These groups are an excellent approach to enriching your network. They offer a low-threshold way to connect with liked-minded people, or to find people in need of your expertise.

Whatever your reason for joining a group, let’s explore how you can search for groups, join them, and begin to participate.

Finding Groups Relevant to You

Start by logging in to your LinkedIn profile. Click the Groups button in the toolbar along the top.

The default tab is “My Groups.” Here you will see the Groups you belong to. You can rearrange their order by clicking on “Edit the order of your groups” at the top right of your list.

Since you are probably starting your list now, you won’t have any groups listed.

Let’s Join a Group

Click on the “Groups Directory” tab and let’s explore the types of groups you can join.

LinkedIn hosts some groups that attract tens of thousands of members. These are are shown along the right in their Featured Groups category.

Read through this list to see if anything catches you eye.

You will see groups with political affiliations, university alumni, and professional or trade industry.

Selecting groups relevant to your career is a smart first stop.

Another way to find relevant groups is to use the Search Groups function on the left hand side.

You can choose Categories and Language in your search filter. I recommend choosing a category that’s relevant to you and your preferred language, but leave the search field blank. This returns the broadest array of results for your review.

Let’s say you want to attend conferences as a way to build your network. Select the “Conference Groups” option in English. As of March, 2010, that returns 7,880 groups!

Run your search again using one keyword to narrow this down. In this example, I’m using “marketing” as my keyword.

That reduced the list to 301 – much more manageable!

Now I want to restrict the results to my locale since I am not able to travel around the world to conferences.

Click in the Search Groups field again. “Marketing” is still there but add a city to it. I’m using Chicago.

This delivered two results: Marketing To Women, and Marketing to Men.

Now I have targeted two events that may interest me. I would not have known about these otherwise most likely.

The Marketing to Men event strikes me as the more interesting of the two.

Click on the link to learn more about the group and find links to the event’s site. Even though this group only shows 17 members, the conference itself has likely attracted 100+ attendees.

If you are really aggressive, you will research who is a marketing professional in Chicago for companies for whom this type of marketing is important, and reach out to those individuals for input on whether they are attending the event. If they are, you have set up a new networking contact in another city that can help you meet others along the way.

How to Joining a Group

When you find a group that piques your interest, click the yellow “Join Group” button. Most groups provide instant membership but some group moderators prefer to review applicants before granting membership.

This is commonly found among Groups who focus on alumni of universities or companies. Trying to join groups when you don’t have a legitimate affiliation mark you with questionable intentions. You can contact the group moderator directly if you need to appeal to their reasoning and you have other circumstances.

That is, you may have worked at the company for a brief period and do not want it known publicly on your profile but still want to connect with people in that industry or field.

Once you join a group, it’s time to share your input.

In the Overview tab, you have options to “Start a Discussion,” “Submit News,” or “Share group.” To share a group means inviting people in your network to join the group, too. This viral effect is a great way to reinforce your network.

If you want to discuss a given topic, use the “Start a Discussion” link. In the example above where you wanted Chicago hotel recommendations, this is the right place to post that question. When you read the article about Starbucks’ new store concept, you would use the “Submit News” link instead.

Explore the other tabs of the group to see what content has been posted.

Some groups share job leads by posting them in the Jobs tab. Others are such large groups that they have divided themselves into subgroups to provide a tighter focus on specific topics relevant to the group at large.

If the group’s manager has empowered you to have administrator’s rights, you have the ability to contact members through individual or group emails, and edit other people’s membership in the group.

If the time has come for you to leave the group or adjust your privacy settings, click the “More…” tab to adjust your settings.

Connect With Others

Monitor the group’s activity to see who regular contributes and who doesn’t.

If you are looking to grow your network base, you can reach out to other group members whose profile and interests match your own.

Send a message to that person with a short introduction of yourself, and why you would like to connect. Don’t use LinkedIn’s default sentence – it’s not personalized and people recognize it. If you don’t take the time to write a sincere introduction versus using a canned sentence, others are less likely to care about connecting with you.

Two to three sentences is plenty but make sure they are your sentences, not a pre-written one.

That does not mean you have to write a fresh message every single time. Instead, craft a basic message you can repeat with others. The point is to be authentic and human. I use this technique by keeping my standard notes saved in a Word document for my networking activities. This saves me from having to dig up old emails each time to remember what I wrote before.

Finding More Groups

Continue to explore the Groups section of LinkedIn to find at least 10 groups that have subject matter or activities relevant to your needs.

Managing Membership

While you can join as many groups as you like, remember that you will want to monitor their activity levels through the periodic updates that LinkedIn sends out.

Many groups are formed with the best of intentions but quickly wither and dissolve due to a lack of nurture by the group’s owner, or the group was only meant to serve a temporary purpose whose time has past (and the group owner didn’t delete it yet).

I recommend reviewing your groups at least once every three to four months. Look at the ones with regular updates, ideally at least once a week. Those who haven’t updated in several weeks or more are candidates for removal.

Remember that a key part of using social media effectively is not spreading yourself too thin. Focus your energies and resources on where you will get the most return because belonging to a group also requires contributing in some way.

Contributing to Groups

A nice advantage of belonging to a group is that there are always people in it who stand out and help others.

If you need a recommendation on a good but affordable hotel near a conference in Chicago, this is one good way to utilize your networking instead of scouring hotel review sites. Recommendations from others like yourself tend to be more reliable than trusting even the best written – but essentially anonymous – postings in travel review sites.

Social media is an excellent resource for surfacing the best recommendations because you get an honest answer from the people answering your questions.

Another way to participate is to post links to articles in the media relevant to your audience. Don’t just post a link though – you need to add value to your posting.

Keep the posting on topic for the group (i.e., don’t post sports stories in a financial advisors group on the assumption that someone in the group likes the same team – that’s not why people are in this particular group).

When you post the link, add some analysis or opinion to the story.

For example, Starbucks has begun opening a new style of cafes that mimic local, independent coffee shops. Their intent is to blend in to the neighborhood better by being a part of the neighborhood versus installing their standard blueprint store with its consistent branding, push-button coffee dispensers and merchandise for sale.

If you are a Starbucks regular who has experienced one of these new concept stores, what did you think about the experience? How would you have executed the idea differently?

By demonstrating your thought processes and ideas, you strike up conversations. Others will respond, with their own pros and cons.

The point isn’t that you have to defend your ideas. The point is to start conversations, and nurture them until they naturally dissolve. That is, don’t start a conversation and abandon it once people begin posting their comments. Respond to each and every poster – this is how you engage and participate.

Creating a Group

I encourage you to explore extensively the groups that match your interests before creating a new group.

However, if you cannot find a group that matches your needs exactly (for example, there is not a version of the group you need in your city), then create a group.

Before you create it, though, take time to prepare for how you will manage and nurture the group’s growth and sustenance. The motto of “Build it and they will come” has deluded many an internet enterprise into believing a massive audience was waiting at their doorstep when really only a few were interested. Don’t fall into this same trap.

Considerations for Creating a Group

Be sure your group has a broad enough base of interest to attract a viable membership base.

What are your group’s goals? Is it to foster networking among a particular group? Is it to coordinate actions to achieve a common goal or objective?

Perhaps you are self-employed and you want to establish your presence as the go-to professional in your field. Having a LinkedIn profile is not enough. Add a group that focuses on your business, too, as a way to corral customers and recommendations around what you do and the value you provide.

This is free advertising, and provides a forum where you can speak to people who are opting in to hear your messages.

Make Your Group Thrive

But what do you do with them once they show up?

Brainstorm with a pad of post-it notes by writing down one idea on each sticky. Each idea can be a topic you can write about, advice you can provide, stories you can tell about success you’ve had with your clients, or news about upcoming events.

Now place these in a sequence that makes sense. It may be by event date or a multi-part series with each component building on its predecessor.

Congratulations, you’ve just created an editorial calendar.

Update whatever calendaring system you prefer, whether it’s a printed day planner, Outlook, Google Calendar or other tool. This becomes your to-do list so you can focus on the content and not stress over what to contribute.

Wrap Up

LinkedIn Groups offer the quickest access to expertise across the expanse of disciplines considered professions. You can easily connect with others near and far away. Start a Group if you cannot find one that meets your exact needs but be prepared to nurture it, keep it vital and of value to others so it will grow.

Let’s Have Coffee

Which Groups have you found to have the most value for you? Have you created a LinkedIn Group? Pull up a chair and share in the Comments section for a response.

As said before, your LinkedIn profile is how you make a first impression on others. Whether you know it or not, you are being regularly researched online. For the job seeker then, it’s exceedingly important you make that recruiter pick up the phone and call you.

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile

Just as it’s important to be descriptive for the person reading your profile to understand who and what you’re about, it’s equally important that search engines understand you, too. Why does Google, Bing, and Yahoo matter? When people research you, they typically don’t go to specific sites to find you. They enter your name and probably your location into a search engine, then start sifting through the results.

Associating your name with relevant keywords is why optimizing your profile for people and machines matters.

For example, let’s say you are an independent accountant. You focus on providing accounting and tax preparation services to small businesses in your city. You have no staff, no marketing budget, and a rudimentary network. How do you promote yourself?

One way to help you get found is to write your profile to include keywords that people searching for you will use.

Make a list of the types of businesses you want to attract. Let’s say you want to focus for now on lawn keepers because it’s summer:

• Lawn maintenance services
• Lawn mowers
• Gardening services
• 98122
• Small business accounting
• Small business tax preparation

This simple example lists search terms that you can incorporate into your profile. The search engines look at relevancy and proximity of terms to one another to determine context. That is, if your profile says the following, then a search engine is likely to score you a high match to the searcher’s query:

David Thompson is a small business accountant with 10+ years experience providing small business accounting and small business tax preparation for lawn maintenance, gardening services, and lawn mower small businesses in the Seattle area.

Make LinkedIn Profiles Work For You

As you write entries about your work experience and history, use specific terms. Avoid generic statements like, “Successfully achieved first quarter results for my division.” Instead, you can say, “Generated 24% rate of return on physical inventories in the first quarter of 2008 using CPERP inventory management system.”

Put Some Flair Into Your LinkedIn Profile

The impulse with LinkedIn profiles is to write dry, conventional resume-like statements. I encourage you to show more color in your profile. Certainly profanity is out of the question for most people but I have seen profiles that use mild instances to good effect. You know what is acceptable in your industry, so use good judgment.

By injecting some color into your profile, you reveal yourself as a well-rounded person – not another resume. And everyone wants to connect with a real person, not a piece of paper.

Honor the Facts

Tempting as it may be to stretch the truth here and there, you can better compensate for any shortcomings by using gentle humor or short-and-sweet sentences to fill in the gaps.

New to the work world and fresh from an internship this summer? Show what you learned but also show how you grew and enjoyed it.

“Advertising Account Specialist freshly minted from Northern University wants to surprise and delight your clients like I learned from Watson Advertising the summer of 2008. I listen to what they want, craft a brief so the creatives get it right, and know to fetch coffee if you need it.”

When In Doubt, Imitate

Look at several profiles in your profession on LinkedIn. When you find one that impresses you, study what makes it work. Pick apart the formula, then swap out the keywords that person used with the ones you need. You are better off imitating than being boring.

Looking for Some Mutual Optimization?

Want to review a statement before going public? We can’t give you lawyerly advice but we are great with a thumbs up or thumbs down and reasons why. Post your optimized profile in the Comments.

Relationships matter. Relationships are about individuals connecting to share information, discover meaning together, and expand their mutual knowledge.

As social media expands its presence among the facets of our lives, the professional realm receives special focus.

Long considered the premier social networking site for business professionals, LinkedIn boasts over 50 million members in 200 countries in 170 industries as of October 2009.

Whether for meeting a new recruiter, business partner, vendor or job candidate, you can expect to be researched on LinkedIn. It is regarded as the web site to research people and companies.

Salespeople use it to mine for leads. Recruiters research job candidates before deciding to move resumes forward. Job seekers use it to uncover who they know at the companies they are targeting — and who those people know by extension.

Think of LinkedIn as an expanded edition of the yellow pages: not only can you find the right person at nearly any company but you can review their history and relationships, too.

Use it to create awareness of you among people you do not know but want to know. You can also use it to demonstrate your company’s strengths and build business relationships.

Who’s Using LinkedIn?

Who are those 50 million users?

• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies
• Entrepreneurs seeking new clients and investors
• Recent college graduates connecting with classmates and instructors
• Sophisticated job seekers
• Independent consultants of all stripes
• Individuals building professional networks for career and business development

What You Get From LinkedIn

Rather than exchanging a business card (buried on your desk never to see daylight again), LinkedIn keeps your connections vibrant and sustains your interactions with them by you maintaining your profile and network regularly. Otherwise, your connections can easily turn into that forgotten business card.

Many companies post job openings exclusively on LinkedIn to attract higher caliber candidates, and to recruit for those golden slots in the hidden job market.

Thousands of Groups, Discussions, and Answers offer a wealth of free expertise to help you solve specific problems. Just ask!

The more active you are by posting Status Updates, building new connections, participating in Groups and Discussions, and providing Answers to questions asked by others, the more value you gain from LinkedIn. With daily or weekly email updates, you are easily kept up to date with the goings on of your network, too.

Making Introductions

A terrific feature of LinkedIn is the ability to introduce your connections to one another. Since we can’t always meet in person, this enables you to connect two people who can benefit by getting to know each other.

Whether it’s a candidate interested in a recruiter’s company, or a friend needing services from a firm you recommend, the ability to introduce and build connections demonstrates the value you offer your connections. This value grows your network into a potent resource others will want to tap.

Degrees of Connection

As you build your network, people you connect with one-on-one are “first-degree” connections. Their connections are “second-degree” and those connections are “third-degree,” relative to you.

You might think a first-degree connection is better than a second- or third-degree connection. It’s counterintuitive but second degree connections often prove more vital.

This is because you cannot know everyone. But the people you know bestow a level of trust in the people they connect with, just as they do with you. This shows that if they trust you, they likely trust the other person also.

By extension, you can probably trust this person, too. Ask for an introduction through your mutual contact if you can offer value to that second-degree connection. Don’t just connect to ratchet your numbers higher. Building a network is not solely a numbers game but your number of connections strongly correlates with your reach.

Growing your network organically allows you to curate your base of contacts. Choose quality over quantity.

LinkedIn Tutorials

For a quick but thorough lesson on getting started, try LinkedIn’s online how-to’s for step-by-step instructions.

http://bit.ly/linkedin101

Looking for a Jump Start?
Unsure of how to create a profile or what certain settings mean? Post your question in the Comments section for a response.

If your LinkedIn profile is your professional side, then Facebook is your personal side. Regularly using your profile on Facebook through status updates, friending other people, becoming Fans of Pages and joining Groups are ways to round out your social media profile.

Facebook is the dominant social networking web site for connecting with friends and family online. With over 350 million members as of January, 2010, its audience continues to grow and demonstrate high levels of activity.

With LinkedIn, you are optimizing your profile to be found by people searching for you online. In contrast, Facebook offers more customizable security and privacy functions to tailor your degree of visibility to the world.

This post is longer than normal because we have a lot to cover, and it’s best to do it all at one time. This unit will focus on how to create a great profile and keep it fresh with Status Updates.

1. Profile Basics

Signing Up
Start by signing up at www.facebook.com with your first and last name, your email address and a password. Facebook also requires your gender, and birth date. Don’t worry about showing your age – this can be hidden later in the process but it’s used to reveal age-appropriate content only.

Even though there may be other people on Facebook with your name, your email address, birth date and location will keep you unique among the listings.

Facebook will then present two oddly shaped words (called CAPTCHA) that you must type into the box below them. These are a deterrent to email spammers trying to create bogus accounts on the site.

2. Add Friends

Adding friends to increase your network is at the heart of Facebook.

After you successfully enter the CAPTCHA words, Facebook walks you through four steps in setting up your profile.

The first two steps include adding and finding friends already on Facebook.

In Step 1, Facebook will suggest people you may already know. Part of the sign up process includes providing access to your email address book. This is so that Facebook can scan it (and find who you know on the site).

At this stage, it also scans for your email address among the users who have already submitted their address book. Think of it as a reverse-lookup.

If you see a person you know, and want to connect with that person, click the link “Add as a friend” below their name. A request will be sent to the person to approve or ignore your request. You will receive many of these requests as you begin to be found, and people want to connect with you.

These users will not know that they were suggested to you so it is OK if you choose to forgo adding them to your network for now. You can click “Skip” next to the “Continue” button if you prefer to bypass this step.

In Step 2, Facebook will ask to access your email address book to scan for email addresses of members already on the site. This is a quick way to find people you know.

If you are using an online email service such as Google’s Gmail or Yahoo’s mail, this is a quick and easy scan.

If you are using email that is stored on your computer, such as Outlook, then this tool will not work since Facebook is trying to access your email history on a service’s computer system – not your personal machine.

Click “Skip this Step” if your email provider is not an online service.

3. Completing Your Profile

In Step 3, you may add your high school and college information as a way to find classmates from schools you attended.

You may also enter the name of a company where you work now or in the past to find colleagues.

Facebook will then use these pieces of information to suggest yet more people you may know. Review the suggestions and add the ones you know and want as connections. There is no rule of thumb on how many friends you should or should not have. Having too few means you are either new or not very active, and having too many could mean you’re spending too much time online.

Likewise, avoid friending people you have only met once and briefly. While that is acceptable on LinkedIn, reflecting how business and professional relationships are more cut and dry, in personal life this action assumes a stronger degree of connection than the other person may feel. Unless you explicitly ask to friend the person on Facebook, it is not a smart tactic.
The same goes for friends of friends. If you look through your friends’ list of friends and see someone you want to meet, ask for an introduction. Do not friend the person on the assumption that it is welcome. This can be viewed as “stalkerish” behavior.

4. Adding Your Photo

Using your photo online helps other people find you. It also is an opportunity to reveal yourself in a very human way.

Facebook lets you upload your photo from your computer or you can use your computer’s camera to take a quick snapshot.

Make sure your photo is clear and your face is visible. You can post group photos and artistic shots in your Photo section later. For now, focus on being identifiable.

You can reuse your LinkedIn profile photo if you like.

Don’t forget to smile!

5. Rounding Out Your Profile

Now that you have the basics, it’s time to build a full profile.

Facebook presents a page where you can add friends, update your profile, and modify your privacy settings.

Let’s start by clicking on “View and edit your profile.”

Basic Information
We will focus on your Basic Information window in the middle to start.

You can choose to reveal your gender in your profile, and your birth date. Whether you do this or not is a personal choice. There is no benefit or loss with either choice.

For “Current City” list where you now live. This greatly improves your chances of being found by others. Do the same for “Hometown” for the same reason.

Most people add their family to their Facebook network. If you are worried about some family members seeing what you may post, don’t be. There are ways to carefully reveal who can see what in your profile. We’ll get to those in the next stage.

For “Relationship Status” select the right one for you. For “Interested In” select the right one for you as well. And “Looking For” is the same.

Why are these three included? While you don’t have to answer these if you prefer not to, your answers create opportunities to connect with similar people. Also, advertisers use this demographic data to target relevant ads in Facebook to you.

For “Political Views” and “Religious Views” you may want to opt out of answering. I suggest this because nothing elicits more high-strung emotions and arguments than politics and religion. If your network is pretty homogenous and like-thinking, or you are adamant in your positions, then answering these makes sense.

I caution against it because you never know who believes what, and friendships are lost over divisive issues. At the least, give this some thought before answering since you can update your profile at any time.

Click “Save Changes” when done.

Personal Information
Click the triangle pointing to “Personal Information” to open the window.

In each of the categories, you are given a free-form text box to enter as much as you wish. Separate items by commas. As in other parts of your profile, these entries are used to target information to you that matches your interests.

Enter as much or as little as you wish.

Click “Save Changes” when done.

Contact Information
Due to concerns over identity theft and general privacy, I recommend you enter only the information you feel is necessary.

If you like to use instant messenger programs like Yahoo Instant Messenger or Google’s GTalk, you can add your handle for the different systems.

Facebook has an integrated chat feature so you may prefer using it than your regular instant messenger program.

Adding your City/Town and ZIP codes are safe ones – these make it easier for people to find you to add to their networks.

Adding a link to your own web site is a smart entry, so be sure to include it if you have one.

Contact Information: Privacy Settings
Notice those little padlock icons to the right of each entry?

Click the downward pointing triangle for options of who can see each piece of information.

Facebook’s privacy settings recognize you will have different degrees of connection to people. Depending on the information, you may want only those people you add as friends to have access to it. You may be comfortable with that information being accessible to friends of friends (second degree connections). If you want, you can open the information up to “everyone” which makes it viewable in search engine results.

How private versus open you want to be is a decision for each individual. I recommend considering the piece of information you are sharing, and how readily available you want it to be. As mentioned above, you can change these settings at any time. Regardless of your decision, be sure to review the settings for each item and select the one appropriate for you.

Education and Work
Last you may add the schools you attended to find classmates and employers to find present or former colleagues.

Not everyone is comfortable with friending a coworker on Facebook because we retain a distinct sense of difference between our work lives and our personal lives. Do not be offended if a coworker seemingly never accepts a friend request – and do not pester people to accept them. This is rude and unnecessary. We are not seeking to see who can have the most people sign our yearbooks before the semester ends and we all leave for summer.

This is also an example of why revealing your political leanings or religious views can be a source of friction, and worth consideration before publication.

Sometimes the people we have fond memories of are also people who have moved on to different phases of life. That means not everyone wants to keep in touch with those they used to know. This reflects how we grow and change over time.

While it is nice to catch up and say hello once in a while, keeping up to date on a regular basis through Facebook status updates is probably too much contact with these individuals.

We have to take this into consideration when reconnecting with people from our past. Not everyone wants to reconnect – respect that boundary and do not take it personally.

All of our relationships and friendships have varying degrees of intimacy. What you share with your best friend now is not what you shared with your best friend in high school, probably. Unless your best friend from then is still your best friend today!

Finalize Your Privacy Settings
While the default privacy settings are probably a safe bet for a majority of people, I recommend you visit these periodically.

As social media becomes more and more prominent in our lives and a key way for people to learn about us, we have to practice more control over what is shared about our lives. Celebrities and politicians have had publicists and public relations experts to manage these flows of information. Now, you need to exercise some of the same judgments in your life.

Let’s review what Facebook’s Privacy settings do.

Click on the Account tab in the upper right, and go down to Privacy Settings.

Each part of your profile has an independent privacy setting. You can choose the level of privacy by category by clicking on the button on the right. You can choose from:
• Everyone
• Friends of Friends
• Only Friends
• Customize

The first three are self-explanatory. Let’s look at Customize further.

By creating a Customized privacy setting, you can strategically filter out who can and cannot see that category’s contents.

The first section allows you to choose who can see the content:
• Friends of Friends
• Only Friends
• Specify People
• Only Me

By choosing the first option, your second-degree connections can see information about you. This is typically suitable for your hometown or where you live now, and other basics.

Choosing “Only Friends” constrains the information further to only people you have a one-to-one connection with. Selecting “Specify People” reduces the content to be viewable ONLY by those you approve to see it. The last option of “Only Me” is for the most private information. What’s the point of posting information on a social network that nobody can see? The content may be information you want to share with others one by one or on an as-needed basis, with the ability to withdraw permission at will.
Using these options wisely lets you share information selectively with your network and avoid potential conflict, too.

For example, if you support one view on a controversial view but you are unsure if your neighbors or certain friends think the same way, it is safer to limit your postings on that topic (whether “for” or “against”) to a list of only those who agree with you.

Though we hold our First Amendment right to free speech dearly, we do not always exercise the best restraint when dealing with others who oppose our views.

Consider these settings as tools to use wisely to keep in the peace. Your option is to avoid making controversial statements online.

Remember, too, that potential employers research you online. If they see your postings, and feel concerned by them, you may have forfeited an opportunity without ever knowing why you didn’t that get that interview.

Face Face Face / Give Me Face

Paint that profile with the best palette in shades of You. Some blue for in the cloud moments, a little red when you feel randy, and some white to show your purity, too. What’s in your Profile? Who has the best Profile you know? Spread the love in the Comments section for a response.

Social media introduces a new facet into your life, one that is exciting, valuable and when done right does not require a huge time commitment. In fact, you can do it on an impulse basis – which often proves to be the best moments of clarity. These random thoughts will accumulate, and you will soon become comfortable with actively using social media in your everyday life.

This book-as-a-blog is written for the social media beginner to intermediate social networker. If you are a self-driven individual who enjoys learning new skills, this is for you.

Remember, it’s about collaborating, acting, sharing, networking, participating, and inspiring. And as Dan Schawbel, author of “Me 2.0” said, “There is no hiding anymore and transparency and authenticity are the only means to survive and thrive in this new digital kingdom.”

Social media users interact to find friendship and commonalities, and this requires that you have something interesting to bring to the conversation, that you show respect, and that you don’t impose on others. A friend remembers you and what you stand for.

That Spark of Inspiration

My initial idea for this eBook was to help myself better learn about social media for job search functions.

When I want to learn new skills, I rewrite what I’m learning in my own words to better retain the new knowledge. I have several Moleskin notebooks dedicated to specific books.

Then I started meeting more and more people who were also in job search mode.

More jobs were evaporating than being created and recruiters were receiving hundreds of resumes within hours of posting positions on their web sites.

To combat the deluge of resumes, recruiters were beginning not to review the resumes they received through their web sites. Instead, they quietly exchanged names of good candidates among themselves. It was a matter of efficiency and quality versus sifting through hundreds of resumes.

Layoffs continued to pour people onto the streets of Seattle by the hundreds, just like they did across the rest of America.

I witnessed people become progressively more desperate to return to work after overcoming sticker shock of salary reductions of drops of 15-25% or more in an environment where the employer set the price – not the market – to lower salaries that would keep their companies afloat. It was painful for us all.

In April, 2009, I attended a LinkedIn 101 class and about 50 people came, filling the room to capacity. As the speaker began, I glanced around and guessed the average age was mid-40’s, with an even mixture of men and women. I noticed great fear on their faces.

The speaker surveyed the crowd regarding their current employment status. Many had been with the same company for over 10 years and in their careers for over 15 years. They were hardworking and loyal marketers, engineers, programmers, network managers, project managers, finance and human resources professionals – the gamut of American middle-class, white-collar workers. The American Dream never felt more out of reach; more like the American duping.

As the presentation proceeded, the full advantages and special tricks of LinkedIn were explained. I learned some great tips I now use everyday. When the discussion shifted to take questions and offer answers, I glanced around again.

This time, almost every member in the crowd had that classic look of a deer caught in headlights.

And This Book Was Born

This LinkedIn 101 class reflected what I have encountered at other social media events: “I’m on LinkedIn but I don’t really use it.” Or, “My kids use Facebook but I don’t know what it is.”

How could these otherwise intelligent, and modern professionals not know how to use some of the most powerful and free technologies, the very tools that could most help them find new careers?

After seeing the scary expressions that night, and hearing this reaction a few dozen times over at the many networking events I attended, I decided to address this dire need for a straightforward book that explained all the social networking platforms in a way that would be friendly, achievable, accessible and manageable for an audience who is smart but feeling inept at marshalling the tools and benefits of social media.

By researching, testing, and combining the best of the best online resources, I have distilled these into a winning set of core skills to give you the simplest, strongest and most basic solutions to marshalling social media.

This book will get you up to speed quickly with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and blogging tools that empower you to use them in an integrated fashion.

This will minimize your time managing your social networks and enable you to make meaningful contributions that simultaneously create solutions for your needs—in ways that also support others.

The Internet Is (Over)Loaded With How-To’s

Social media can be like drinking from a fire hydrant. This book turns down the flow of water to a manageable rate so you get exactly the amount you need and don’t drown.

While you can easily find much of this book’s contents through a search on Google, the sheer number of choices available is overwhelming. That is part of what I mean to address: which resources will serve your particular wants and needs?

Recognizing how frustrating deciding which venues might help you the most can be daunting. That is why I have collected and refined it all into a single source that provides multiple jumping-off points that help you explore specific topics in greater detail.

My second goal was to support you, the reader, in building these lessons into a progressive, start-to-finish method that gives you the following: (1) gets you on the right track using best practices, (2) keeps you up to date on the latest enhancements and tools, and (3) opens a precise, just-right approach that removes the confusion and intimidation.

Just an Hour a Day

If you worry that using social media sites requires a lot of attention and maintenance, then remember that you are in charge of your time and how it gets used. Don’t let the technology monopolize your time or distract you from your primary concerns.

Devote one hour-a-day to working on one chapter of each unit (set a timer to help you). In one week, you can finish the book with a stellar online reputation.

While you can share updates of your cat’s odd behaviors or your child’s antics, most social media pros do not recommend that you do this. Remember when your mom learned how to use email, and began sending you animated, glittery teddy bear grams 10 times a day? Don’t be your mom.

Use these tools productively! Do not spend all day online. Once you get started, though, you will likely find it rewarding enough that it quickly becomes a part of what you do daily. You will become more conscious of, “I should post this on Facebook” moments.

This book shows how to focus on being a contributing member instead of a person falling into the black hole of frivolity that can also be the shadowy feature of social media.

What helps me each time I get on to a social media site is this modern truism: “By giving value, I get value in return.”

Social Media Is About Sharing

If you find that this blog helps you, please share it with others.

Remember, pay it forward by helping other people get what they need and want. You will then find those same people helping you with what you need and want. This eBook on social media can get you there, especially in the new world that practices collaboration over competition. With the gifts of social media, there’s no doubt that we’re moving from a me culture to a we culture.

Not Sold Yet?

Want to ask a few pre-sale questions before committing? We can’t give you a toaster if you act now but we’ll put your fears at ease. Post your question in the Comments section for a response.

With the economic situation affecting millions of lives globally, we are connecting and reconnecting in new ways. People are attending networking events in droves to learn new skills and meet new people. Groups with mutual interests are self-forming and self-directing collectively without any formal structure – and producing great work.

And with these behaviors comes the impetus to open up, to be transparent, to admit our vulnerabilities, to drop selfish agendas and begin looking beyond ourselves to meet not only our own needs and desires but those of others.

One tool that answers this is social media.

Connecting with others is a social activity. Connecting with others in a meaningful way is networking. And networking with a collaborative view in mind in an online, virtual way (called web 2.0) will surely change the way we work with others. For a history on this kind of social change through social media, see Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom by Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta.

In the past few years, social networking and social media have become prominent topics in the ongoing transformation of life online.

By now, you have surely heard of Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, probably Twitter, and maybe even read a few blogs. But what hidden value does each of them hold for you?

Consider that social media is changing the way we connect, work together, and sustain relationships, and you will quickly see why it matters.

Social media is the technology that knits together, online, what you do in real everyday life: talk to people, bond over commonalities, and form mutually beneficial relationships.

Social media thrives on participation and making connections. It is media in which you can easily participate and add your contribution. It is an arena where your unique perspective has influence and your precise credibility is prized. Whether you’re a high school drop out or an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, your offerings may be a real value to others and a key motivator for you to keep active in various virtual communities.

Once you understand how to use the various tools (the ones most relevant to you), you will find that they extend your reach by many degrees.

Social media is the set of tools, the digital manifestation, the driving the need to share important information in ways that are simple and efficient.

As social networking sites like Facebook have exploded–especially for the babyboomers—we now share with other people in our network more about our lives and the lives of those we know.

It’s been said that, “It isn’t who I know that matters so much as who my friends know” that makes the difference. Those second-degree connections (what Malcolm Gladwell calls loose affiliations) have proven to have the most value in networking and in marketing. Now technology makes it easier to uncover who knows whom. Ready to play private investigator without being called a stalker?

Browse through a friend’s LinkedIn connections. Did you know that David knows Charlie who knows Shawna, the same Shawna you happened to meet recently by chance?

Your circle just tightened by a degree through closing an outlying tangent. The added benefit is that Shawna is friends with the hiring manager of a company where you want to work. This is the magic of networking. Even economists like John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison are realizing the magnetic force of such networking. They call it the Power of Pull.

It’s also the power of social media: it flattens and equalizes the access to information that makes it possible to connect to people and ideas that are important to you.

When you share a New York Times article on Facebook, you share it with every one of your friends there. What conversations are you creating? What questions are you helping to answer? What sparks are you igniting? You may not always know but taking credit isn’t where the value lies. Inspiring another person is where your currency now trades.

With simple tasks you can do each day, this eBook teaches you not only the tools you need to use regularly but also how to use them in an integrated fashion that increases your online presence in ways that get you recognized as a go-to person. By taking ownership of your digital footprint, you begin to build Brand You. Brands (and careers) are not built overnight. Both require hard work. Now is the time to seize the (free!) tools to make you more agile, more connected and a great resource.

Adopt these behaviors today – not only when you are job searching.

Interesting article with a great concluding sentence:

“…they may be overlooking extremely talented individuals whose only weakness is that they don’t have the right name to drop.”

This piquant statement expresses frustration that I felt along the way in my job search.

I have fixed this by networking a LOT, and uncovering many, many 2nd degree connections. I use those all the time to make introductions for others and myself as well.

Also, I now have great respect for the added “something special” that knowing a name brings to you – and knowing how to get introduced to that name.

My standard: Keep networking, keep talking to people, keep building relationships and don’t blindly accept invites unless you feel the person is someone you can help along the way.

Copyright Monocle Magazine

I’ve taken a break from blogging for the past two months. I wanted to take some time to re-evaluate my job search, start to consider alternative career paths and just spend some time enjoying everyday life again. This period has been refreshing and lifted my spirits.

While on my blog sabbatical, I began reading one of my favorite authors. Alain de Botton’s newest book, “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work” is a great read. Botton’s writing is always eloquent, crisp and succinct. Since reading his book “Status Anxiety” in 2005, he’s remained at the top of my must-have reading list. Botton’s writing contains nested and looping phrases. One might say it is very British. Read him slowly and savor his construction of language, his precise descriptions and digest what he writes. He is a wonderful philosopher who writes in accessible language despite the analytical thoughts expressed.

In our working lives, we draw much of our self-worth and sense of self-actualization from what we do. The author cites work as having an “…extraordinary claim to be able to provide us, alongside love, with the principal source of life’s meaning.”

Our culture especially prizes high-paying jobs because we equate salary with achievement. Even in this time of economic transformation, the old standards are slow to ebb away. Many of us are committed to obligations based on the old assumptions, though, that make it difficult to give up the paradigms we’re accustomed to. This doesn’t mean that we cannot opt out and try a new course that’s held our interest.

Botton describes the different types of work that are done – with pleasure – by people throughout economies around the world. It turns out that there is, after all, reward and honor in doing the most innocuous occupations. Perhaps the author glosses over the soul-grinding aspects of some labors that truly demean us but just the same he uncovers what propels people forward in what they do.

This blog entry highlights some particular points he makes, points that I found poignant and examples of beautiful writing. I will post additional entries as I finish the remaining chapters.

In chapter four on career counseling, Botton shadows a British career counselor. The man works for himself, and is hired by individuals seeking to determine what’s suitable for their lives, their interests and how to attain fulfillment from them.

In summing up how we ache for stellar achievement as a means to validate ourselves, he writes:

“Most of (us) stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or a bicycle.”

The ache for achievement has a gnawing potency on our psyches. It’s comparable to the persistent dream of winning the lottery. Oh, the things we’d do, the ways we’d help others, the comforts we could acquire. Nevermind there’s 1:200,000 odds usually. The dream is comforting and in it we numb ourselves for a little while from the reality of instability, need and not knowing what comes next. Meeting one’s potential is in large part dependent on the action one takes to make it happen. Without that key part, which I interpret as “advantages”, we remain the grounded airplane waiting to soar.

“For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualized; it will never earn us bountiful sums of money or beget exemplary objects or organizations. It will remain no more than a hope carried over from childhood, or a dream entertained as we drive along the motorway and feel our plans hover above a wide horizon. Extraordinary resilience, intelligence and good fortune are needed to redraw the map of our reality, while on either side of the summits of greatness are arrayed the endless foothills populated by the tortured celibates of achievement.”

Those who climb the summit to greatness are surrounded by people tortured by knowing they have not climbed the summit, who clearly see where success lies but cannot climb.

“All societies have had work at their centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be something much more than a punishment or a penance. Ours is the first to imply that we should seek to work even in the absence of a financial imperative. Our choice of occupation is held to define our identity to the extent that the most insistent question we ask of new acquaintances is not where they come from or who theirs were but what they do, the assumption being that the route to a meaningful existence must invariably pass through the gate of remunerative employment.”

For us, work defines who we are and our worth to our friends and family. We conceive of work as an endeavor deeper than one of necessity. Our basic needs are easily met. We do not have to bake our own bread; sow our own crops; and tend our own animals for survival. Nor do we weave our own clothing, construct our own homes or make much of anything by hand. Instead, we use our minds to pursue meaning by which we also supply our needs and indulge our comforts. Given the Great Correction of our present lives, though, it’s time to solve these problems with a new approach.

A Word On The Edition
The edition I’m reading is published by Monocle magazine (I liken it to The Economist meets Vogue in conjunction with the author. It is a very handsome cloth-bound limited edition signed by the author that includes a DVD discussing the book’s topics. There is also a video podcast on Monocle’s web site where the author and the magazine’s editor, Tyler Brule, (also a hero of mine), interviews Botton.

I’m a sucker for lists of 10 but there’s good nuggets in this one, plus video segments. Pass it along!