was literally walking around a popular youth culture part of Tokyo called Shibuya late at night and walked right into a symbol of the Twitter Movement in Japan without my knowing it.  First view the video, and then follow the text below it for what I found out about this cafe after I shot the video.

As it turns out, the hashtag #ahiru and the logo represent the term “ahiruguchi,” which literally means duck mouth or duck lips.  It was November 19, 2009 when a famous Japanese blogger named Matsuyou decided to change her profile photo.  The first reply to her was someone who said that they liked the photo but said she had a duck mouth.  This started off a chain reaction of people who said they actually liked the “duck mouth look,” and a new fashion trend was created.  But the story doesn’t end there!

Shortly afterwards Matsuyou (who, by the way, has more than 200,000 followers now) tweeted that she’d love to write a book on this Twitter movement, and three hours later she received an email from a publishing house.  Less than six months later, and Matsuyou’s new book “Everyone Love’s Duck Mouth!” was released.

The duck mouth look and Matsuyou have become such a boom that one of the trendy departments stores in this fashionable part of Tokyo, Parco, decided to open a cafe dedicated to the “I Love Duck Mouth” movement, and that is what you see in the video.  Not only does this cafe offer all the cutesy “Duck Mouth” cakes (like the one pictured here) and other accessories that you would expect from Japan, but if you go to this cafe after 6 P.M. you can get a discount of up to 20% based on the number of Twitter followers that you have!  Have you heard of a restaurant in the U.S. offering the same?

I’m already looking forward to my next trip to Japan and reporting to you all on the developments.  In the meantime, have you experienced Twitter in different countries other than the United States?  Do you find different countries and cultures are absorbing the social networking platform differently?  Would love to get your feedback!  日本語でのコメントもよろしくどうぞ！

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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 that you checked in in real-time and decide whether or not they want to visit you while you are at that location.  Of course, there are other ways of using Foursquare, like telling your friends about the latest and coolest location that you found.  But the idea behind a geo-location service like Foursquare is to find (other people) and be found (by other people) in real-time at an actual physical location.

Foursquare has spread virally since it’s inception because they made it easy for you to 1) login with your Facebook connections and 2) connect your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts to broadcast to the world every time you check in to a new location.  This is the root of the potential problem: do you really want to fill your Tweets and Facebook Wall up with broadcasts of where you’re at all the time?

Twitter has progressed a great deal in the past several months.  If you are on Twitter and have found use for it, you already understand that not everyone on Twitter is talking about what they had for breakfast today.  If you are seriously tweeting and trying to make friendships as well as sharing information, chances are you avoid mentioning tweets that no one is interested in to begin with.  Remember, Twitter is about having meaningful communication and sharing relevant information…unless you are a foodie or really DO want to know what someone had for breakfast, you probably don’t mention these things in your tweets.

If you buy into my argument this far, you can see why I personally don’t enjoy Foursquare tweets.  Think about it: just as nobody cared about what you ate for breakfast, I don’t think that people on Twitter care that you are “checking in” to your local Trader Joe’s.  If I am out and want to find someone to hook up with for a cup of coffee and conversation, I’ll check to see where my friends are at on my iPhone through the dedicated Foursquare application.

I don’t want my tweets flooded with real-time location updates from my Foursquare friends.  And I’m not the only one.  Just doing a Google search for “block foursquare twitter” will yield a lot of results, including this tweet from someone who echoes my sentiments:

The funny thing is I feel like I am in the minority on this one.  One of my good friends who I met on Twitter yet have been unable to physically meet in person, Perri Gorman (also known on Twitter as “@BeTheButterfly“), recently wrote a great blog post on Foursquare.  At the end of the post she asked a few power users, including myself, as to how we felt about these “location tweets.”  Of the seven people who commented, I was the only one who disliked them.  In fact, and you can quote me, I said,

“They should be banned. I promised my Twitter followers I would never tweet a Foursquare location and they should call me on it if I ever do!”

So there you have it.  Now that I’ve completed my rant, what do YOU think about these tweets on Twitter?  For or against?  Am I missing something here?   Please do let me and all of my readers know!

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