LinkedIn Signal was released just two months ago as a new way for professionals to consume information. While the new product was only available in beta for some time, my good friend Glen Loock recently mentioned to me that now anyone can access the application through LinkedIn Labs, or better yet, here’s the official link for Signal. I always feel it is best to wait a little time and give new features some historical perspective before reviewing them fully on my blog. This is no different with Signal: While it was announced with some fanfare in late September, the application …
read more
I had a chance this week to speak at an event in front of several different local Orange County nonprofit organizations. While nonprofits are beginning to understand the potential for social media engagement, my sense during the meeting was that efforts seemed to be centered around Facebook for the objective of merely gaining awareness for their organization in the community. While utilizing Facebook to help in raising awareness for a nonprofit and its cause is a necessity to any social media strategy for nonprofits, there are many other things that nonprofits can be using social media for. Similarly, there are …
read more
Once you’ve been active on Twitter for awhile, you will begin to realize that the micro-blogging platform is not just about you and your tweets: it’s about everyone. You could say it’s a huge chat room, and everyone is vying for attention. One of my friends thinks that Twitter is more like a high school popularity contest than anything else. But one thing is for sure: If you’re only talking about yourself, no one wants to listen. Talk about relevant issues to a target audience and people start to follow you and listen to what you’re tweeting. In such a …
read more
November 18, 2010 | United States – Japan Social Media Debate, Tokyo – I am honored to be the American representative on a panel, together with 2 Japanese thought leaders in social media, to discuss the differences in how social business has accelerated in uptake in the United States versus Nippon. Since I speak fluent Japanese, this panel will be presented in Japanese and limited to 40 participants.
read more
With all of the information generated concerning social media these days, it really is getting hard to keep up on the latest developments amongst the multitude of platforms, case studies and statistics. There are definitive sites like Mashable and Social Media Examiner that have risen up to become leading sources of information, but what about the work of all of the excellent bloggers out there with unique perspectives that aren’t appearing on these sites? That’s where social media content hubs come in: Websites that are publishing content from a variety of these bloggers. There are 3 great sites that have …
read more
Despite the fact that Twitter has apparently grown from 58 to 175 million users in less than a year, it is clear that some of those “users” are actually “bots” or even corporations who have several different accounts to serve their current and potential customers with. Case in point: Dell alone has more than 30 Twitter accounts. All it takes is an email address to register a new account, so it is not uncommon for even some individuals to have multiple usernames. This may explain why, outside the networking circles of those active in social media, there are many people …
read more
There are many tools that are available to companies in social media marketing, but one that you don’t hear about often is social gaming, especially when these games are played directly on popular social networking sites like Facebook. Farmers Insurance earlier this week announced a new campaign that would put their virtual airship on the screens of everyone playing the popular social game FarmVille, which was reported to be 80 million users earlier this year. I had the opportunity to interview Ryon Harms, the Director of Social Media for Farmers Insurance, and get his input on the significance of this …
read more
While recent social media conversations tend to be about Facebook and Twitter, I find that many professionals and businesses aren’t maximizing their LinkedIn presence. There are many that simply don’t know what else they can be doing on the platform, while others still believe in some of the many common fallacies about the social networking platform for professionals that exist. Social media is a tool, and you can only leverage the tool by thinking outside of the box and applying it to your situation. Believing in what you hear about any social media platform, without taking the initiative and experimenting …
read more
It’s not easy being a social media consultant these days. Between the bashing of some social media “experts” and the viral what the **** is my social media strategy blog, you’d think that every social media “guru” is a quack. I thought it was about time to clear the air and stick up for my profession and the need for our existence, and I am glad to see that Shannon Paul just did something similar by writing an excellent blog post on why we still need real social media strategists. Yes, there are professionals with years of successful sales, marketing, …
read more
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 …
read more
