The last few weeks I’ve tried out a number of new(ish) apps in the social media/contact management space.
Klout.com: free online service provides a useful read on your influence via social media, and helps match products to their influencers to spread the word. My score is 47 out of 100, not great (yet!) – but for some reason their system has identified me as an expert in “development” and “Drupal.” Huh? Craig Leinoff, who built RMA on Drupal, would definitely not agree. In any case, seems like a great tool to track your own growth and activity level in social media.
Branchout.com: This launched last year, but this week it popped up in quite a few FB friends’ status updates. It's the first major play to meld in LinkedIn-style professional networking to FB where you can better leverage your personal network AND the more dynamic FB environment. At the moment I still feel ambivalent about making FB more than what it is for me today: A place to talk about all the stuff that interests me that isn’t my work. But we’ll see how the rest of the world reacts. I’m willing to be open-minded.
Connectedhq.com: $10/month direct competitor to Gist, which is still free. Connected (which launches you with a free 2-week trial) and Gist are equally easy to set up. Gist’s dashboard overwhelms me, and I don’t necessarily want to aggregate my FB feeds with my Twitter feeds. What’s most important to me is to identify and retrieve all the feeds of an individual contact, along with our history of exchanges. Gist does that with its email plugins; Connected does it on its web site (which has a mobile optimized version) and with a gmail sidebar. Connected’s edge seems to be a whole bunch of cool-seeming apps – for example, the Interaction Summary “tracks your weekly interactions in terms of total contacts added, emailed, called, and met.” Good way to get a snapshot of whether you’re keeping up with your networking efforts. So at the moment, Connected seems to have a slight lead over Gist on functionality – but am I ready to pay $10/month for it? Not yet.
Job Seekers: Finally, I haven’t tried it, but LinkedIn just launched a Job Seeker premium service. [UPDATE: Apparently the service has been around for a while - but I was only just recently targeted with advertising for it.] The major benefit over their standard paid service comes when you apply to a job through LinkedIn - you jump to the top of the list of applicants (although with all the other paid Job Seekers!). Also you get a “Job Seeker” badge on your profile – but is that really a good thing?
If you’ve got opinions on or have tried any of these services, please weigh in! Since no one person has time to explore every service's last bell and whistle, we really need crowd wisdom to sort it out.
Check out the LinkedIn tip below – it’s just a tiny taste of the free webinar being offered by our resident LinkedIn expert TODAY, March 21, at 3pmET.
Click here to sign up! Don’t worry if you’re not available today – signing up gets you access to the recording and e-book.
Now, here’s today tip:
Have you used LI’s “Ask A Question” tool yet? Sure, it’s a great way to pull expertise from your network – but here’s a more clever usage: Use it to organize meet ups! When you’re heading to a city, send out the question, “Would anyone like to have a drink in Orange County? – I’ll be in town for a client meeting and would love to meet some of you in person!” You can also experiment with framing the meet-up around a discussion topic, and direct the question toward appropriate industry groups.
Hope you’ll check out the call today – it’s a great way to start leveraging the full power of the world’s #1 online professional networking tool.
Whether you know it or not, you are creating a brand for yourself online. If you haven’t given any thought to what you put on the Internet this may sound like bad news. As the proverb goes, “in crisis lies opportunity.” You can start right now to shape your online brand so that your best foot is forward – all the time.
Kate-Madonna Hindes’ RMA Masterclass is the ultimate beginner’s guide to getting the real you across online. Small business professionals and solopreneurs, this one is especially terrific for you.
Here are three tips from Kate-Madonna to help cultivate an authentic virtual presence that screams, Connect with me!
Humanize: People don’t want to read a ‘how to.’ They want to read opinions and hear about experiences and passions. Bring your own voice.
Resonate: Once you find your audience, never stop adapting your material. This is your platform to broadcast WHO you are.
Originate: A successful presence is original and filled with anecdotes and wit. The only thing that sets you apart? YOU.
Question: How often do you Google yourself, and are you happy with what you find? If not, how are you fixing it?
Sitting in the Delta Sky Room of Los Angeles Airport, I had the great pleasure of interviewing social media relationship expert Chris Brogan—who was for once not in the airport himself but in his office in Northern Massachusetts – for, among other things, an RMA Masterclass that we called “Never Eat Alone Meets Social Media Mastermind.”
Chris gave ME great advice – “more @replies Keith!” – and gave listeners a ton of act-now info on how to rev up your LinkedIn profile, create door-opening currency online, and bring customers to you instead of having to go find them.
Click through to read part of Chris’ awesome LinkedIn advice:
To help get you a jump start in the Twitterverse, here’s the Top Six Twitter Tips for Newbies that my team culled in part from a conversation in the RMA forums!
1. Dive in. Once you’ve added the obvious Twitter friends, start digging – who and what are they linking to that interests you? Who are they retweeting? In addition to searching through your initial network, do a Twitter search for topics or people of interest to you. As RMAer Eric Frazer suggested, http://search.twitter.com/ is a great, user-friendly search site to find out who’s having the conversations you’re interested in joining.
2. Save space! You’ve only got 140 characters per tweet, so use a URL shortener like the one found at http://tiny.cc/ to convert your links into shorter ones.
3. Hashtags and retweets and private messages? Oh my! What can make Twitter feel so foreign at first are the #s and @s you see everywhere – but making use of these links you to the larger Twitter community. Use the @ symbol before a Twitter user’s name (@RMA) to link to that profile. Use hashtags to get your post to show under a particular category – for instance, if referencing your RMA work, just add the hash before it (#RMA) to get it to show up in a search for tweets on RMA!
4. Save time by linking your accounts. Wondering how you’ll keep up with Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn while still finding time to eat three meals a day? Applications like TweetDeck link your accounts for you, so that you have a centralized space for all of your social-networking applications.
5. And then I went to the store… Even your closest friends will be tempted to remove you from their Twitter feeds if all you post are your accomplishments or obvious PR. Similarly, a play-by-play of your day’s events isn’t going to draw people in. As Chris Brogan notes in his list of tips on using Twitter for business (thanks to Eric Frazer for the link!), “Instead of answering the question ‘What are you doing?’ answer the question, ‘What has your attention?’”
6. Cultivate conversations. You don’t always have to have something to share – a great way to start a conversation with your Twitter followers is to just ask a question. And as Rachel Katz has noted, don’t be afraid to reply to someone’s tweet, even if you don’t know them! Your response will show up on their feed, meaning they and others interested in the same topic will have the opportunity to read your thoughts and respond.
I'm trying to make my Twitter stream more useful. Here are some ideas Ryan, KF.com's community/social media guy, had for me. I thought they might be useful for you too.
1. Start to post more questions. People love to answer them. This is a quick way to build community. If you ask the right questions as people will answer other people’s questions and connect that way.
2. Give more tactical advice. Transform your inspirational thoughts into challenges for your followers. Try to think tactically and I think people will respond well. ex: “Next time you go to a meeting, call ahead and ask if they want a Starbucks. Ask the receptionist too :)”
3. Host more impromptu “tweetups” when you have downtime in your travels. A great opportunity to do this is to invite people to any charity events that you plan to integrate into your travel schedule this year.
I also throw the question back at you: What you would like to see more of in my Tweets/Status Updates? Less of?
Start to post more questions. People love to answer them. This is a quick way to build community if you ask the right questions as people will answer other people’s questions and connect that way.
Give more tactical advice. Transform your inspirational thoughts into challenges for your followers. Try to think tactically and I think people will respond well. ex: “Next time you go to a meeting, call ahead and ask if they want a Starbucks. Ask the receptionist too :)” or “Set one goal for this week that you’ll do every day. Make it simple, like “I’ll wake up at 5am”. Tell me about your experience.” Then followup up later that week - “Did anyone set a simple goal for this week? Give me your tips for sticking to your goals in the New Year!” (Then I’ll RT people’s answers)
Host more impromtu “tweetups” when you have downtime in your travels. A great opportunity to do this is to invite people to your charity events that you plan to integrate into your travel schedule this year.
When I started tweeting, I was a Twitter idiot! I made tons of mistakes. Here's the top five, translated into my "5 Tips for Better Tweeting."
Quick hits on the 5 tips:
1. Be generous first. Think about what’s in it for your readers.
2. Twitter yourself! Twitter’s about authenticity; you shouldn't hire it out, and you’ll enjoy doing it anyway.
3. Don’t broadcast; have a dialogue and a conversation.
4. Don’t get swept up by negative tweets. Engage them, but don’t obsess.
5. Put Twitter on all your devices so that you can be ubiquitous.
And even though I feel like I've gotten the hang of it, I'm sure I'm still making mistakes. Please, tell me! And what goofs have you seen elsewhere on Twitter?
Blogging and tweeting can help you build your personal brand and rev up relationship outreach. But you may be wondering, How am I going to have time to do all that writing? Do I even have anything to say?
Of course you do! Don’t make the mistake of thinking that everything that you put on your blog has to be written expressly for the blog. Here are a few sources of quick, repurpose-able content:
1. Take two minutes to scan your Sent emails from the past few weeks and you’ll find that many of them have valuable content – advice you gave to a colleague or employee, for example. (Of course, never put someone else’s personal information on your blog; either get permission or generalize your advice.)
2. Now scan your Inbox: If someone sent you a particularly insightful email, ask if you can use it on your blog and give them credit, or a guest byline.
3. Listen carefully: Conversations that you’ve overheard on the subway platform or online at Starbuck’s can make for interesting “Overheard” style posts.
4. Avid movie or TV watcher? Be on the lookout for great quotes that apply to your business or subject area. (For someone in advertising, for example, Madmen is a smorgasbord of quotable quotes.)
5. Look for quotes and ideas from your bedside/morning reading.
6. Excel documents that you’ve made to manage productivity, contacts or anything else can make great shares for your blog.
7. Search online for educational or inspirational quotes from your heroes – business leaders, public figures, and artists you admire.
8. Consider a group blog: You’re instantly multiplying the amount of content you’ve got working for your brand. Just make sure to choose your partners wisely.
In collecting content, don't forget your audience -- shoot to be either educational or entertaining (or both) at all times. For a great primer on quality blogging, check out this Problogger post.
The last few weeks I’ve tried out a number of new(ish) apps in the social media/contact management space.
conversation in the 
1. Start to post more questions. People love to answer them. This is a quick way to build community. If you ask the right questions as people will answer other people’s questions and connect that way.
