Lovely daughter, Laura. They say we look alike. Don’t I wish!
Me 37 years ago and many pounds ago. Don’t I wish I could turn back the hands of time!
The Past – Start 1.0 2.0
Web 2.0 Applications Audio: itunes, zune, iLike Video: YouTube, Netflix, amazonunbox Publishing and photography: Blogger, Picasa, Flickr Browsers: Google, Yahoo, Firefox Search and Reference: Google, Ask, Wikipedia Productivity: Remember the Milk, Google Calendar and Docs, Sharepoint Communication: Skype, Meebo, yahoo mail, gmail, im Utility and Security: Yahoo Briefcase, Box , LogmeIn Commerce and Events: amazon.com, ebay, craigslist Social networks: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning, Plurk
Before you beat me up and point out all the wonderful benefits of technology (including this dialogue) I’d like to leave you with this thought. Two hundred years ago, the pressure to keep up with technological change was not even a human consideration. Life pretty much went on as it always had, and our mindset was that it would continue that way forever. Mankind lived a rural life dependent on friends and family, weather and livestock … as it had for centuries. There was no “app for that.” Genetically, we are cut from the same cloth as our pioneering ancestors. What are the implications for having a constant imperative in our lives to understand, assess, deploy and maintain our digital selves?
All things here have diminished greatly. What will be the casualties of the future?
An important point in the history of the web: Nielsen On-line: The fourth most popular category for time spent on line is “Blogs and Social networks” after Search. Portals and PC Software. It just surpassed e-mail. Every 11 minutes on-line is accounted for on Social networks or blogging. Audience becoming more diverse in age. Largest growth in 2008 – was 39-49 (11.3 million) Mobile Technology is starting to play a significant part. People are communicating directly through social networks instead of e-mail. If the people we want to communicate are moving to a new mode of communication, we need to be there communicating with them. They can’t hear us, if we are not in the same space. Our conversations are falling on deaf ears if they are not there.
Communication – Disconnect I can’t hear you!
Social Networking Sites
65 million members 630,000 total groups IMA Official LinkedIn Group has 7000 members
You Pick 3-4 social networks or functions and do them well What you put into it -
Consider yourself a small business. You are responsible for yourself professionally. The days of a career in a big company are over. In the future – Resumes may be dead Job Boards may be ineffective Your online presence and your network will be what you need to further your career
Technology moves in dog years. If you un-tether for a month, it’s like missing seven months of technological advancement. The answer to staying on top of things? Never un-tether.
If you are delaying getting on the “bandwagon”, don’t. You won’t arrive at the same destination if you are using the bus. Everyone else will be somewhere else. And the speed of change is only picking up. Don’t be left behind.
Location – can you be located. Build your locations and then search. Do you want to broadcast to a wide audience? Are you different? Are you a thought leader or SME?
What can you offer of value to your community? Are you a “delighter”? – Six Sigma Do you do things differently? Are you creative? Are you funny?
Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip. - Will Rogers Think of the internet as the “Town Gossip.” Be careful what you put in cyberspace. It has a long-shelf life. Think twice. Spell check it. (Use Word and then cut and paste.) Think about who might read it. Present employer, future employer, co-workers, potential employees, customers, competitors Do you really want to say this?
Before joining any site, you want to ask: What do you want to accomplish? You may have several things that you want to accomplish . Look at your profile? Is it speaking to your purpose? If you want clients/candidates, can they contact you? Do they know how you can help them? Have you given them a reason to join your network and return to you? This is the focus of your profile.
Back Channeling.
Keep up on a regular schedule Keep content fresh Respond Morph and change as you go 5 years and I’m changing and learning
The following is a guest post by Veronica Fielding. As the unemployment rate rises, people are turning to social networking sites to make important business connections. Many recruiters post vacancies and search for passive candidates on LinkedIn. Facebook, one of the best-known social media sites on the Internet today, has become a valuable way of networking outside your circle. If you want to use social media to your advantage, it is important to create a professional “personal brand” for job hunting and networking online with Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. You wouldn’t throw a snowball or have a pillow fight with a co-worker and you should avoid these and other annoying applications when you’re networking/job hunting for business purposes on Facebook. You also don’t want to post inappropriate photos or write about last weekend’s drinking binge on your Wall because a potential employer or business partner might see it. Here are some do’s and don’ts on how to use social media for personal brand management. DO use your real name to brand professional profiles on LinkedIn or other sites. For personal profiles (stuff you don’t want employers or colleagues to see, such as family photos), pick a made-up username that only your friends or family knows about. DO be keenly aware that potential employers, clients, and even members of the media may be checking out your online profiles to get a better idea of who you are before they hire, do business with, or interview you. Present yourself at your best, at all times. DO develop your “elevator pitch” (a concise description of who you are, what you do, and who you do it for) and post it to your online profiles. DO have a photo on your social media profiles. Help your connections put a face with a name – they’ll be more likely to remember you when they need to find someone with your expertise or skill set. DO strategize for how you want to be perceived by other business people in your network. Let your overarching strategy guide the type of information you include on your profiles and the tone of the content you post to social media networks. DO take advantage of Facebook’s excellent privacy options if you choose to have a presence on that site. Facebook makes it easy to split your content into items that can be seen only by close friends and family vs. content that can be seen by your entire network. You can go ahead and post your Maui beach vacation photos so that your college friends can see them, but your boss and that new client you landed yesterday can’t. of Digital Brand Expressions and publisher of The Jump Start Social Media Guide For Professionals .
DO N’T neglect your online profiles once you set them up. Make sure you update your profile details when you change jobs or start a new venture. DO N’T include content on your profile that can be considered controversial. It’s best to leave political and religious preferences off the table. DO N’T use social media as an advertising tool. Just as businesses have learned the hard way that their audiences don’t want to see marketing messages on their social networking sites, your personal network will not appreciate being spammed with information about your latest business products or services. DON’T use add-in applications unless you carefully review the terms of use for each one. There are few LinkedIn and even fewer Facebook applications that are appropriate or useful for business purposes, so it’s often best to avoid them entirely. If you do decide that you would like to “throw a snowball” at some of your Facebook friends, make sure that you don’t let the application access your entire contact list. DON’T forget to make sure all your social media profiles are indexed by the search engines. Facebook and LinkedIn both give users the option to allow their profile to be indexed or not. Part of a good online brand management strategy is taking ownership of the search results that are served up when someone searches for your name. Social media profiles are a great, easy way to take over some of those top 10 results. Veronica Fielding is the president of Digital Brand Expressions and publisher of The Jump Start Social Media Guide For Professionals .
Start small Quality/high touch over quantity/automation Community Manager? Company-wide social media guidelines 2-3 sites – but do them well
Many people have talked about ROI in relation to social media and one usually examines the performance of a social media marketing campaign using specific metrics like traffic, links or comments. Some measure ROI in an more abstract way, by monitoring the amount of buzz or conversation in a community and the opinions of the public. What you choose to measure is dependent on your goals, or what you want to receive as a return. If you’re purely interested in building links, your costs and investment should be measured alongside how many links you receive. If an activity does not efficiently help you to procure links, you should reduce your investment in that area. Conversely, if a specific activity maximizes your efficiency in getting links, you should increase your investment in that area. However, things are a little different when it comes to social media and specifically, the process of networking with others through various social media channels such as Twitter , Linkedin , Stumbleupon or Facebook . Measuring the ROI for social networking can be a little difficult because the returns you’ll get out of networking via social media are not direct and immediate . Chatting with another person on Twitter does not always give you an immediate benefit: however, you are building a relationship which you can leverage in the future. It is also difficult to track the origin of a purchase or visitor, even although you may have information on the referring web page. How did the visitor first know about your website? What influenced them to subscribe to your newsletter or hire your services? And how much of all the visible results you see stem from social networking? Did the hours you’ve spent on Facebook lead to a greater readership? How much did your forum posts contribute to your increase in subscribers or links? It’s not easy to correlate the returns you receive with social networking. Any attempt at measurement will be inevitably incomplete. You can’t pin down every visitor and know how if networking has enhanced the way they feel about your brand. What you can do is to focus on improving your ROI efficiency , which means improving the rate of benefits you’ll get from the time or money spent networking. It’s okay to have vague or broad goals for social media networking as long as you maximize the value you’ll get when compared to the cost you’ve invested.
- GSM World and the CTIA recently confirmed that there are now 4 billion mobile phone subscriptions on the planet, vs. just 1 billion PC owners. - Mobile subscribers now represent 60% of the population and growing. - In the USA alone, 262 million subscribers contribute to over 75 billion text messages per month.