Social Selling with The Eagles – Already Gone by Mike O’Neil

Posted on August 23, 2014 by Rosemary Cardno

Integrated Alliances
Social Selling with The Eagles – Already Gone
by MIKEONEIL on AUGUST 22, 2014 · 0 COMMENTS
in LINKEDIN,MARKETING,SOCIAL SELLING

Social Selling is about many things. But first and foremost it is about getting attention and keeping their interest – what people see and read. It is about relationship building and this article deals with the start of many of those relationships.

Sorry to say this, but your profile might be killing business prospects and you may not even know it. Visitors come to your profile and they might be “already gone”. Why is this and what can you do about it?

Visitors may be coming to your LinkedIn profile and they just don’t like what they see. They jump for the back button. You’ve lost them. You may never know it or why – unless you get help. They come, they go and you may not even know (OK, I made a rhyme, but you expected something musical, right?)

Look at “whose visited your profile” and see who this is. It’s a great place for finding leads and it’s a place that shows you who is NOT reaching out.

One simple way to begin improving upon your “click off rate” is to ask others to take a critical look at your profile. And ask them for suggestions. Have them specifically look at the areas listed below so you can focus their attention. Be sure to do a decent sample size (5+ people), start making some changes based on what they say.

When people land on your LinkedIn profile they see a few things right away. They might hit the back button. That’s bad. Or they might move their heads a little closer to the screen (good) based on what they see when they get there. It’s that first 3-6 seconds that makes you or breaks you and it’s like with a web site. So, are you pulling them in or pushing them away?

Let’s dive in a bit and see if we can improve upon a bit…

Some help with pulling them in

The primary things that will affect how you are “viewed” are:

LinkedIn photo
Headline text
Current job titles & employer names (up to 3)
Past job titles & employer names (up to 3)
Education
LinkedIn profile URL
Location
Industry
Posts
Summary
Header image (Premium Account holders only)
LinkedIn profile photo

Your LinkedIn photo is the VISUAL welcome mat on your profile and it is SUPER important, worthy of a post all to itself. You can sure bet we will be doing a special post on this topic. This photo should be of you and you only. There is much that can be done to pull in viewers. My all means make it attractive and make it stand out.

Your profile photo is the center piece of your profile AND is what people see of you whenever you appear anywhere on LinkedIn. This can be in lists, in messages, in posts and much more.

LinkedIn profile headline text

Your headline text is the TEXTUAL welcome mat on your profile and it is equally important. The reasons are 2-fold. First is what people see (read) and that’s critical. What message are you putting in front of them? There are lots of strategies here. And I will explore them just a little bit. Once again, this is the subject of an article all to itself and you can expect an article dedicated to this coming from us in the future.

Second is what the search engines see. The text you put are tracked by both the LinkedIn search engine and external search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. They all (rightfully) assume that this text is the most important things on your profile. For starters, think about including keywords and some type of a value statement. Here is mine for example:

Forbes Top 50 Award Winner ♦ Social Selling Speaker, Trainer, Author, Expert, Futurist ♦ I help sales teams make quota!

Current job titles and company name

The job title and company name text that appears for each position appears in clear view to all visitors. LinkedIn show up to 3 entries from your pool of “current” jobs. There are lots of strategies on what to do here as well. No matter what, make sure you think about how they appear at the top of your profile as much as you think about how they look down below. The search engines also value this information. Think about keywords that you want to be associated with in your job titles and spice it up a little bit. For example:

► Integrated Alliances LinkedIn Training and Sales Training, ► Integrated Alliances Social Media Speakers, ► NewGen Broadcasting – WebmasterRadio.FM

Past job titles and company name

Just below your current job entries are the 3 PAST job entries and it too appears in clear view to all visitors. Perhaps you can make those past positions look nice and attractive as well. Here is mine:

► Internap Network Systems, ► Cable & Wireless Global | SAVVIS, ► US West | USWest | U S West

Education

You can display one education entry in this area and you can control which one it is. Pick one that shows you off best or that is most genuine and move it around so it appears here. It might take several iterations. If you have a real degree and took a class at a local community college most recently and have that listed, pick the better of the two.

LinkedIn Profile URL

The LinkedIn profile URL is much more subtle than the previous items I have presented. Everyone has one of these and it’s just a matter of whether you figured out how to change it or not. When you have the default URL with random characters appended to your name it shows a lack of detail that visitors may think applies to your work as well. Be sure to give yourself a nice custom profile URL that makes you look as intelligent as you are.

Location

The importance of this is subtle although there are indeed some good strategies for it. For example, I live in Prior Lake, Minnesota. The city is a cool place with a vibrant business community and lots of great live rock and roll music. Yet, most people don’t know where it is other than “somewhere in Minnesota”. Fortunately, LinkedIn lets me pick the larger nearby city instead and I choose to do so (Greater Minneapolis-St Paul Area). I look more ready for business being in a big city vs. a small one.

Industry

For many there are options to be had with your industry. If you do marketing for an aerospace firm should select Marketing or Aerospace or something for your industry? Give it some thought for attracting people and enticing them to stay on your profile a little longer. Look at what others are doing, both in your firm and in similar positions at other firms to get a perspective. On another note, your employer may have a standard or may want to implement a standard.

LinkedIn articles and posts

LinkedIn implemented a sophisticated content publishing platform a while back. And they launched it first with a select group of individuals. This is now open to everyone and it’s a terrific way to get attention of your target market and jazz up your profile. I am doing just that here with this post for example. Make sure you include a good looking, relevant picture in your post. So that picture will appear on your profile and encourage people to hang out a little longer. How is this for standing out a bit?

LinkedIn profile summary

Getting a little further down we get to your summary and, in particular, the TOP of your summary. Pay some extra attention to the first sentence and the first paragraph. Greet profile visitors with a “virtual handshake” and thank them for stopping by. The profile summary is the single most important piece of “larger” text field you have on ALL of LinkedIn. Make it count.

LinkedIn profile header image (premium account holders)

In May 2014, LinkedIn added a full width header image that has long been included with Facebook, Twitter, web sites and blogs. This is the NEW way to really impress visitors and draw them in. In the same month, I wrote a popular LinkedIn article about this feature with over 20,000 views to date.

The Eagles Already Gone song trivia and links

“Already Gone” was a huge hit for the Eagles but it is not a true “Eagle song” in the purest sense of the word. This song was written by Jack Tempchin and Robb Strandlund, who were good friends of the band. Tempchin sent an early version of the song to Glenn Frey who had just come out of a personal relationship and the lyrics really clicked with him. Frey sings the lead vocals while he and Don Felder do the nifty twin guitar solos that complete the song.

The Eagles (mostly Frey and Henley) had a falling out with Johns over the way he handled the recording sessions and the band was seeking a new producer. Bill Szymczyk was subsequently contacted about the role, but he wouldn’t take the job until he cleared it with Glyn Johns. Call it a combination of background check and professional courtesy. Szymczyk got the OK and he brought the band to his LA recording studio to actually cut the record.

This was also one of the first songs that the Eagles recorded for the On The Border LP with their new producer Bill Szymczyk. The band’s first 2 albums were recorded in London with famed British producer Glyn Johns (Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones).

See the song lyrics and view the YouTube video.

Author: mikeoneil (83 Posts)
@MikeONeilRocks ♫ The LinkedIn Rockstar ♫ #RockTheWorld Author & Radio Host | #LinkedIn Sales Trainer | #SocialMedia Speaker Authority Visionary Celebrity ♫ klas-ik-rokr’/ ♫ Interested in Rocking LinkedIn? Free Training Here: http://RockLinkedIn.com

Tagged as: classic rock, eagles, Mike O’Neil, Social Selling, the eagles, the linkedin rockstar, Training

10 Incredibly Simple Things You Should Be Doing To Protect Your Privacy: Forbes

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Rosemary Cardno

10 Incredibly Simple Things You Should Be Doing To Protect Your Privacy

Kashmir Hill, Forbes Staff

Welcome to The Not-So Private Parts where technology & privacy collide

The Verizon version of the Apple iPhone is dis...

Please tell me you have a password protecting this.

Over the weekend, I wound up at Washington, D.C.’s Trapeze School with a group of friends. Before one of them headed up a ladder to attempt a somersault landing from the trapeze bar, she handed me her phone and asked me to take photos. “What’s the password?” I asked. “I don’t use one,” she replied. My jaw dropped as it often does when someone I know tells me they’re choosing not to take one of the very simplest steps for privacy protection, allowing anyone to snoop through their phone with the greatest of ease, to see whichever messages, photos, and sensitive apps they please.

So this post is for you, guy with no iPad password, and for you, girl who stays signed into Gmail on her boyfriend’s computer, and for you, person walking down the street having a loud conversation on your mobile phone about your recent doctor’s diagnosis of that rash thing you have. These are the really, really simple things you should be doing to keep casual intruders from invading your privacy.

1. Password protect your devices: your smartphone, your iPad, your computer, your tablet, etc. Some open bookers tell me it’s “annoying” to take two seconds to type in a password before they can use their phone. C’mon, folks. Choosing not to password protect these devices is the digital equivalent of leaving your home or car unlocked. If you’re lucky, no one will take advantage of the access. Or maybe the contents will be ravaged and your favorite speakers and/or secrets stolen. If you’re not paranoid enough, spend some time reading entries in Reddit Relationships, where many an Internet user goes to discuss issues of the heart. A good percentage of the entries start, “I know I shouldn’t have, but I peeked at my gf’s phone and read her text messages, and…”

2. Put a Google Alert on your name. This is an incredibly easy way to stay on top of what’s being said about you online. It takes less than a minute to do.Go here. Enter your name, and variations of your name, with quotation marks around it. Boom. You’re done.

3. Sign out of Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc. when you’re done with your emailing, social networking, tweeting, and other forms of time-wasting. Not only will this slightly reduce the amount of tracking of you as you surf the Web, this prevents someone who later sits down at your computer from loading one of these up and getting snoopy. If you’re using someone else’s or a public computer, this is especially important. Yes, people actually forget to do this, with terrible outcomes.

4. Don’t give out your email address, phone number, or zip code when asked. Obviously, if a sketchy dude in a bar asks for your phone number, you say no. But when the asker is a uniform-wearing employee at Best Buy, many a consumer hands over their digits when asked. Stores often use this info to help profile you and your purchase. You can say no. If you feel badly about it, just pretend the employee is the sketchy dude in the bar.

It’s this easy!

5. Encrypt your computer. The word “encrypt” may sound like a betrayal of the simplicity I promised in the headline, but this is actually quite easy to do, especially if you’re a MacHead. Encrypting your computer means that someone has to have your password (or encryption key) in order to peek at its contents should they get access to your hard drive. On a Mac, you just go to your settings, choose “Security and Privacy,” go to “FileVault,” choose the “Turn on FileVault” option. Boom goes the encryption dynamite. PC folk need to use Bitlocker.

6. Gmailers, turn on 2-step authentication in Gmail. The biggest takeaway from the epic hack of Wired’s Mat Honan was that it probably wouldn’t have happened if he’d turned on “2-step verification” in Gmail. This simple little step turns your phone into a security fob — in order for your Gmail account to be accessed from a new device, a person (hopefully you) needs a code that’s sent to your phone. This means that even if someone gets your password somehow, they won’t be able to use it to sign into your account from a strange computer. Google says that millions of people use this tool, and that “thousands more enroll each day.” Be one of those people. The downside:It’s annoying if your phone battery dies or if you’re traveling abroad. The upside: you can print a piece of paper to take with you, says James Fallows at the Atlantic. Alternately, you can turn it off when you’re going to be abroad or phone-less. Or you can leave it permanently turned off, and increase your risk of getting epically hacked. Decision’s yours.

7. Pay in cash for embarrassing items. Don’t want a purchase to be easily tracked back to you? You’ve seen the movies! Use cash. One data mining CEO says this is how he pays for hamburgers and junk food these days.

Red is bad

8. Change Your Facebook settings to “Friends Only.”You’d think with the many Facebook privacy stories over the years that everyone would have their accounts locked down and boarded up like Florida houses before a hurricane. Not so. There are still plenty of Facebookers that are as exposed on the platform as Katy Perry at a water park. Visit your Facebook privacy settings. Make sure this “default privacy” setting isn’t set to public, and if it’s set to “Custom,” make sure you know and are comfortable with any “Networks” you’re sharing with.

9. Clear your browser history and cookies on a regular basis. When’s the last time you did that? If you just shrugged, consider changing your browser settings so that this is automatically cleared every session. Go to the “privacy” setting in your Browser’s “Options.” Tell it to “never remember your history.” This will reduce the amount you’re tracked online. Consider a browser add-on like TACO to further reduce tracking of your online behavior.

10. Use an IP masker. When you visit a website, you leave a footprint behind in the form of IP information. If you want to visit someone’s blog without their necessarily knowing it’s you — say if you’re checking out a biz competitor, a love interest, or an ex — you should consider masking your computer’s fingerprint, which at the very least gives away your approximate location and service provider. A person looking at their analytics would notice me as a regular visitor from Washington, D.C. for example, and would probably even be able to tell that I was visiting from a Forbes network address. To hide this, you can download Tor or use an easy browser-based option like HideMyAss.com.

These are some of the easiest things you can do to protect your privacy. Ignoring these is like sending your personal information out onto the trapeze without a safety net. It might do fine… or it could get ugly. These are simple tips for basic privacy; if you’re in a high-risk situation where you require privacy from malicious actors, check out EFF’s surveillance self-defense tips.

Hacking The Human Brain: What Every Marketing Professional Needs To Know

Posted on December 25, 2012 by Rosemary Cardno

Hello friends — I hope you had a joyous Christmas Day that was relaxed, and full of family, love, and much too much wrapping paper. I want to introduce you to Mark Armstrong, an illustrator whose blog I happily happened upon this afternoon. His drawing skill is quickly obvious, and after just a paragraph or two, his wit likewise becomes apparent — I now follow his blog, markarmstrongillustration.com, and you may want to do the same.

Hacking The Human Brain: What Every Marketing Professional Needs To Know

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

tags: blogging, business, marketing, media, psychology, science

A recent illustration for The Partner Channel Magazine, which focuses on marketing and salesmanship. It was for an article entitled Why People Buy.

The author defined marketing as applied psychology, and began by asking this question: How do you get inside of people’s heads to get them to buy from you? A rather visceral image immediately sprang to mind. Here’s the final:

A more interesting question, perhaps, was this: What tips the scale to get people to buy from you instead of your perhaps equally competent competitors? The author went on to discuss 6 psychological triggers that influence the way people buy and behave. Here’s a brief summary:

1. Reciprocation: Give to get. You comment on my blog, I’ll comment on yours.

2. Commitment: Small sales lead to bigger. A satisfied customer will ask you to take on on bigger, higher-paying jobs.

3. Social Proof: Evidence that people like you and your work: sales, commissions, testimonials, enthusiastic followers.

4. Liking: People buy from people they know and like. Reach out, join groups, be friendly and courteous.

5. Authority: We buy from people who project it. Good manners, good grammar, knowledgeable blog posts all project authority.

6. Scarcity: The ol’ limited time only: People will buy it today if they’re afraid it might not be available tomorrow.

I decided to incorporate these buzzwords into the illustration by running them around the perimeter of the face. Photoshop’s ability to string text along a path came in handy here. I could then adjust the path to align the text perfectly along the head’s contours.

There’s something amusing about “Reciprocation” curving along someone’s nose. Here’s a close-up:

You can see some slightly thicker lines running through the brain. They define its four principal lobes: frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal– what you’d see in a medical diagram. It makes me smile at myself for being such a stickler for detail.

I wanted the brain to be anatomically correct. Why? Because the humor in the drawing depends on the reader instantly recognizing the brain for what it is. It has to look the part, even if it’s only a “cartoon brain.”

It’s the old maxim: one has to know the rules before one can successfully break them. A humorous illustrator has to know what something really looks like before he can draw a credible cartoon version of it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

What do you think? Ever heard anyone coming down that little ladder into your skull? Is blogging a form of salesmanship? one that requires us to pay attention to these same psychological triggers?

Other Posts You Might Enjoy:

Happy Birthday To Folksinger Patty Larkin And Her Machine Gun Guitar

Paula Deen, Twinkies, And The National Debt

Ring Around The Rosary, We All Stand Together

footer for all future blog posts showing picture of blog author Mark Armstrong, along with short bio and contact information

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Social Media Screening: Here’s How to Use it in Your Hiring Decisions

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Rosemary Cardno

Social Media Screening: Here’s How to Use it in Your Hiring Decisions

Don Charlton on Dec 5, 2012, 8:10 AM | TLNT

You’ve probably had friends whom you wished would stop using Facebook or Twitter for just five minutes.

After all, who needs to see 12 new pictures of someone’s dog every hour, or hear about how so and so’s love life is still on the rocks? A hiring and staffing manager who’s trying to make hiring decisions, that’s who.

People use social networks to share snippets of their personal lives with friends and family, but hiring and staffing departments also view the material. According to CareerBuilder, 37 percent of companies use social networks to research job candidates, and 12 percent of businesses use the websites to look for reasons not to hire someone.

It’s all about making the right distinctions

Would the woman who wears a skimpy outfit on Facebook dress in a way that’s too risqué on Casual Friday? Does the guy who criticizes his boss on Twitter have a legitimate beef, or is he the office troublemaker?

Some companies don’t care to know – a little slice of raw humanity from someone’s social media life is all it takes to make them toss out a resume faster than The New Yorker rejects a poetry submission.

But that’s not how it should go.

When hiring and staffing departments use social media screening as a tool for employee selection, they should have strategies for distinguishing between candidates who occasionally post questionable content and applicants who could pose a real problem in the workplace.

Tips for using social media screening right

Here are some tips for making the distinction:

Consider comment responses. When someone tweets a message like “Everyone can jump off a cliff and die,” he usually gets one of two responses: people seem concerned and ask him what’s wrong, or they act like he’s being himself and tweet a response like “chill, dude.” If you’d rather not hire a verbal hit man, avoid people whose friends indicate that they’re acting normal when they blow up – but give the person who occasionally speaks his or her mind a break.
Count photos. A candidate seems perfect, but then you delve into his Facebook photos and see him drinking liquor. Yes, it’s the hard stuff, but ask yourself this: is it just a photo of the man holding a glass of scotch at a cigar bar, or does it look like he tipples at every dive in the city? If it’s just a single photo, be careful not to overreact.
Be fair about social associations. Say that one of your applicants likes Motley Crüe’s Facebook page. Does that mean that he likes to “Shout at the Devil” and thinks of women as “Girls, Girls, Girls?” Likely not. He’s probably just a fan of ’80s glam rock. If he likes skinhead punk bands, on the other hand, there’s a good chance that more than musical taste is at play. When you evaluate someone’s social associations, try to be skeptical without being morally judgmental.

Social media sites are useful screening tools for the employee selection process, but hiring and staffing managers should be careful how they use social content to make hiring decisions.

While some types of content can indicate that an applicant would be a bad hire, other kinds are just evidence of the free-spirited behavior that hardworking people have always engaged in. Those things shouldn’t stop anyone from getting a job.

How does your company use social networks to make social hiring decisions?

This article originally appeared on The Resumator Blog.

Don Charlton is a Web entrepreneur, developer and speaker. His company, TheResumator.com,, helps employers hire with confidence. Contact him at don@theresumator.com.

Tags: Background screening, Best practices, HR management, HR trends, recruiting & staffing, Social Media

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The Can’t-Miss Social Media Trends for 2013 — ARE YOU ALIGNED?

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Rosemary Cardno

I wonder if all our companies are aligned with these 2013 trends…..

The Can’t-Miss Social Media Trends For 2013

BY RYAN HOLMES

FAST COMPANY

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite, crystal balls the future of social so you’re not stuck with–gasp–Twitter 101-level skills.

Will Facebook continue its reign atop the social hierarchy? Will businesses get better returns on their social media investment? Will your CEO finally learn to tweet? Here’s a look at the biggest social media trends set to unfold in the year ahead.

Mobile social media usage continues to soar: In September, Facebook made a monumental–if little noted–revelation in a quarterly SEC filing: “[We] anticipate that the rate of growth in mobile usage will exceed the growth in usage through personal computers for the foreseeable future.” Mobile Internet users are set to overtake wired Internet users by 2015 in the U.S., but this shift is happening far faster on social platforms.

What does this mean for the future of social media? Networks that make engagement on the go easy–especially visual platforms like Instagram–are at a significant advantage (Instagram, in fact, already has more mobile users than Twitter). Meanwhile, traditional networks must work to better differentiate their desktop and mobile experiences–ensuring that mobile interfaces are streamlined and fast-loading, while also taking full advantage of GPS, near field communication (exchanging information by touching smartphones) and perhaps evenambient location functionality.

At the same time, developing viable advertising options for mobile platforms is more critical than ever. Finding ways to squeeze ads onto tiny mobile screens has thus far proved a serious Achilles heel.

Social advertising grows and evolves: To solve the mobile revenue puzzle, social networks will push ahead next year with new social ad models. Traditional banner and interruption ads will decline, replaced by innovative offerings like Promoted Tweets and Sponsored Stories. What makes these so-called native ads unique is that they don’t look like ads at all, apart from small disclaimers. They appear in-stream and read exactly like another piece of user-generated content.

While some users resent this intrusion into their home streams, natives ads potentially enable brands to reach clients on their own turf and on their own terms. Behind it all is the concept of convergence–the idea that ads and content can be interchangeable. Companies, for instance, are already sending out Tweets to followers on their social media channels. Using analytical tools to identify which are most read, they can selectively amplify the best of the bunch as Promoted Tweets, turning content into ads and reaching an even larger audience.

International and niche social networks experience dramatic growth: Total social media users are forecast to grow by just 4.1 percent in North America in 2013. Compare that with growth rates of 21.1 percent in Asia-Pacific (including China, India, and Indonesia), 12.6 percent in Latin America, and 23.3 percent in the Middle East and Africa.

The major networks will continue to make impressive inroads internationally: Facebook users grew by 47 percent in Latin America alone last year. But localized social networks–especially those geared for mobile users–are also experiencing dramatic growth. China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging platform recently surpassed 400 million users (nearly doubling its user base in one year), while two-year-old competing upstart WeChat already has 200 million users.

Meanwhile, niche networks, which offer deeper, more focused functionalities overlooked by the bigger players, will continue to experience truly explosive growth both in North America and internationally. Riding the wave of its acquisition by Facebook, Instagram saw its share of social media traffic grow by 17,319 percent this year, while Pinterest grew by 5,124 percent.

What does this all mean for brands and businesses? To maximize reach, it’s critical to keep up with an expanding array of social networks both in North America and abroad. Anticipate increased demand in 2013 for social media management systems that streamline monitoring and posting across multiple networks.

Social media moves beyond the marketing department: In the year ahead, expect enterprises to embrace social media tools–including internal networks, real-time chats and wikis–for uses that go way beyond the familiar applications for marketing and community building. At stake is a potentially enormous boost to the bottom line: Last year, McKinsey published an eye-opening report that pegged the untapped business value of social technologies at $1.3 trillion–and most of that comes from improved office productivity.

We’re already seeing HR departments applying social media to streamline application processes, sales teams cultivating leads and monitoring the sales funnel via social channels, and operations and distributions teams tracking supply chains at a granular level. Deeper still, internal networking tools like HootSuite Conversations are enabling companies to free up expertise trapped in departmental silos. (Conversations is sold by my company.)

At the same time, the way social media is rolled out at large companies is fundamentally changing. Until now, adoption has been fueled from the bottom-up, by front-line social media and community managers. But increasingly CIOs, CEOs, and CMOs who have seen the business value of social media are taking the reins. As the C-suite formalizes top-down social media strategy, expect to see social media management systems become as commonplace as office productivity suites and customer relations management software.

Big data grows but gets more manageable: Social media has given companies access to unprecedented volumes of information about their clients and buying trends on an aggregate level. The challenge, which confronts everyone from data giants like Facebook to small businesses active on social media, is how to process all of this and turn it into actionable policy. Case in point: 93 percent of North American executives surveyed by Oracle believe they’re losing revenue by not leveraging available data.

“We need to build robust systems for analyzing the huge amounts of data flowing in from social media and how they then link to all the other touch points consumers have with the brand,” explains digital analyst Marita Scarfi.

The coming year will see the emergence of new software and tools to do just that. Using new-wave social media command centers capable of tracking multiple social stats in real-time, from tweets and Likes to customer sentiment, companies will be able to radically improve customer service and predict future buying patterns, not to mention streamline internal communication and increase productivity. This kind of social data is already being harnessed by Nestle to boost customer sentiment, GE to speed up repairs to the electrical grid, and Wall Street to forecast stock prices.

Social media education gets formalized: A recent Harvard Business review survey showed that only 12 percent of companies using social media feel they use it effectively. Given the expanded business applications of social media, maximizing impact increasingly requires specialized training. Just knowing how to send a Tweet or friend someone on Facebook is not enough. In 2013, expect to see more social media coursework at universities, as well as dedicated social media MBA programs, as schools rise to the challenge (Syracuse, NYU, Columbia, Harvard Business School, and dozens of other higher ed institutions are already leading the pack here).

At the same time, companies will begin to double down on social media education for their existing employees as the entire workforce gains an added level of social sophistication, similar to the Internet 1.0 skillset that was on-boarded a decade ago. Social media skills will join email as part of basic business literacy in the digital age. Perhaps most critical of all will be social media compliance training to ensure that workers in sensitive industries from finance to healthcare uphold regulatory standards while taking advantage of social media’s benefits.

This year has been widely regarded as the year social media made the jump from dorm room to boardroom. In 2013, expect to see companies who have taken the plunge begin to reap expanded returns from their social investments, with help from improved social technologies, innovative ad models, and an expanded user base around the globe.

Learn more about the future of social media by subscribing to the Fast Company newsletter.

–Ryan Holmes is CEO of Hootsuite.

[Image: Flickr user Len Burgess]

PROMOTE YOURSELF

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Rosemary Cardno

Promote yourself!

02SundayDec 2012

Posted by Susana Gonzalez in Business, Social Networks

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Blog, LinkedIn,Promotion, Social Media

Although individual users were the first to use social media, only companies have given a strategic role to these new tools, integrating them into their marketing plan. However, not being the director of a company doesn’t mean that we cannot promote ourselves. These are the four principles that will help you achieve this:

Myself Inc

1. You are your own business

Actually, you are the director of the company Myself, Inc. As a company, you have designed a business model. You have specific professional and personal interests and you are aware of your abilities. You know how you differ from other people, what products or services you offer and what problems you help to solve.

Obviously, you need a strategic plan. You have a personal and professional goal in the medium/long term that points the next phases to follow and the resources you will need in this journey.

2. The company you work for is your client

If you are your own company, the company you work for is, therefore, your client. The time when people joined a company at age 20 and left it at age of 65 is over. The company is not a second home, but a client we offer our services to help them grow up.

This approach is useful to always maintain a professional relationship with our company. Some workers tend to think that, by the fact that they have worked for a company for 10 years, they can take certain liberties and neglect professionalism. This is a mistake.

Obviously, this relationship with the company demands a higher level of self-demand, but at the same time, it also offers a higher degree of autonomy because we know that our job security doesn’t come from the company but from ourselves.

3. Invest in yourself

Like any business, you have your own program of Innovation and Continuing Training. With an open mind, you are always willing to improve, learn and explore new fields.

Your training program is not limited to the training offered by the company you work for. Your goals go far beyond because they are related with your own business model and your strategic expansion plan.

Try to be aware of new trends, identify what knowledge and skills could make you more competitive. Attend seminars, conferences, trade shows. Identify the leading experts and learn from them. Search your competitors and analyze their offer.

4. Create your own brand

Obviously, you also have your own marketing strategy. Use all the knowledge and know-how accumulated over the years in your daily work and other activities to make yourself known and to create a reputation.

Design a blog and offer your knowledge, take care of your LinkedIn profile and try to join groups related to your professional interests, engage with your community, advice other professionals.

***

Some companies may feel threatened by those employees who adopt this strategy of self-promotion. They may prefer traditional employees, who are nothing more than pawns. However, this perspective, besides being wrong, is negative for the own company.

Employees who promote themselves, who are a referent, are not only getting notoriety for themselves, but they are also helping to promote the company they work for, because a company with great employees is perceived as a great company.

How to Social Network Like the Presidential Candidates (Infographic) from CareerEnlightenment.com

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Rosemary Cardno

by Guest Writer, Heather Huhman

While becoming President of the United States isn’t your typical employment situation, even our presidential candidates know their success lies in networking. Although your dream job may not be in the White House (or maybe it is!), even everyday job seekers can take a page out of the presidential candidate playbook when it comes to landing their ideal position.

It’s true: In the presidential race, candidates use some of the same networking tactics that can help even regular ol’ job seekers on their search for employment. That means taking advantage of online resources like email, video, blogs, and social media to tap into the right networks. After all, some say Barack Obama won his first election off the back of social media–he hosted the very first White House Google+ hangout and revolutionized fundraising with the power of the Web. This year, Obama has sent out 600 emails in just the past three months alone, and Mitt Romney’s YouTube channel has already garnered 260 million views.

Job seekers everywhere can tweak these networking tactics and incorporate them into their own job search. The infographic below, compiled by Jackalope Jobs, a Web-based platform that combines search, social networking, and the overall user’s experience to provide relevant job openings, details even more techniques used by presidential candidates.

Have you used any similar techniques in your job search? What are some other networking tactics you’d suggest for everyday job seekers?

Heather R. Huhman is a career expert, experienced hiring manager, and founder & president of Come Recommended, a content marketing and digital PR consultancy for organizations with products that target job seekers and/or employers. She is also the author of Lies, Damned Lies & Internships (2011), #ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle (2010), and writes career and recruiting advice for numerous outlets.

Linkedin Endorsements Changes Everything. Here’s Why …..from INC.

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Rosemary Cardno

LinkedIn Endorsements Changes Everything. Here’s Why

By Dave Kerpen |
Nov 08, 2012

LinkedIn endorsements is to small business owners what the Facebook ‘Like’ button was to consumer brands: influential exposure.

For years, LinkedIn has offered recommendations as a way to get support from fellow professionals and businesses. If you received recommendations from other individuals, you garnered credibility, and were more likely to show up in searches.

But now, LinkedIn’s endorsements are much easier to get. It takes someone seconds to vouch for one or more of your particular skills, versus the 10 minutes to 15 minutes a recommendation might take. In today’s time-starved world, this is a critical difference. LinkedIn hasn’t released numbers yet, but if you look at several profiles, it’s clear that in just a few weeks, many users have generated way more endorsements than five years worth of recommendations.

If you want to give an endorsement, go to the top of a connection’s LinkedIn profile, where you’ll find an endorsement box you can click on, or write in skills or expertise you’d like to endorse (like PowerPoint, writing, market research). Lower down in the profile, you can view all current endorsements that connection has already received, and if you agree with any, simply click the plus sign and you’ll endorse that person as well. When you endorse someone (or someone endorses you), this will show up in your LinkedIn news feed (and spread the word).

LinkedIn isn’t weighting endorsements in search results yet, but it will soon. This means, the more endorsements for your skills and talents that you get, the more often you’ll appear in search results, the more trusted you’ll be, and the more leads you’ll potentially generate from LinkedIn.

So how do you get endorsements? There are two main ways I recommend:

1) Ask. Send out a dedicated email asking people you know for endorsements with a link directly to your profile. You can also send private messages via LinkedIn to your connections. Better yet:

2) Give others your endorsement. When you endorse others, they get notifications from LinkedIn, and will often reciprocate without your asking.

If you believe an endorsement is invalid, you have the option to hide it from your profile.

Remember, the more endorsements for your skills and talents you have, the more leads you can generate when people are looking for whatever it is you have to offer.

How many endorsements do you have on LinkedIn? Do you think endorsements could be a game changer?

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ASK THE CAPITALIST: CAN I CONNECT LINKEDIN AND TWITTER TO REDUCE MY NEED TO POST TWICE?

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Rosemary Cardno

November 06, 2012

Ask the Capitalist: Can I Connect LinkedIn and Twitter to Reduce My Need To Post Twice?

Smart people try to look for hacks that automate work. For example, if you’re trying to create a relevant social content stream as a candidate, manager or recruiter, it make sense to answer the following question:

“Kris:

I do updates to build my professional brand on both Twitter and LinkedIn. I don’t mind doing this, but since the updates are pretty much the same, it would be great if I could update one and it automatically updated the other. For example, is it possible to set it up so if I post to Twitter it automatically shows up on my LinkedIn account as an update?”

-Christine

—————————-

Hi Christine –

I like the way you’re thinking. You’re experimenting with the social tools and are looking for ways to be everywhere without taking the time to be everywhere. Well played. The answer is…. maybe. In June of 2012, Twitter announced an end to their partnership that allowed users to sync updates from the two sites. According to Twitter, the site is increasingly focused on “proving the core Twitter consumption experience through a consistent set of products and tools.” This essentially means that LinkedIn users can no longer automatically sync their tweets to publish on LinkedIn.

Boo. That sucked. It was all Twitter’s fault, not LinkedIn’s.

Users like you are now be forced to post their LinkedIn updates separately. Or, how LinkedIn positions it, “Simply compose your update, check the box with the Twitter icon, and click ‘Share.’ This will automatically push your update to both your LinkedIn connections and your Twitter followers just as you’ve been able to do previously.”

Basically, users can post from LinkedIn and have that message go out to its Twitter following, but not vice versa.

So no automatic API exists, so doing the manual dance above is one way to deal with it.

The other way? Use a 3rd party tool like Buffer or HootSuite that allows you to link all your social accounts to the same account, then do an update and select all the social accounts that you want that update to appear on. This type of system allows you to control your digital life, do one update and blast it out, and even time when you want it to show on each social account. It’s a better way to deal with it. The picture to the right of this post is a screenshot from Buffer, where I’m sharing a cool HR website via a social update, then sharing it across twitter and LinkedIn at the same time.

No direct API from twitter to LinkedIn? Just another example of the man trying to hold us down. Buffer doesn’t care. Kind of like the Honey Badger.

-KD