I recently had a chance to meet the younger sister of a high school friend who was in transition for the first time since college graduation. “I used to always have jobs lined up for me and never had a challenge finding work.” Heard that one before, right? How about, “I received all of these LinkedIn invites, but I thought they were such a nuisance!” Indeed, the only positive thing to come out of not digging our wells before we are thirsty is to finally realize the power of LinkedIn in helping us build out our personal brand, professional networking, …
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My social media consulting clients always ask me as to who they should be trying to “influence” on social websites, and I always have to remind them that any social media user could potentially be an “influencer.” That being said, some people or businesses use social networking sites more than others, some have more reach than others, and some are considered to have thought leadership in their industries or professions more than others. So, although an exact measurement of social media influence is impossible because it will be different based on 1) the context of what exactly you’re trying to …
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When I wrote my LinkedIn book back in 2009, I had two detailed chapters on how you can embed a video into your profile using two different applications that LinkedIn provides. What is interesting is that, for the casual LinkedIn user, there are no “video” profile sections nor applications to choose from in the main menu, but both Google Presentation and SlideShare Presentations have always supported video. This tutorial will cover the easiest way to get a video up on your profile, which I have chosen Google Presentation for. Assuming that you already have a video of yourself, the entire …
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With Seth Godin about to appear on stage in Orange County in just a few weeks time, there is a buzz around here about what new insights he will provide to us in 2011. And the event, in line with what Seth preaches about holding BIG events, is set to be HUGE – he will be speaking at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, part of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, a location that is host to the likes of Natalie Cole and the Vienna Philharmonic. In my eyes, but more importantly the eyes of the event organizer …
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As someone who consults and speaks on social media, I still get the newbie customer who wants me to “do” their social implementation for them. What does “doing” their social media mean? It’s means potentially representing every facet of their company with every potential new and current customer that are out there on the Social Web. Last I checked we were spending 22% of our Internet time in social media, so that’s a huge amount of influence that I could yield. Not to mention the fact that I can yield power controlling the brand image for a company, something they …
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Forgive the cheesy title, but I’m starting to pick up running again and am finding a lot of analogies of what businesses can learn about social media from training for a marathon. No, I’ve never run a marathon, my longest race being a 10K run decades ago (#justagedmyself). I’m not training for a marathon, either, just the ability to at least run a 5K in the spring. But businesses who are looking to get started in social media can learn a lot from what I am going through now as I am trying to work my body into better shape. …
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Everyone who knows me knows that I am one of the biggest evangelists for LinkedIn. While others turn to Twitter and Facebook, I keep reminding businesses that LinkedIn should be your hub for B2B social media marketing. And while the world is going crazy about Branchout, the Facebook application for professional networking, I find immense value in new tools such as LinkedIn Signal. But as a trusted networking platform for professionals, I find that LI is falling behind its social media counterparts in one important area: Privacy Settings. Here are 3 specific scenarios in which I believe it is in …
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One of the amazing things about Twitter, when compared to a LinkedIn or a Facebook, is that it’s core functionality is so simple yet complemented with complexity by hundreds if not thousands of useful 3rd party apps because of its open architecture and growing ecosystem. Where you don’t really need any external tools to maximize your presence on LinkedIn or even Facebook for that matter, using external apps on the realtime platform for tweets can not only help save you time, it can also help you unearth critical business intelligence and allow you to truly maximize your presence for whatever …
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One thing that every social media consulting client asks me about is how to find out who the “Influencers” are in their particular industry. My answer, of course, is that every consumer who is active on social media could potentially be an influencer, and thus truly “accurate” measurement is impossible. Think about it: Someone with 10 followers could tweet something out that gets ReTweeted by someone with 100 followers, and 1 of those 100 followers is someone who works for an industry publication, who then breaks the story to the public, and so on. I think you get the picture. …
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I had a chance to be on a CEO Trust social media panel last night with Joe Meyer, the CEO of HopStop. Embarrassing as it is to say, I wasn’t familiar with HopStop because they haven’t rolled out their service in Southern California (coming soon, L.A.!), and also because I rarely have a chance to take public transportation in the US or Canada (or Europe, where HopStop is also growing). But if you live in a major metropolitan area with a robust public transportation system, I’m assuming that you already use HopStop (and if you haven’t then you should!) because it provides a …
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