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Communications

Feb 02
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Social Media Assignment #5: Find Your Tweeps

By Communications

I let you have a few days off; call them virtual snow days. Now, back to work!

If you’re not on Twitter, go set up an account at www.twitter.com We’ll wait.

If you’ve ignored that last line, still don’t have a Twitter account and yet are still reading this post (tough room), here’s the deal — you want a Twitter account in the name of your choosing yesterday. If you don’t grab your name, or the name you want it will be gone (if it is not already). So even if you’re not quite ready to tweet, grab your name (and make sure you tweet a little or you will lose it.)

/digression.

You have a Twitter account and you’re following a few people; some are friends or bloggers you follow, others found you and you’re simply following them back.

Today’s Social Media Assignment: Find People to Follow on Twitter

Go to http://www.tweepz.com

Conduct a search using query tools, for example:

name: “Marijean Jaggers”

or

loc: Charlottesville, Va.

Use keywords to help you find the people you seek. Realize that, as usual, search is only as good as the information to find, so if people haven’t completed their biographical information, they may be more difficult to find. THIS IS A NUDGE TO GO COMPLETE YOUR BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION.

Ahem. Subtlety is not my strong suit.

Let’s see who we can follow, shall we?

For fun, I did a search for people with “business” in their bio, entering: bio: business.

Naturally the return was a huge number of users; more than 25,000. The next step when something like this happens is to refine your search by excluding extracted entities. Because I speak English, I start by excluding other languages, then I’ll move to excluding users who don’t follow anyone and so on down the line until I’ve created a more specifically generated list of people I want to follow.

You may be doing this exercise for yourself or for a client — if you’re generating this information for monitoring purposes, you can create an RSS feed to follow the search.

I hope this helps you develop new relationships via Twitter and you find it as beneficial as I have.

Jan 28
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Social Media Assignment #4: Edit Company Website

By Communications

A surprising number of my contacts have the following default setting in their LinkedIn profile:

It’s an easy fix, and one that’s often overlooked.

Today’s Social Media Assignment

Customize that “Company Website” default thusly: Edit the default Website settings on your LinkedIn profile. Login to your account and select Edit Profile.

When you’re in Edit Profile mode you will see lots of click-able blue links that say “Edit.”

Move to the section of your profile that lists Websites.

Click on the blue Edit next to one of your listed Websites (or if you’ve only listed one, that one — it doesn’t matter, they’ll all show up on the edit page.)

You have lots of options when you get to this stage, so you may have to think it through a bit.

You probably chose “Company Website” or “Blog” in the past. What you want to do, to open up an additional field to the right of this drop-down menu, is choose “Other.”

Choose Other! Really — it’s OK. When you choose “Other” a field opens, as depicted in the image at the left, that asks for your Website title. It is a really great opportunity to take advantage of smart search engine optimization to add the name of your company or a description of what you do to this field, then the URL in the field to the right of that.

As you can see in the capture of my profile below, my website listings are much more descriptive than “Company Website.”

I’m thrilled to hear from all of you who are following the social media assignments — keep up the good work!

Jan 27
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Social Media Assignment #3: I’m Just Not that Into Your Title

By Communications

See this?

It’s what LinkedIn calls my “Professional Headline.”

A professional headline is not your title.

Let me repeat: A professional headline should not be your title.

If, in this space, you’ve proudly put President, Vice President, Manager, Associate or what-have-you, then you’re missing an opportunity. In this space, rather than inserting the general, commonplace label your company has given you, put in key words that describe what it is you do. This helps others in your field, or those looking for someone just like you to find you.

Let’s face it, there are an awful lot of Vice Presidents out there, aren’t there, but there’s only one of you, right?

Today’s Social Media Assignment

My professional headline includes: “Social media strategy consultant, public relations professional, media trainer, public speaker, social media educator,” — list some phrases that describe what you do. If you need to, seek input from others at work. If you’re looking for a job or a new opportunity, think about including words that would help you be found in a search for someone fitting that description. Above all, take the time today to edit this part of your social profile and stop being lumped in with all the other people in the world who share your title, but nothing else.

Thank you to John Heaney who included me in the astute post, Avoiding the Top 5 LinkedIn Mistakes.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.

Jan 26
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Social Media Assignment #2: Show us Your Face

By Communications

I’ve been pretty adamant on this point because I believe in it so firmly.

It’s really important to show your face in social media. I see a lot of companies using a logo rather than an image of the actual person behind the tweets — I get that in some cases, there are multiple Twitter contributors to a single account. But often that’s not the case. So for single-user Twitter accounts, it is imperative to provide an image that reflects you; who you are right now (not as a four-year-old, as I am depicted to the left).

Here’s why this is important: when you’re meeting with someone for the first time, you are providing them a sense of comfort by allowing them to recognize you at first sight.

It’s not about you; it’s about what you’re doing for others.

If you’re squeamish about your own image, (trust me, I get it; I’m constantly fussing over bad hair or bags under my eyes) think about this: Roger Ebert lost his chin, jaw and, in fact the lower portion of his face due to cancer. He’s never shied away from showing us his face. If he can do it, well, come on!

Now it’s OK to be silly (see left) or seasonal (also left, at Easter) as long as it looks like you. My point here, is you do not need to hire a photographer to capture an image of you to use on social platforms.

However!

If you want to appear professional, if you want to look good, you should absolutely leave it to the experts and hire someone to give you a headshot you’re happy to share. Digital images can be captured in the dozens, giving you the chance to select from several “takes” — choose one you are satisfied with so that you will really use it everywhere you can.

Today’s Social Media Assignment:

Find or make an appointment to get that image of your face you’re happy to show the world. Wear something that doesn’t distract from what you look like; unless you wear a hat all the time (I’m looking at you, John Feminella), don’t wear a hat in the photo. The idea is to make yourself as recognizable as possible; it’s one of the best ways to really be human in your virtual social network.

Special thanks to Angie Brement Photography for professional headshots I’m happy to use!