Today’s blog post is from someone I met Windmill Networking on Twitter, Aaron Lee. Aaron represents how truly global Twitter (and social media) have become, as I have been able to build up a virtual relationship with him being in Malaysia through someone else I met on Twitter that was in Hong Kong! Aaron is very social on Twitter, so if you haven’t been following him, you’re missing out on great tweets and getting to know a great person. When he commented on my previous blog post as to where to find great content to tweet, I thought that we …
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Twitter is both a tool for communicating with your network as it is about sharing information that interests you. While you may only connect with those in your professional network on LinkedIn and friends & family on Facebook, we are also following those that we share a similar interest with on Twitter that is helping to expand our networks. If you are active on Twitter, then, you are probably already sharing information that your target audience, whether personally or professionally, might be interested in. Sure, there’s never a lack of personal information that you can share about yourself, but …
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I find that Twitter is slowly becoming a “last resort” for consumers who are having issues with businesses and cannot get them resolved through the normal means of phoning or emailing customer support. We’ve seen it time and time again, made famous by @Dooce and the Maytag washing machine incident, but repeated by many others, including myself which I documented in my how to deal with angry customers on Twitter post, that a tweet is the most direct and quickest way of getting out your message to the world in realtime when all else fails. As Twitter membership grew by …
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Let’s face it: Since email as we know it today started developing from the 1960s, a lot has changed. The way we use email, the way that businesses try to get our email addresses to opt-us-in to their newsletters, and the fact that we tend to use email less and less as we send more and more messages through social media websites means that it may be time to start looking for more convenient forms of representing our virtual mailboxes beyond email that might exist. In fact, a recent report by Hubspot mentioned that Facebook is now our most popular …
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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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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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Image via Wikipedia 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 …
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Image by jyoseph via Flickr 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?
read more![What are Your Favorite Twitter Pet Peeves? Here are My Top 10. [VIDEO]](http://windmillnetworking.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Yellow_stop_sign-134x150.jpg)
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 …
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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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