OK, so I’m being more than a little melodramatic to get your attention, but if you are guilty – you’re making a really big mistake. Not only in regard to my health, but your own networking and marketing health are suffering. Mark my words!

Look, I’m all for breaking rules to be avant garde  and stake a claim in cyberspace. But misusing profiles isn’t the way to do that.. it just makes you look like you don’t know what you’re doing. The rules of social engagement call for respect of user agreements.

Some ‘Don’ts’ from the LinkedIn User Agreement (10. LINKEDIN USER “DOS” and “DON’TS.”) 

• Don’t create a user profile for anyone other than a natural person
• Don’t upload a profile image that is not your likeness or a head-shot photo
• Don’t invite people you do not know to join your network (this one is just plain asinine, against the rules of social engagement and doesn’t count – must be a left over April Fool’s Day prank )

What would better suit your needs is a Company Page.

LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook have specific provisions for company pages. Twitter on the other hand functions quite differently and the best solution is to create separate personal and business accounts to strategically engage the twittersphere.

What’s wrong with networking as a business rather than as a person?

When you ‘hide’ behind a company profile, rather than present yourself as a representative of the company, you’ll find that you have to constantly police your attitude, sense of humor, distribution of content and personal relationships – because you are acting as the company. I can’t say how many times I have seen a ‘company’ post something not in its best interest because the individual behind the posts had a ‘personal’ hat on and missed an opportunity to represent the company in the best possible light.

When you wear the company hat the content character must be purposeful, selective, targeted and engaging to the right audience – often meaning the general public. Think of it as being a billboard with potentially immense global reach (depending on how good you, your strategy and execution are). It should be the company’s character that is promoted not the individual’s. That’s a heavy responsibility.

Managing your personal online presence is also critical matter – if you care, and you should. It’s expected an individual – regardless of how high up the food chain they are, has a unique personal style, character, sense of humor, off the cuff comments, candid moments, personal conversations, photos, etc. You can be the CEO and post about your family, vacation, what you had for lunch, and personal opinion, and it can crystallize the essence of ‘social networking’ and make you human and approachable – something that hiding behind a logo cannot do.

Can you see now why posting personal content directly under the company banner just doesn’t do the company any justice at all and it’s important to have both personal and corporate identities?

P.S. Don’t bother considering that I am being inappropriate with the inhaler here… I’m all too familiar. 

Anyone who belongs to a few groups and actually visits them or receives email updates (you know you can control those right?) knows that spam and off topic conversations are pervasive and even the most liberal of group moderators needs stock in flyswatters or it starts looking like Get Rich Quick Boulevard real fast. Real people, or at least ones who were genuinely interested in the group to begin with – start to change their settings to not receive updates, and leave.

If all group members had appropriate behavior, policing wouldn’t be necessary of course – but that wouldn’t be very indicative of human nature now would it?

Certainly you want to be seen as a good group citizen and have people take you seriously if you are going to be an effective networker. So, here are 5 tips to help:

1. Introduce yourself to the group – Most groups have a thread going where people introduce themselves. If the one you belong to doesn’t start one! Name it something innocuous but exciting like ‘Introductions”. Don’t post your resumé – just a few sentences about who you are and why you joined the group. Say what your expertise is and how you are willing to help others.

2. Do not make posts like this –> “Hey all Im Ken. Does anyone know of any jobs in mass communications here? have 2 masters from Syracuse and need a job now. If u know of anything, pleas write me at (email address)”. <– Seriously?

• Install and use spell check
• Use punctuation and capitalization
• This is not networking, this is lazy and no one is even going to reply except to tell you to use punctuation and capitalization and spell check

3. Be professional if you want to be taken like a professional.  Whining, flirting, harassing, and any other type of inappropriate comments are just going to sabotage your efforts and make you look like a clown. A benevolent group owner will warn you once and then kick you out if you do it again.

4. Do not mispost. That means jobs and job conversations go in the jobs tab. Promotions like B2B offers, discounts, whatever the group allows – should be posted in the promotions tab. And if the group is about XYZ don’t post ABC, you’ll stick out like a weed.

5. Read the the group description and rules. If you can’t stay on topic and be professional – don’t join, or risk looking like a fool and wasting the group’s time – and your’s too.

Do you have a tip for good LinkedIn group citizenship to add to the list?

One of the recurrent conversations that perked my ears was that even though the group is still relatively small, it is the largest in northeastern PA, and with such growth it isn’t as easy to know who’s a member anymore. As with every group, there are a handful of members who are very active, more who are occasional contributors, and a whole lot who are followers, lurkers – whatever you want to call them.

I offered to write some instructional posts to help people understand how to get the most out of the group experience. Today’s post is a shorty (happy Friday!!) explained almost entirely by a pictographic.

1) Click on the members tab

2) Search whatever type of individual you are looking for by keyword. Some ideas are searching by profession, city, company, skill or competency, alma mater, foreign or computer programming language, etc. Or, maybe you want to know how many members are named Bob. Whatever the case may be, the results are sure to be interesting.

3) Voilá – Sit back and scroll through the results!

Connection with force

Although actually a measurement of acceleration, the term g-force is, as its name implies, popularly imagined to refer to the force that an accelerating object “feels”. These so-called “g-forces” are experienced, for example, by fighter jet pilots or riders on a roller coaster, and are caused by changes in speed and direction. The relationship between force and acceleration stems from Newton’s second law, F = ma, where F is force, m is mass and a is acceleration. This equation shows that the larger an object’s mass, the larger the force it experiences under the same acceleration. – Webster’s Online Dictionary

Google+ is the new positive G-force

A few weeks ago on Google+ launch day, the value of the social web accelerated exponentially with positive g-force.

I like portals and command centers (throwback to the military?) and as a compliment to the extensive suite of many other very fine apps the big G provides, Google+ promises to provide the one-stop communications command center I have longed for.

Over the past few weeks I have been informally polling people from various professional backgrounds, “Are you on Google Plus” I ask? The typical response is “Oh that new Google Facebook thing?” So, while there have been several very good tutorials to share written by other bloggers, my thoughts are that there is no need to recreate the wheel …. I have enough work to do. I choose to share the best by far – it comes right from the source. However by all means, add your favorites in comments – please.

Until the launch of Google+ I was a Mozilla Firefox maven. But, the same day David Graziano hooked me up with an invite, I decided to take the final plunge into the Google pool of goodness and go Chrome. What I have found immensely useful are a few of browser extensions to customize the experience. Since I added the extensions I have spent little personal time on other social networks – with the exception of LinkedIn (yes it is). If I didn’t manage so many Twitter and Facebook Fan Page accounts I doubt I would continue to spend time on them at all.

G+me for Google Plus – Enhances the Google+ web app to make it much easier to process a large stream of incoming posts and comments and unlock the potential of its real-time updates.

SGPlus - Complete social network integration: post to Facebook and Twitter, see your feeds inside Google Plus, and much more.

Plus One (+1) Button – With this extension, you can ‘Google +1′ all web pages and websites. Great for sites that do not have a +1 button installed (hellooooo ST).

This week, Google pulled out all the stops with a campaign to convert holdouts of email accounts from other web based email providers over to the dark side. I approve of this type of conversion…

No one had leads.

I searched within a 50 mile radius and came up with very little posted opportunity in his field. I logged into my contact database and made a few calls. No one wanted to seriously discuss underemployment opportunities with someone who had a VP title for the past decade.

Ouch.

We talked about the possibility of relocation and to where he might be willing. It didn’t seem very appealing to him. Then we talked about transferable skills and what they might be molded into and marketed as. There was a very solid and well established focused career here and under the circumstances it wouldn’t be easy to convince someone he wanted to try something different – they would see he was camouflaging. We talked about doing independent consulting.

There didn’t seem to be much enthusiasm for that.

I checked out his LinkedIn profile and offered some suggestions for an updated summary. I gave him some tips about participating in Q&A and using it to gain positive attention and cast a wider net, about using it to search jobs because it will show who he has connections to at those companies that have openings he might be interested in.  I talked about applying through the front door and networking through the back door.

It would be a great use of the newly found time he has to do some industry research by launching a poll and then writing about the findings. Good reason to have a blog. A Posterus is simple to set up, has great SEO optimization and the RSS feed could be imported to his LinkedIn profile.

It mentioned might be helpful to read company blogs based in the region he wishes to work in, check out company announcements in the local media for promotions and new hires to get a handle on who vacated a position, who was hired into a new one and where a vacancy might be left… You know, I always have to throw in some Special Agent tactics…

He thanked me for my time, reminded me I had a copy of his résumé in front of me and that I was free to send it out. I let him know this might take some time but that being methodical and consistent in his approach would eventually pay off.

He walked away with notes, seemingly a bit more on target with a strategy. Yet, I didn’t exactly sense urgency – perhaps because this life event was so new and he is still stunned. I didn’t sense much energy – perhaps because what happened is not generally viewed with a glass half full attitude by middle-aged executives who lose their job, face a job market in an industry that is excruciatingly tight and really weren’t looking for the unwanted excitement of change to begin with.

I’m very confident it will turn around for him, eventually – with a lot of hard work and strategy.

P.S. In the meantime, I look forward to a great white paper based on his linkedin research in the messy banking industry.

How do I know if it’s gone well?

Many times after a seminar attendees stick around and ask questions and I always stay around until they have all been answered.  I look at the evaluations to see how well the content resonated and if there are suggestions for next time. But for me the real feedback comes from what happens in the days and weeks after the presentation.

I feel I have done well when people connect with me and want to stay in touch. I get a lot of technical questions on how to do this or that and I get plenty of requests for one-on-one sessions and people asking to tap into my network. I think that’s fantastic, and it shows the experience met or exceeded their expectations.

So, when Wendy sent me the message in the screenshot today on Facebook it struck me that she didn’t want anything other than to tell me that she realized the importance of what I presented and made a decision to implement the strategy. I offered further support and she wrote back that she wasn’t looking for me to do the work for her but she would let me look at it when she has it up and running. A huge smile came to my face, she got it.

Recreate Wendy and then show the world…

Another mission accomplished.

Hello. I am a fellow open networker and I was wondering if we could connect. I would really appreciate if you could send me an invitation since I am running out. By connecting with me you will gain almost a million 2nd and 3rd degree connections. I also promise you that I won’t send you any spam.

I love LinkedIn – I’m all about helping others too and as a fellow open networker here is the reply I sent. I figured why just let that person see it when it could help others?

I appreciate your interest in becoming one of my LinkedIn contacts, and yes, I am a fellow open networker. Please indulge me by allowing me to share an immensely more etiquette proficient and effective way of engaging potential contacts.

Promising more contacts is not a hook… especially for someone who already has a lot of them. Especially another recruiter. A good recruiter knows how to reach most anyone.

I would be happy to accept you as a contact but not on my own invitation.. You’re asking me to work, to send you an invite – I don’t know you or have reason to. Open networker means I accept invitations not acept invitations to send invitations..

If you would like to be my contact find out how to make that happen through one of the 5 groups we are both members of or wait till next month when you’ll have more invitations to send.

Please don’t take this the wrong way.. Consider it networking skill building free advice.

Karla

Once a year there is another type of event at the Arena that is totally different. It’s an interactive event that can literally change your life. It’s the NEPA Job Fair. Similar events are held in cities across the country every year. So, if you’re lucky enough to have landed here through finding this blog in a Facebook or Twitter post or Google search it’s for you too.

Now of course, you can walk in the Arena doors and on to the floor and weave in and out of the maze of employer booths like a spectator – that’s what most people do. Then you’ll go home and talk about how it was, “OK but nothing special, there are no opportunities around here.”

That’s the big mistake most people make, they treat a job fair as a spectator sport. Find out how to work the job fair over at the NEPA Job Fair blog…

OK, I think I like it a lot. But how many places can one be logged on and use to communicate?

So, I’m here cozy by the fireplace with my laptop trying to figure out what to use. I’m a little confused where I should update statuses and share links from. I could do it from any of the applications I use… how does one choose???????????

I demand lifestreaming. I want one provider who gives me everything. I don’t want to have a gazillion separate logins with usernames and passwords and a bunch of clients and websites going at the same time. I think the addition of Buzz to the Google line of products is probably way better than Facebook and Twitter and I think I might eventually prefer to just use it and give them up.

But alas, as far as I can see I’ll never be able to do that because not all of my contacts, friends and even my own brother use Gmail. Facebook and Twitter have that one thing in common saving both of them. How do I get everyone in the same place?

I want integration and I want it now!

P.S. I think Wave was a decoy, a crude attempt to not give a way the baby with the bath water during a trial to get feedback about what people do not like and what doesn’t work. Buzz is the real roll out. Those Google people are slick. If I were ever to get a tattoo it might be the Google logo. Just sayin…….

L says there are only 4 people that are allowed to have the kind of instant access that social media provides and that would be the 3 kids and spouse however, it’s via cell phone and text messages not Facebook or Twitter.

L says that there isn’t a spare minute of time as it is to get everything done that needs to be accomplished professionally and personally and any intrusion in the already hectic daily schedule would just be intolerable. L routinely rejects LinkedIn and Facebook invitations to join, scared that doing so would mean giving up pieces a of a perfectly happy orchestrated and organized life.

L asked my opinion. I said why fix something that isn’t broken. Everything isn’t for everyone.

What do you think?