I’m putting together the final elements of my Linkedin Workshop materials at the moment, and dealing with one of the burning questions people often ask;

How do I Turn Off all that Noise?

This question can take other forms, such as:

“I keep getting emails from people I don’t know”
“I don’t read the updates because my home page is full of banal twitter comments”
“I joined some groups but all I got was spammed”
“People keep selling to me”

Some people who use Linkedin don’t understand the principles of professional networking, and if their activities aren’t checked, they can use it as a tool to bother you with irrelevant material.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this makes Linkedin useless – knowing what to do about it is the key.

Like all social tools, Linkedin is Opt-In. Learn how to Opt Out of the Noise.

How to Opt out of the Noise on Linkedin

Examples of how to opt out of Linkedin noise include:

• Tuning your settings correctly to stop unsolicited private messages;
• Getting your Group settings right to encourage activity on the group not in your inbox;
• Leaving badly run groups;
• Turning off the updates from noisy connections;
• Removing troublesome or mistaken connections altogether (without them knowing).
• You can also learn how to manage Linkedin updates via your email inbox.

Once the noise is filtered out, Linkedin becomes a powerful tool for looking after your real life network and helping your network help you.

If you’d like to know how to turn off the noise and develop a personal plan for your Linkedin activity, come to one of my Linkedin Training Workshops in London, Colchester, Manchester, Leeds and other towns in the UK.

Start making Linkedin work for you, deliver a real return on your investment and generate new business and opportunities now.
Please Share this Post:

Here’s a great presentation by Allister Frost, head of Digital Marketing Strategy at Microsoft.

The presentation was given today at the Capital Cardiff Conference which was run by Cardiff Council alongside South Wales Chamber of Commerce. I hope he comes over to East Anglia soon.

If you liked that you’ll like his blog too. Here’s a post about marketers.

On Tuesday I was interviewed by Bernie Mitchell and Emily Breder in advance of Social Media Week and the conference they are organising on 16th February on behalf of NRG Networks, ‘Making Social Media part of your DNA‘.

Bernie and Emily asked me some tough questions and it was interesting to look back on how my journey using social tools began some eight years ago. As the podcast was made for a non-construction audience they were interested to hear more about how the construction industry fits into the social media landscape, and whilst there was not enough time to talk about some of the more wacky tools we’re using like geocoding, QR codes and the ‘internet of things’ we did manage to cover some of the primary issues of concern to construction professionals, which is how these tools can help you with your business responsibilities.

In particular I’m interested in how to see social tools as a natural extension of your traditional networking. We in construction work a ‘Referral Culture’ where people are introduced to each other by others because it is believed there is a mutual benefit. Many in our industry get this wrong and think its simply warming up what might otherwise be a cold call… but with social tools such unsolicited responses are easily turned off, or worse, you may be blocked and reported for spam. It is so important to take the right steps at the beginning and this means thinking about what your ideal audience needs.

The podcast was recorded by Gary Jesch (aka @chopz) who is a webinar specialist (his company is Console Call). Gary also provides interactive ‘talking head’ animation tools to conferences, events and schools. An interesting idea – apparently people are happier to talk to a cartoon character than a person sometimes!

You can listen to the podcast on this tab here:

If for some reason your browser doesn’t support it, there is also a link to the podcast page here, and you can subscribe to the #SMWdna podcast on itunes.

The conference next week is excellent value – with speakers from Salesforce, Cisco, Virgin Atlantic, Mind (the Mental Health Charity), O2, Barclays Bank and Tweetminster, amongst others. You might think that the minimum donation of £20 to this not-for-profit event is too little and want to buy a pricier ticket so more money goes to the charities they are supporting. More about the event here – register here.

I’d be interested to know what you think of the podcast – it was my first interview of this type. Do you agree with my approach to using social media tools, or do you have another viewpoint?

Many of my clients for consultancy services have been asking me the same questions.

Why aren’t architects downloading our information?

Why aren’t people visiting our website?

Why aren’t they coming to our events?

There are two main reasons why this might be.

Firstly because they don’t know about you/it/them;

Secondly because they aren’t interested.

Just because you build it, doesn’t mean they’ll come

In the past when there were fewer adverts in our lives, one could rely on being the thing, the company, the service that people knew about. Your flyer might be the one they remembered.

Today there is too much noise and people quite naturally shut it out. Ads on the tv, unsolicited emails and phone calls, unwanted promotional material. Today shouting louder than the next person isn’t going to be enough; in fact it can be counterproductive.

Instead we need to ask ourselves

Who are we trying to attact?

What are they concerned about?

What do they need?

Then focus on providing that in the simplest way possible, and measure if it works. It might not be what you’ve been trying to sell them, but it will make selling it a hell of a lot easier.
Image: Not like the others by Derek Gavey (Creative Commons)

Last week Linkedin announced that it “will be shutting off the Tweets application on January 31, 2012”.

Here is the announcement:

I found out about Tweets in May 2010 from this post on the Linkedin Blog and have blogged about Linkedin and Twitter integration on and off since. Integration has some downsides, in particular the tendency of inexperienced users to connect both accounts so everything they tweet is shared with their Linkedin connections. You can see my screencast about this here.

The fact that Linkedin is dropping direct connection of this type is good for Linkedin, but what about a feature of the integration that is really useful? This is the ability to find out which of your connections have twitter accounts and follow them. A healthy use of this would actually negate the need that some users have felt to broadcast their tweets to their connections on Linkedin, providing an alternative way to connect with some of their contacts.

The consensus appears to be that the reason Linkedin is abandoning Tweets is lack of use, but I’m not really surprised at that – Linkedin hides its applications very well from users and didn’t encourage its use much. The loss of the connections tab would be a huge shame however. I hope they keep it on.

I’ve been asked whether I might consider helping construction professionals learn how to use Linkedin properly so I’m planning a seminar. I’d like to choose a couple of venues in the UK to deliver it.

I’m currently researching venues and locations around the UK for this workshop. If you’d like me to deliver a workshop near you, and if you’d like to be informed of dates, times and prices, please fill out the form below (including an email address and post code) and I’ll see where the interest lies.

If you’re outside the UK and would be interested in a webinar please enter ‘webinar’ in the postcode field.
Want to know more about the webinar? Check out this post on my JustPractising site for details of what I’ll be covering.

Screen Shot of Phishing Direct Messages

“Want to lose any weight? go here: [link removed] best product for losing weight”

And then later,
“You seen what this person is saying about you? [link removed] terrible things..”

The first one of these is a link to yet another ‘Acai Berry’ site, but I’m pretty convinced the people who tweeted me didn’t know they were promoting this product through their direct messages.

The second one is currently out of action this morning, however it is linked to a domain tivvitter.com which has been associated with Stalktrack, a bogus app which purports to be able to ‘see who ‘stalks your twitter’, which was active last summer.

The stalktrak scam presents you with an ‘Authorise StalkTrak to use your account?’ page similar to ligitimate twitter authorization pages, which required you to enter your twitter login details. The purpose of the page was simply to steal your login so as to use your account to spread the messages to your followers via public and private messages.

Background Information article from last July (don’t rely upon the information, it is going to be out of date).

Recent verification of the scam at Phishtank

Twitter is waging an ongoing war against spammers and hackers. I wrote about this here and here. It isn’t surprising that with such a large community there are some attempts to do this, so lets look after each other.

What if I’ve been Hacked?

If you believe that your account has been compromised and you have given away your login or authorized an app like this, or if your account sends out messages you didn’t authorize, there are two things you must do.
1. Revoke access to the applications that already have access to your account. Do this by visiting the Applications tab in Account Settings (when you are logged in).

2. Change your password. If you can’t login to your account anymore, request a reset of your password to be sent to your email address.

What if a friend sends me these messages?

If you come across someone who is sending you unsolicited Direct Messages – why not send them a link to this page so they know what to do?

Here is a conversation some of my friends had yesterday on Facebook. Thought it might be useful to some of you twitter people.

Peter Syme

Twitter ? I really need to nail this. Background. I have various twitter streams running and when we do answer them they are driving business however, is their anyway to filter so we only see what we want to see? Example a quick search of or stag and hen party related streams today produced 5 people leads of people asking for ideas for their stag and hen party. That is a potential £7.5-£10k income. That is a free lead stream worth a potential £2.5-£3m a year. Even at a very low conversion rate it is getting way to interesting to be just treating it adhoc as we do now. 20 hours ago

People who don’t use ‘Social Media’ often ask me why those who do use it, go on about it so much. One reason why this is such a concern is that there isn’t enough exposure for the good that it does.

Like any other tool, social tools on the internet can be used for useful purposes or for timewasting, and tools like Twitter are often cited as a great way to waste your time. As a result I’m keen to share with you examples of how people use these tools to save them time, and even achieve what they may not have been able to by conventional means. Here’s a great example.

Koisty Cassells is an architecture graduate who is studying part time whilst working for an architects practice. Traditionally, taking your studies part time has been a lonely, isolating experience because you don’t get the benefit of the studio environment.

In this video, one of our ArchitectMap podcasts, Koisty explains how social media has helped her get the most out of being a part time, full time architecture student.

Find out more about the Architect Map here. You can follow Koisty on twitter and read her blog here.

Are you holding a conference or seminar to which the public or professionals are invited to attend? If you use the internet in any way to publicise your events, or you want to, consider what advantages Live Blogging the event might bring.

In this short article I’m going to investigate some of the reasons you might have for choosing to engage a professional Live Blogger to cover your event. Perhaps you have other reasons, I’d love to hear them.

1. Find a larger audience

Some people won’t be able to attend your event. Some will not be able to come because you’re holding it in another country, or at a time when they can’t get away. Some will not be able to afford to pay for it, or won’t be able to give up the travel time or a full day away from the office.

Perhaps they just don’t know whether the event is for them and can’t take the risk with the limited information they have. If you don’t share your event online, these people are lost from your sphere of influence. Live blogging gives them an opportunity to be involved and to receive your messages.

Of all the people you tell about the event, only a small fraction will be able to attend in person. Live blogging creates a means by which a larger audience can attend, if only in a partial way. Have a look at your target audience and consider whether a section of them would benefit from viewing the event in a live blog instead of attending in person. What advantages would this bring you?

2. Promote the event with real value

When an event is live blogged, people who can’t commit to attending will see some of the value in being there. The live blogger can give a flavour of the discussion, but viewers can only participate in a limited way.

What they do get, however, is a clear sense of what the event is like without attending, and can work out with relatively little commitment, whether they should attend the next one. The live blog becomes a gift to your future audience, something useful they can share, and will want to share.

If you want to grow your events, Live blogging is a cost effective way to promote them both before, during and after they take place.

3. Make your event last beyond the day

A live blog is a real-time record of an event, but it also creates an archive of the event for people to view in future. A good blogger will be able to provide a commentary on the event whilst incorporating materials you provide them in advance – slides, screenshots, links to associated information about your speakers and their topics, photography, as well as contributions from the audience either in person or on twitter or via the blog itself.

All these elements can be brought together to make a compelling, informative record of the event that can stay online promoting your events long after the actual event is forgotten.

If you hold annual or quarterly events, a live blog archive becomes a great way to revisit the event before the next one, refresh your memory of what happened and re-energise your audience as you prepare for the next event.

4. Encourage online discussion

Social media is by its nature interactive, and live blogging is no different, though it is largely a one-way medium with contributions from one person or a team of bloggers. If you would like to encourage lively discussion about the event as it happens, this can be achieved most effectively by providing viewers and attenders with a range of ways to contibute, including commenting on the blog itself, emailing the blogger, or on twitter using a #hashtag.

Your live blogger can also make an archive of the #hashtag tweets for future reference, providing a lively ‘backchannel’ to the simpler narrative of the blog itself.

Much lively discussion at an event is lost between the participants, and live blogging and twitter, together with encouraging attendees to write about the event online afterwards, can encourage richness and a continuation of themes well into the future.

5. Reach Further

Live blogging enables an event to be heard about by more people, attended by more people, and shared by more people. A live blog becomes a ‘social object’, which your advocates can use to demonstrate ideas and put your case to third parties. It can act as a recruiting device for speakers who will see their message carrying further than the room and find new readers on their blog or website. It can give your event a life beyond the room and the day it happened.

Recent live blogs I’ve done:
Workplace Trends 2011 Conference

RIBA Housing: Creating Designs for Life

If you’d like me to live blog your events, get in touch with me here.

Image: Blog World Expo 2008 by Shashi Bellamkonda (Creative Commons)

Please Share this Post:

]]>