I've committed a social media no-no and I fully expect to pay for it. I'm guilty of blog neglect.

How many times have you read or heard expert testimony telling you that you've got to keep the content flowing? I've read that a few times just in the past week, most notably in Brian Solis & Deirdre Breakenridge's Putting the Public Back in Public Relations. They quote Ian Lurie's hysterical How to Write a Really Crappy Business Blog - check out #12:

Never post anything. The easiest way to have a blog that's crappy: Set up the blog, post once, and then never. post. again. This tip's great because it involves no work on your part. It's like you never created a blog at all. Which might have been better....

Well this isn't supposed to be a business blog, but that's no excuse. Mea culpa. My blog has become crappy.

Now I'm not here to tell you I'm firing it back up again. Actually quite the opposite: I'm here to ask your forgiveness for my decent into craptitude, and to beg your patience as I manage other priorities. It's no coincidence that my blogging ceased last June; I started my Internet Marketing Master of Science (IMMS) program at Full Sail Univeristy at around that time, and started a full time job shortly thereafter. And there you have my excuse.

I'll be done with the grad stuff by June, which will free up time and let me get back to social media just the way I like it: for the fun of it. Until then I may post from time to time but don't hold me to it. More likely to see you after the thaw.

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You may not realize this, but you’re being judged. All the time. Not for who you are or what you do, but for the content you publish.

When it comes to social media, you are what you tweet. Or update. Or blog. Whatever the medium is, the content you publish is the lens through which you are seen. Readers and viewers take a look at your 140 characters or your 5000 words or your three-minute video and form opinions about you. They’re categorizing you according to whatever standards they hold dear. To them, you’re a set of characteristics that fits you into a particular worldview. These characteristics are your persona, the mask you show the world (note: the term 'persona' as used in marketing is far richer in meaning; personas are defined by research and interviews. Matt Dickman provides an excellent explanation on his blog, Technomarketer. My usage of the term is rather simplistic but please play along).

So I got to thinking, what kind of persona do I put forward? And for that matter how do I classify others?

As it turns out I had no simple answer. Very few people can be defined by a single persona (in fact when content is so one-dimensional I suspect it’s automated and there’s no persona behind it at all).  We’re usually a combination of personality types or characters that show through at different times.

Today I’ll share the first 10 social media characters I came up with. I found I couldn’t stop there so I’ll save the rest for future posts. Some of these apply to me, some don’t, and there are days where I might be diagnosed with multiple persona disorder. I’m sure you’ll identify with more than one, or know someone who does. Anyway here’s the list (in no particular order), enjoy:

1. Giver: If you feel compelled to share constantly, you’re a giver. You like to put out tweets and/or updates every few hours and never ask for anything in return. On Twitter you’re usually sharing other people’s content, but from time to time you’ll add a gem of your own.
2. Upchucker: When your volume gets too high, you might be upchucking, vomiting out tweet after tweet after tweet, clogging up the stream. It’s hard to tell if anything is really important to you, and your tweets get lost or ignored.
3. Handyman: You’re a handyman if you’re always tidying up other people’s content, then re-publishing. A fix here, a tweak there. Anyone can be a handyman at any time but as with any skill, some people are better than others.
4. Delegator: You have others post your content for you. Sometimes this is a calculated tactic—maybe you’re a celeb and have no time to write 140 characters. Or maybe you’re a corporate executive whose communications department insists on owning your public voice. In any case when you delegate be prepared to take responsibility for the content.
5. Professor: If you’ve always got something to teach your followers or friends, and you use social media to share knowledge, you’re a Professor. You enjoy sharing insight and constructive criticism of others’ work while publishing plenty of original content.
6. Preacher: You’re a professor gone mad. You’re not concerned with sharing as much as with broadcasting. Your opinion rules, and you let everyone know with a high volume of tweets and updates.
7. Cover artist: Perhaps you’re more at home on Facebook than Twitter, where you regal your friends with your endless stream of quotes from hit songs of the (fill in the decade here)’s. You are always strolling down memory lane, but all of the unfortunates among your friends and followers who have never stepped foot in your high school will be left out in the cold.
8. Anthologist: You believe that everything of import has already been written, and that’s why you flood your Twitter stream with quotes by famous authors.  Come to think of it, you’re probably a bot.
9. Flasher: Privacy? Not a problem. You, as a Flasher, don’t care what other people know about you or anyone else. You display your junk to the whole world. Your tweets and updates are loaded with too much information, and you post photos that should never see the light of day. You astound, you offend, and more often than not, you bore.
10. Confectioner: By all means, share the love. Share the good feelings you have for others. In Twitter you could #FF and in Facebook you could poke, like, send a gift, and so on. But being a Confectioner, your syrupy proclamations gush forth, and your stream or your wall is a sticky, nauseating mess. While it’s nice to show the love sometimes, too much sugar can lead to a big bad bellyache.

The list can and will go on; I’ve got more personas to share in the coming weeks. In the meantime what are some of the personas you’ve encountered? What masks do you wear? Let me know and I’ll include them in upcoming lists.

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Wormhole image courtesy of io9.com

If you’ve ever applied to a job on the web, you’ve performed an act of faith and sent your resume and all of your personal information through to an unknown quantity in the hopes of getting contacted for an interview. 

Yet after carefully filling out the forms, checking off the boxes, uploading your resume, cover letter, writing samples, and any other pertinent files, you hear nothing. You get no feedback. You have no idea whether a real human being has even seen your life’s work, or whether your application has been eliminated by an automated screening program.  Weeks go by and zip. Nada. What the hell happened?

Perhaps you now realize that you’ve toyed with forces beyond the understanding of all but the most brilliant astrophysicists. You’ve danced with the mysterious, yet surprisingly common, cyberspace hazard knows as the Resume Black Hole. Who among us can hope to escape its gravitational pull?

Yet some of us do, or we make it through to the other side. So maybe it would be better to call it the Resume Wormhole.

Granted, what I know of wormholes comes from in-depth study of Star Trek: wormholes are tunnels in the fabric of space-time connecting two locations (potentially light years apart or in different universes) or times (past, present, or future) or combinations of both. Sometimes wormholes conveniently convey our heroes to the exact point in space-time at which their help is urgently needed. But wormholes don’t care much for the space-time continuum and the Enterprise does, on occasion, need to close one up to prevent the unraveling of the universe as we know it.

I wanted a more formal understanding of this phenomenon, so I turned to Wikipedia, the ultimate resource in the field of astrophysics. I found that there are different kinds of wormholes with different theoretical outcomes, but the general definition is:

…a compact region of spacetime whose boundary is topologically trivial but whose interior is not simply connected.

I posit that our online recruitment universe is infested with wormholes, and every single time you click the “submit” or “send” button at the end of the last screen of every job application you’re sending your resume blindly through a disconnected “region of spacetime.”  And when you click that button or link, here’s what can happen:

1. Oops, it’s a black hole after all: You’ve applied to an ad that goes nowhere. Your application is crushed among the mass of applications sitting in this gravitational sinkhole. You’ll never hear a word. 
2. Lost in the past: You’ve found a wormhole that connects to a role of the past. If you’re lucky enough to hear anything at all, you’ll get an automated message saying that the job is no longer available. But you’ll probably never hear a word. 
3. Lost in the future: Your application will be discovered at some unspecified time in the future. In one way you’re lucky because you will get feedback if you stumble across this wormhole. But you’ll get it months from now when it no longer matters.  
4. Random exit: Sometimes these wormholes are unstable and can deposit your application in all kinds of random places. In this case you’ve applied to a job and get contacted for a completely unrelated role. While you may get lucky, chances are that the unrelated role is for an unrelated applicant.
5. Safe arrival: You’ve found the stable wormhole that connects you to the right person in the right place at the right time. Congratulations.

So what can you do to avoid the wormholes out there and get your resume into human hands and at least get some kind of feedback?

• Work the hell out of LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn to follow up on any applications you make anywhere online. Find contacts at target companies, follow those companies, do whatever it takes to find an ally on the inside (you can also read my post on this topic, 5 ways I’m working the hell out of LinkedIn)
• Network. Remember when you’d go out to events and exchange business cards, maybe even pitch yourself to a real person? Still effective.
• Use the phone. If you’re wondering where your resume is in the application process, do some research and find out who you can call in your target company. Rehearse the call ahead of time and be brief and polite. Above all remember that if your application is lost in a wormhole, you’ve got nothing to lose. You can’t hurt your chances by speaking to someone.

You may not get the job or even an interview, but at least you can find out where you stand. We can’t move forward if we don’t know where we are.

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In my years working in the staffing industry I learned a thing or two about what makes a successful hiring process. Obviously you need a good candidate, someone who can not only do the job on offer but will fit into the employer's culture at the right salary at the right time. 

At the same time, you need an employer who is serious about hiring. A company that knows what it wants, defines it clearly, and deals with candidates in an open, honest fashion. You also need confirmed intent: simply, that the company is going to make a decision within a reasonable time frame.

Seems straightforward enough. Yet right now, at a time when jobs are scarce and job seekers are abundant, some employers are playing the field for as long as they can. In some cases they’re just kicking tires, checking out features and prices, even if they’re not ready to buy. And candidates often don’t realize they’re being played until it’s too late.

So if you’re a job seeker, how can you tell whether or not you’re wasting your time?

Here are six signs to look for that the company you're interviewing with sucks at hiring:

1. Endless interviews. You may be required to meet dozens of people, but there’s no reason to meet them one by one over months and months. Sure you can expect a few surprises or unexpected meetings, but when an employer says “There’s just one more person we’d like you to meet” more than once, get suspicious.
2. Changes to the job description. You’re interviewing for a marketing role, and all seems to be going well. Then around your second or third meeting you notice more questions about your sales experience. It’s at this point you should ask how involved this position will be in sales. It may be that you’re simply being probed for your overall understanding of sales, or it could be that you’re now interviewing for a business development role. Big difference.
3. Murky feedback. Beware of feedback that tells you nothing. If you’ve been through three interviews and the hiring manager still has no clear opinion of you, cut and run.
4. Unreliable follow up. When an employer tells you they’ll follow up with you by such-and-such a date and they don’t, OK, sure, they’re busy, you’ll just have to follow up yourself. But when they do the same thing repeatedly? Bad sign.  
5. Unreasonable homework. Completing a short homework assignment - writing an article, preparing a short presentation, writing a brief plan - can be an excellent chance for you to showcase your skills for a potential employer. But if you’re asked to write a white paper or a complete business plan before you get the job, beware.
6. Your instincts. Believe it or not, the most reliable bullshit detector is probably the one hardwired into your brain. If you continuously get the sense that the process is going south, it probably is. Trust your instincts and go look for another employer. 

In spite of all this you’ll probably undergo the repeated interviews, wait weeks to be contacted, complete assignments, and do just about anything it takes to be in the running for a job.  And nothing is likely to change until candidates are scarce and jobs are abundant, whenever that may be. Just remember that the way an employer conducts its hiring could very well be reflective of what it’s like to work there.

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My first day at work at my last marketing job, back in 2006, one of my erstwhile colleagues (a salesman) welcomed me with this half-assed joke: “Hey, you know what they say about marketing: last to get hired, first to get fired!” 

Although I lasted longer at that company than he did, there’s some truth to his dig. As the global financial crisis worsened, marketers everywhere found themselves escorted out the door in droves while their revenue-generating co-workers held on for dear life. 

Where did all of these marketers go?

Why, to social media, of course. Especially to Twitter (let’s focus on Twitter, for simplicity’s sake).

OK, I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. Kettle, you’re black. My social media usage (in terms of both time and volume) has been inversely proportionate to my own employment situation. I’ve put in hundreds of hours over the past few months, in fits and spurts. Makes sense - when I’m on a project, I tweet less and hardly look at Facebook. But when the project ends? I dive back into the stream.

I’d bet that a good chunk of folks out there – those not tweeting on behalf of a company or client, and those not actually making a living from it – follow a similar pattern in their lives. 

Twitter stats kind of, sort of reflect the connection between unemployment and the urge to Tweet. Check out these graphs:

(Source: RJMetrics, New Data on Twitter's Users and Engagement)

(Source: US Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Twitter growth rates lag just behind unemployment rates. As unemployment surged from late 2008 and through 2009, Twitter grew like gangbusters (and not so coincidentally, Twitter experts propagated like rabbits). Recent months have seen Twitter growth still high but slowing…just as unemployment has slowed and has now (hopefully) turned the corner.

Does this mean that as our economy improves Twitter usage will decline?

Maybe. But what Twitter will lose in quantity, I think it will make up in quality. Here’s what’s likely to happen:

• All those opportunistic social media snake oil salespeople we’ve been hearing about (for a great example check out Erika Napoletano's piece on social media "asshats") will leave the streams and take their stale content with them.
• Only the strongest Twitterpreneurs will survive, while the vast majority will close their “businesses” and take their stale content with them.
• B2B Twitter usage will mature as well-meaning marketers re-enter the workforce and take their understanding of social media to their new employers. Their content will be replaced by more focused, B2B tweets. They’ll tweet less but offer more.
• True social media mavens and thought leaders will continue to offer great content and find ways to innovate. Twitter will become their space even more than it is now. And the relative amount of good content vs. stale crap will increase (according to this excellent infographic, only 8% of all tweets are good and "RT worthy" - this percentage is sure to rise).
• Same goes for news organizations, journalists, and information brokers: the true professionals will improve and innovate, while the thousands of hacks will drift away and take their stale content with them.
• And what of celebrity Twitter usage? Don’t really care, so couldn’t tell you. 

What do you think?

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I've got a hard-earned lesson to share today, and hopefully I can save you some trouble.

Anyone following my tweets may have picked up on my personal quest to unfollow money miscreants, people collectors, and a slew of multi-level marketers. It’s been an ongoing struggle, because back in the early days of Twitter I had an automatic follow-back mentality: I just followed anyone who followed me. 

Well I’m glad to report that I've since learned a thing or two, but it's taken more hours than I care to count. I've cleaned up my account, first by hand but more recently using tools like ManageTwitter (which I can't recommend highly enough). I've unfollowed over 400 people and organizations. I should never have followed most them in the first place.

Learn from my mistakes and don’t get too hung up on following back. How should you decide who to follow back, and avoid having to spend hours cleaning your Twitter account?

Numbers are worthless if nobody is reading your content. When someone follows you, before you follow back always ask yourself, "Will I ever read this person’s tweets? Will they read mine? Will they care? Will they share?" The sad fact is that some of them won’t ever care or share. You don’t need them.

Ultimately the best way to grow your following is organically. I’ve been following the guidelines below and sure enough my following has been growing:

1. Publish quality content: make sure your tweets, and the content they link to, are interesting and well-written.
2. Make your content searchable: use #hashtags and keywords in your tweets, and people searching for those words will be able to find you. These are the folks you want as your followers.
3. Read, absorb, and share other people’s content: Learn. Study. Increase your knowledge so that you can better yourself, your business, and contribute to the conversation. And share with your followers, they’ll appreciate good finds.
4. Build a trusted network of alliance partners: Engage with key people through @replies and direct messages, retweet their content, give them a mention from time to time (as in Follow Fridays). Assuming you’ve got common ground they’ll become your partners and affiliates. That’s how you expand your reach and publish beyond your own followers.
5. Pay back, forward, and sideways: Always keep Karma in mind. Promote those who promote you, thank people publicly, and connect followers with each other. Put the social in your social media.

Overall we’re talking very low numbers (I’m no @Mashable after all) but the net effect is a noticeable improvement in quality of content and frequency of engagement. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I've made connections with thought leaders, accomplished marketing and PR pros, talented writers and artists, and a whole lot of good people who have interesting things to say. All I had to do was pay attention.

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From where I stand in the great Twitterverse, I see so many tweets fly by that it’s hard to keep up. Like a kid in a candy store I grab at the goodies until I’ve got a dozen or more tabs open in Chrome, to be read "later." Most of what I read I like, which is a good thing, and some of what I read, I share -- which is an even better thing.

So much of my Twitter feed is comprised of shared links. Folks share articles, infographics, shopping deals, stats, insights, reviews, job tips, and pithy quotes all written by other folks. I don’t know that there’s a statistic for original material but I’d bet it’s a low percentage of overall Twitter content. 

In any case what I’m getting at is that sharing content makes the Twitter world go round, and the most common form of that shared content is the retweet, the RT.

I love the RT. I RT great content to my followers and I’m always thrilled when someone RT’s mine. But I don’t RT willy-nilly. I think carefully about every tweet I share. To RT or not to RT? These 10 points help answer the question:

1. Interest: Exactly how it sounds. If your tweet or the link therein is interesting to me, I’ll be glad to retweet it. 
2. Humor: Funny (clever-funny as opposed to fart-humor-funny) could get you a RT. And if the humor ties in to my professional interest, even better.
3. Originality: I’m far more likely to RT something that I’ve never seen before, or a new take on an old topic. That's probably why I like infographics so much. 
4. Insight: I want to learn from what I read. If your content offers some insight that will help me understand a complex issue or demystify a trend, then I’ll be eager to share. Infographics work well in this category too, and if I see an insightful one I’m highly likely to RT.
5. Gratitude / props: I like to give thanks to you for writing that interesting, humorous, insightful article or at least for finding it and bringing it to my attention. The least I can do is share with my followers, and promote you in the process.
6. I want the bookmark: Have you heard of packrati.us? Link your Delicious account with packrati.us and every time you tweet a link, it’ll automatically be saved to your Delicious bookmarks. So for me, the RT is the stone that kills two birds: I acknowledge good content and automatically store it away for future reference.
7. Kiss ass: Few people admit this but I’ll put it out there: sometimes I RT to ingratiate myself with someone I admire. Maybe “kiss ass” is too strong a term, because the tweets still have to be interesting, original, funny, or otherwise fulfill my quality criteria. 
8. Get Attention: Let’s say you’re someone I’ve been following and I want to send you a message, but you’re not following me back. I might RT your tweets with more regularity in the hopes that you’ll send me a thank you or otherwise give me an in. It may never work but since your content is good anyway, I have nothing to lose by sharing with my followers.
9. Pay back, forward, sideways: Sometimes the RT is a karmatic device. I’m more likely to RT your tweets if you’ve done the same for me. I’m also going to RT the people who’ve helped me or have been good to me in the past. And sometimes I’ll get behind a person, a service, or a business and RT their content to show my support and enthusiasm. 
10. Pure value of info: And let’s not forget the practical, actionable advice that Twitter is chock full of. So many people have surprisingly good tips and tricks to share. They write about their experiences and help us to solve problems or understand things better. These kinds of tweets make for excellent RTs.

I don’t keep a checklist and tick off boxes but every time I retweet you can be sure that at least one of the above reasons applies. How about you? Feel free to share you thoughts below.

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I’m no power blogger and I freely admit that I’m a Tweeter of relatively low standing and questionable influence. However I’ve been participating in this thing we call social media for years now, have read thousands of pages of content both online and off, so I should have a good idea of what works. And still I’m ashamed that sometimes I write stuff that sucks, or good stuff that nobody cares about.

So today I’d like to examine why posts can be rotten. And why, even if you’re a good writer, even if you understand the medium, you may have an off day from time to time, just like me. Feel free to use this list to aid in self-flagellation, to help you come up with excuses, to rationalize poor reader response, or just to have a laugh. I’m sure you’ll identify with at least a few.

10 Ways to Guarantee a Bad Blog Post

1. Too much to write, too little to say. Ever write 500 words where 250 would do? Or maybe you’ve written around and around a topic that could have been expressed as a tweet or two. Either way the reader will come away feeling bloated and dissatisfied.
2. Too little to write, period. Also known as running out of gas. I have this problem more often than I’d like to admit. If you start writing and realize after a paragraph or two that the post won’t go the distance, stop. Put it away for safe keeping, you might be inspired to continue at a later date. But don’t post it until it's cooked.
3. Forcing the topic. Often the direct cause of running out of gas, above. Sometimes topics sound better in your mind before you start writing, or once you start writing you realize you’re stepping out of your realm of knowledge. Unless you’re prepared to take a break and do some research to flesh out your understanding, then do everyone a favor and stop. 
4. Posing. Sometimes posing goes hand in hand with forcing the topic, but is typically more sinister. Here I’m talking about pretending to be an expert about something you know nothing about. Writing as an expert when you’re clearly out of your league is a surefire way to write garbage. You might as well string together phrases from this handy-dandy Bullshit Generator.
5. Mistaking enthusiasm for interest. We all get fired up about some topics and passion often leads to great writing. Yet there’s no guarantee you’ll connect with readers. If your audience isn’t interested in your content, no amount of excitement will grab their attention. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the blog entry sucks, but if nobody reads it, what’s the difference?
6. Assuming you know your readers. Until you develop a loyal following with a constant stream of comments, you probably won’t be able to achieve the level of intimacy with your readers that a more prominent blogger might enjoy. But more than that you won’t really know who your readers are. Sure, you can check trackbacks and see who’s tweeting you (if you’re lucky), but even then it’s hit or miss. So if you write with a particular readership in mind make sure they’re reading you. If they’re not, change your style to appeal to a wider constituency and write more targeted posts later, as you build upon your fan base.
7. Assuming your readers know you. We’ve established that unless you’re a superstar already you’re not on intimate footing with your readers. While it’s fine to be informal (using second person "you" for example), steer clear of inside jokes or oblique references to your previous blog entries. Nobody will care and you’ll turn people away.
8. Bad topic. Occasionally your post will suck simply because the topic sucks. Maybe you have a horrible sense of timing and write about the joys of travel after a horrific airline accident. Or maybe you’re extolling the virtues of swampland on sale FOR CHEAP. Whatever the case may be, a bad topic equals a bad post.
9. One hit wonder. Perhaps you’ve had a major hit: your last post somehow tapped into the zeitgeist and thanks to a few strategic retweets, droves of knowledge-hungry tweeps made it to your blog. Your analytics show a vertical spike in page views and you think you’ve hooked hundreds, if not thousands, of new readers. So how do you follow such a performance? I wish I had an easy answer. Chances are audience-building is still going to be a slow burn. Don’t let the one hit inflate your sense of self or talent. Follow it up with the same drive for quality and excellence that led to your post of legend. And if you don’t get the same results? Then don’t succumb to pressure and publish something sub-par. Work hard, write well, be happy with the exposure you’ve received and continue on as though it didn’t happen.
10. Nothing to offer. Before you publish, ask yourself if your readers will learn something. Ask if they’ll gain insight. Ask if they’ll improve something about themselves based on what you’ve written. Ask if they’ll laugh. If the answer to any of these is yes, then you’re good to go. If your reader won’t get anything from your post, though, stop. Nobody likes a time waster.

One last comment for the road: make people aware that you’re writing. If nobody reads your blog, what’s the point? You may write an incredibly insightful piece about a world-changing event or a new technology, but your readers have to find it. If you’re not using the channels at your disposal – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on – to publicize your post then you’re doing yourself and your blog a disservice. 

Let me know if you have anything to add to this list. I’m sure you’ve had a few misfires in your writing career. Feel free to share below.

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There's no doubt that Facebook is a force to be reckoned with. 400 million users by last count, with 78% of them outside of the United States, means that Facebook is a channel marketers can't afford to overlook (check out this infographic that's been making the rounds of late). And as users, the depth of our dependence on it is evident in the new verbs that have come to pepper daily conversation: to friend, to defriend or unfriend, and even to facebook. 

I confess I'm a regular FB visitor, and just about everyone in my family and circle of friends is on it too. And yet the site just plain irks me. Probably irks many of you too. To be fair it's not all Facebook's fault - it's the user-generated content that is often at fault. In other words, from my point of view, Facebook's biggest enemy is its community. So here are my biggest issues with Facebook, in no particular order:

• Worlds collide, usually not in a good way. I don't use Facebook for my business-related activities, and here's why. Most of us moved away from home and only see our high school friends at 5-year intervals. We speak to our parents once or twice a week (or less), and get the whole family together for birthdays and major holidays only. Yet now we enable 24/7 communications with all of these people, and in an open forum where their remarks to us are visible to the whole world. I don't know about you, but the last thing I'd want would be for Joe Bagodonuts from the BHS Class of '89 to reminisce about "the time we did (insert embarrassing situation here)" on a FB comment thread. I also don't need my mom to nudge me about every single little development in my career...some worlds were never meant to merge.
• Top news is never what I want to see. One of the biggest mysteries to me is the set of criteria Facebook uses to determine what content shows up in the Top News feed. Popularity? Viewing habits? I have no idea. What I do know is that whenever I sign in to Facebook my view defaults to the Top News and invariably I click straight through to Most Recent. I’d be happy to cut out the middle man here.
• One million strong for [cause, person, animal, game, food, website, politician, etc.]. The fact is there are 400 million people on Facebook, most of whom are outside of the United States. I'd bet that given enough time you could find a million people to support anything, especially since doing so requires no money, commitment, follow-up, or action of any kind. So my point is, what's the point, apart from adding more nonsense to the news feed.
• Mobville Farmfish Wars. I understand that Farmville is the most popular game on the planet. But if I haven’t joined it yet, I’m not going to join ever. I’m not interested in becoming a criminal mastermind either. I’ve been involved in too many FB games to know that I don’t really want to be involved anymore. So if there were an option to block all game invitations, I’d take it.
• Suggestions. I call this the “Facebook Nanny” feature. I don’t want valuable real estate taken up with suggestions to help people find their way around Facebook. I don’t need to be nudged to help people find friends or share the latest news. There are more people on FB than there are in the United States, so I think finding friends should be relatively easy. As for sharing news, let me choose. I’ve got over 600 FB connections and of those maybe 50 are the people I want to share with regularly. Once I share with someone I’m not normally inclined to share with that opens up a whole new set of Seinfeld-esque obligations that I’d rather avoid.

In spite of these issues, nowadays there's a strong business case for using Facebook as a legitimate marketing channel. You can check out any number of articles extolling the virtues of creating a Facebook page for your business (Mashable's Facebook Guidebook is probably the best place to start). 400 million people and growing is a statistic that cannot be ignored, and by and large the above issues don’t apply to business pages, at least not in the same way.

But when I'm just on Facebook to check out what my friends are up to and to spy on my family, I'm operating by a different set of expectations. You might think me oversensitive, but I'll bet there are things about FB and other sites that bug you too. Feel free to share below.

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I'm an evangelist for simplicity. I like short sentences, even if I don't always write them. I like words with fewer than four syllables. I like to keep my blog entries brief.

But today I'm all about more.

Before I hear the boo-hiss combo from some of my writing pals out there, I'm still a champion of brevity. When I say "more" I don't mean length, or word count, or syllables, or letters. I mean frequency. 

This revelation should come as no surprise to writers. How do you become a better writer? Write more. More often, that is. If you write once a month, try once a week. If you write once a week, try every other day. When you get to the point where you're writing every day, you're getting it.

Now when it comes to the kinds of content so many of us generate these days - tweets, blog posts, Facebook updates, photo captions, video descriptions, even e-mails - the same principle applies: do it more often and you'll get better at it. Only now there are added incentives: you'll get noticed, expand your reach, and strengthen your personal brand. 

Writing often, in 140-character-or-less tweets or 140+ word blogs, brings with it a host of benefits.

The more you tweet,

• the more you'll get followed.
• the more connections you'll make.
• the more you'll receive (be it information, observations, feedback, consulting gigs, event invitations, etc.).
• the better you'll write.

The more you blog,

• the more original content you'll be able to tweet.
• the more credibility you'll get (well, to be fair this point does depend on whether or not you're adding value).
• the more fans you'll earn.
• the better you'll write.

How about you? Have you gained anything by writing with more frequency? Let me know and comment below.

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While I'm out there looking for a new gig, I've kept busy in part by doing something I think is just plain fun: helping people get into social media. These people include friends and more recently some business relationships of mine. It's the latter group that's been the most motivating, as they've forced me to increase my own understanding of social technology and focus on specifics. In particular they've been fascinated by Twitter, and the questions they've asked most often:

How do I get started on Twitter, and what do I need to do to keep it going?

The resulting discussions have led to this list - for consistency's sake (see my last post on using LinkedIn) let's call it 9 ways to work the hell out of Twitter:

1. Build a solid foundation: When you get started on Twitter you'll need two things: a thorough profile, and some tweets. Write your 160-character bio with care, use keywords, and align it with your brand. Include a URL in the Web field, even if it's just your LinkedIn profile. Upload a decent photo (yes, you can be creative, but don't include your kids, please). And then, once the profile is done, start off with a few (maybe 5 or so) tweets. 
2. Follow and get followed: Though some Twitter practitioners advocate a blanket "follow back" approach, I now disagree (see my post on Twitter miscreants to see why). Be disconcerting; follow the people who are of interest to you and your customers. Then, if your profile is thorough and you've posted a few tweets that give a taste of your offering (your voice, tone, and the kind of content people can expect), you'll start to get followers. One great way to get followers who are important to you: find them first, retweet their content, comment on their tweets using @reply, and stay engaged in their conversations. More on this below.
3. Feed the monster: Simply put, tweet great content. As often as you can. Be conscious of quality, and add value. Retweet posts from people you admire. Key here is to offer quality content, lots of it, that is in line with your business and you personality. You will gain most of your followers and all of your credibility by virtue of the content you generate. Feed your feed and you'll be fed, too. 
4. Recycle: The good ol' Retweet (RT). Much of the content you'll see on Twitter is recycled. It's vintage. But it's also timeless. Great tips and good advice can go around and around and never lose value. Forward these gems to your followers, and at the same time earn the gratitude of the original content author. One thing I've learned about Twitter: it's a karma-heavy community. What goes around comes around.
5. Separate and create: You've got the basics down and you're creating content, the outflow if you will; now take a moment and organize the inflow. Rather than use the Twitter homepage as your information stream, use the Lists function to categorize those you follow. Start using a tool like HootSuite or TweetDeck to view those lists in a more effective way. You'll want some categories to be highly visible (in my case, I've got a "gurus" list that I often retweet from) so that you can have quick access to trending topics or items of interest to you and your followers.
6. Look and listen: While it's good to be jumping in and tweeting to your heart's content, it pays to sit back and observe, too. Read what's going on in your streams. If you've got it set up right, you'll have several customized news feeds that can show you--in real time--industry trends, statistics, world news, local news, financial news, technology tips, etc. and so on. It's your own mini wire service, right there on your desktop or mobile device. Reading and "listening" to all the chatter in your feeds will not only help you find items of interest (which you can then retweet to your followers); you'll also be able to identify opportunities, prospects, and gaps in the market that you can exploit. Listening is also the best way to learn the lingo - and Twitter does have its own specialized vocabulary.
7. Engage: You can have conversations on Twitter, and you should. If you look and listen as explained above, you'll see where you can add the most value to developing topics. You'll find tweets that you'll be dying to comment on. So here's where the @reply comes in handy. Just reply to any tweet you see that's of interest (you don't even have to be following the tweeter) and engage with its author. Before you know it you'll have a bit of to-and-fro that connects you with someone AND with all of their followers (@replies are for public viewing, direct messages (d username) are not). And maybe they'll follow you, too.
8. Integrate: Once you're comfortable with Twitter you can get the most out of its viral broadcasting capabilities by adding it to your existing marketing program as a content publishing channel, a research partner, a feedback gathering device, a thought leadership soapbox, an alliance supporter, an event publicity tool, and more. For now focus on the content publishing angle: even if you don't have a blog, you've probably got content you can publish. Use Twitter to link to E-mail newsletters, landing pages, PDF documents (as long as they're hosted somewhere), videos, podcasts, press releases, news articles (either authored pieces or articles mentioning you or your firm), and other social media sites like YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, even LinkedIn--pretty much anything that's online and connects back to you.
9. Measure: Here's the great thing about Twitter if you're an ROI-focused executive: you can measure just about anything that you do on Twitter. Twitter clients like HootSuite provide weekly stats showing total clicks, click sources, and regional breakdowns. Twitter Grader, Tweetlevel, and Klout give you overall scores which, over time, can show your progress in "softer" areas like popularity, influence, trust level, and engagement, all of which are useful for branding purposes. URL shortening services, such as bit.ly, provide link data summaries. And of course any link to your own sites that you share via Twitter can be measured by your own analytics tools.

I'm just scratching the surface here - feel free to share your advice for getting started and keeping it going on Twitter. Add your comments or questions below. And by all means, tweet this by clicking on the retweet button below.

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I've always been a true believer in LinkedIn.

In 2004, back when the site was fairly new, I was wowed by the fact that I could be introduced to a whopping 15,000 people through my handful of connections. Today (March 12, 2010) I can reach 13.4 million by piggybacking on my immediate network, or the entire 60 million + if I choose to use InMail, LinkedIn's paid (or prepaid) direct contact messaging service.

That's a lot of people. While it's impossible for me to really know to any degree of depth more than a few hundred members of this horde of professionals, my direct connections now number near 800. It would be more, but I purposely slowed down my accretion rate. Not because I was worried about diluting my network, but because I wanted to treat every request that came through my inbox with due consideration.

Now I'm using LinkedIn for one specific targeted purpose: to find a job. So far the best leads I've had, and the best interviews I've had, have been obtained through my LinkedIn network. And it's not just by searching LinkedIn jobs. Here are the top 5 ways I'm working the hell out of my network:

1. Research: Using LinkedIn's Company search, I find potential employers based on criteria that are important to me. Once I figure out which companies are appealing, the folks I want to contact are just a click away (often they're listed right on the company page).
2. Interview Homework: I use Company search to get some basic background on companies I'm interviewing with. Of course these pages are just starting points for a more extensive research effort, but it's worth using LinkedIn to get the basics--and find out who you may know.
3. Due Diligence: When I see job openings on other sites (job boards, corporate career sites, Twitter, etc.), before I even think of applying I go through my LinkedIn connections and gather info from the Company search. I'm trying to dig up useful info, but more than that I want to avoid getting stuck among the hundreds or thousands of applicants who are sure to be mucking up the inbox of whoever is on the receiving end of the automated systems I love so much.
4. Listening to the Chatter: LinkedIn Groups and Answers are fantastic sources of information. Sure there are a lot of conversations that I'll ignore, but going through the most relevant groups to my career and job search, I pick up useful tidbits and leads with some regularity. (I'd do better if I also contributed to some of the conversations out there, but I've got to pick my battles).
5. Getting in touch: Since I've got 800 first level contacts, I've got a lot of people to reach out to. With LinkedIn it's easy to send them a quick note, asking how they're doing, and mention that I'm looking around. Amazingly enough, this is an effective way to generate leads. And since we're connected I don't need to be shy--but I do like to be brief. 

It's important to note that this is just the tip of the LinkedIn iceberg. And with over 60 million professionals and growing, many of whom add content daily, there's always something new, something useful, to be found. That's why I'm still enthralled after 5 years plus of membership. 

How are you working the hell out of LinkedIn? Let me know by commenting below.

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If your job search is going well, you can expect the (vastly oversimplified) process to look something like this:

1. Find job of interest
2. Tailor resume/cover letter to suit the role
3. Apply for job
4. Interview for job
5. Interview again for job (and again, in many cases)
6. Get job offer

The problem is that you never really know if it's going well until you get to step 6 and you have an offer in your hand. Right up until the moment you get that offer, you're a job seeker, plain and simple. It ain't horseshoes or hand grenades - close just doesn't count.

So on to the issue at hand: what do you do between steps 5 and 6, when you're waiting for that final answer to come? 

Simple: you start again from step 1.

Passing the time shouldn't be a problem for anyone engaged in a job search. There's only one acceptable result: getting and accepting a job offer. So all of your efforts should be focused on achieving that objective.

Granted, you may get frustrated or even depressed at the idea of repeating the process again and again. But if you're conducting a good search, there are clear benefits you'll gain from the experience:

1. Expanding your network: As you're meeting recruiters (both corporate and agency) and hobnobbing with hiring managers, the connections you make are all good ones. Capitalize on this activity and grow your online professional networks accordingly.
2. Facing your fears: Your biggest enemies in your job search are fear of rejection, and loss of confidence. The more you interview, the more opportunities you'll have to mitigate or even overcome these obstacles.
3. Honing your pitch: Every time you tweak a resume or cover letter, speak to a hiring manager over the phone, and interview in person, you're getting better (we hope) at explaining how you're the right person for the job.
4. Improving your knowledge (of both yourself and your chosen profession): If you're doing the right thing, then every time you find a role of interest and make the decision to apply, you're embarking on a new research project. You're finding out what you can about a company, its competitors, and its market. And then as you meet hiring managers and (if you're lucky) are challenged by their questions during interviews, you'll think more deeply about what you can do and what you can offer. 

If you're truly on the verge of an offer, or several offers, then you're doing all the right things and are well on the way to success. But until you sign an offer you're happy with, stay focused and keep the search alive.

Comments? Questions? Let me know your thoughts, below.

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via http://scr.im

Sometimes seven really is a lucky number.

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via itechfuture.com

While I've been focusing much of my time on my job search, and occasionally writing blog entries to that effect, I've found my internal idea generator to be on the fritz lately.

So I've decided to cheat. I've been getting into StumbleUpon recently and am thoroughly enjoying it - so why not share here, too? Not my original idea, I grant you that. To make it interesting, I've given myself one rule:

Stumble seven times, and post the result to Posterous.

My clever name for this experiment: Stumble 7. 

Today I clicked the "Stumble!" button on my Stumbleupon Chrome toolbar the obligatory seven times, and I landed on the novel Dell Froot concept design (pictured above).

Since making an almost religious conversion to Mac last year, I tend to ignore innovations in the PC space but this is quite a find. Certainly a space saver, and pleasant on the eyes. But I've got some concerns about the practicality and the usability of such a machine.

You'd need to have the right kind of workspace set up: a blank wall or white screen, and a table/desk that must also be a projection screen. Any of us with woodgrain desks are out of luck I guess. And if your workspace is anything like mine, your wall or cube area near your current monitor is likely to be cluttered with post-it notes, pictures, doodles, inspirational notes (or in my case, demotivator cards), and so on.

Then there's the actual projected keyboard. I've tried various versions of flat keyboards in the past and can't seem to get used to the fact that there's no physical feedback - no give, no key clicks, no uncomfortable mashing of keys together when you commit certain kinds of typos. I rely on most of these sensations to type freely - probably because I am a horrible typist. But I'd bet I'm not alone.

So in the end I won't be buying a Froot, but maybe it'll make it into the Guggenheim or the MOMA.

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I've seen some enlightening posts recently from industry leaders, explaining their rationale for following or not following people. Greg Savage, CEO of Aquent (one of the world's largest recruitment firms) is the perfect example; in his latest post on The Savage Truth he explains as follows (note: formatting below is mine; Greg doesn't use bullets):

• Firstly I look at the picture or avatar of the new follower. No avatar is a big #fail...
• Then I read their most recent tweets. That is key. Lots of one-word Tweets or meaningless phrases and it’s a ‘no follow’...
• Of course I read the bio. I am looking for some connection. ..no bio means almost certainly no follow...
• My next criteria is location... if there is no location on the profile, it leaves a gap in my mental picture of who this is and so they are less interesting and less trusted...
• I am always disappointed if the new follower does not list their web address...
• But it doesn’t end there. I usually have a quick look at your following/follower ratio. This is not a deal breaker, but in conjunction with other measures, such as Tweet content, can be a knock-out factor. For example, you are following 9697 people and three are following you back. That is a problem.

We would all do well to follow Greg's guidelines (with some slight modification for your own needs) when choosing whom to follow in either Twitter or Buzz. Following people of interest, people who share good information, actually adds something of value to your day. But when you follow any ol' content machine you should expect to have to pick through junk from time to time.

Look at my list of followers/followees and you'll see that the majority are excellent people and organizations. But there are some in there - mea culpa, I know - who are name collectors at best, scam artists at worst. I followed people back indiscriminately early on in my Twitter time (my list culling project continues apace but I'm not done yet) and I'm trying not to make the same mistake with Buzz. But the problem with Buzz is that even if you take care, if you happen to be following someone who inspires hundreds of comments on every single post, then you have to wade through the litter in all that stuff, too. 

Best you can do is take care from the get go. Greg's points above may work for many of you; I'd like to add a few more:

• If you offer me something free, or have the word "free" as part of your user name, don't count on a reciprocal follow.
• If your tweets are 100% re-tweets with no commentary of your own, I'll pass.
• If your tweets consist entirely of famous quotes, I may applaud your taste on occasion but I don't think I'll be following you.

And one for Buzz:

• If you make a blatantly self-promotional comment that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, not only do I not follow - that's a block.

The point is, Twitter and Buzz may feed you the content you want, but I'd bet good money that you'll get plenty of junk in that diet, too. Better to be careful and establish good eating habits from the beginning.

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The other day I grabbed lunch at Mendy's Kosher Deli on 34th and Park in Manhattan. I hadn't had a real Kosher deli lunch in years so I was looking forward to a whole lot of meat, with some rye bread around it almost as an afterthought, plus a pickle on the side and a cup of mushroom barley. And let's not forget a Doc Brown's black cherry soda to wash it all down.

I went for the Kosher salami on rye, and as you can see my expectations were met. But being the geek that I am I finished the first half of the sandwich and started thinking about what a great design the sandwich is. It's intuitive, it meets every goal that it's created to meet, and using it (usually) is a pleasurable experience. (OK, disclaimer time: I'm no designer. And I wasn't just thinking of usability at random - I was reading Wrench in the System, by Harold Hambrose, which is turning out to be a fine read I must say).

Now an argument can be made that the Mendy's sandwich is over-designed. Compared to a peanut-butter-and-jelly on two slices of white or whole wheat, sure, the huge salami-mustard-lettuce-on-rye meets the sandwich objective several times over. I'd wager that a half of a Mendy's sandwich is enough to meet most people's needs, so perhaps the whole thing is a bit wasteful. From a design point of view, that is.

But it's all about the experience. The home-made PB&J gets the job done and quickly, and is nice in its own way, but is it as memorable as the giant sandwich pictured here? Is it as fun to eat? Would you go out of your way to find a PB&J? Is it as rewarding? 

Guess it's really up to you. They're both just sandwiches after all. Personally, as much as I love a PB&J slapped together on the kitchen counter, when I picture a sandwich it's the Mendy's version that comes to mind.

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Over the past few months, I've tried to ignore the prospect of spending lots of time applying for jobs online. While I was in Australia I dabbled here and there but decided not to take the process too seriously until I returned to the US and could devote the time and attention necessary for a "real" search. 

Good thing I waited. The one thing online job applications require above all else is time. Hours and hours of registration forms, resume uploads, profile updates, cover letter customizations, experience descriptions, Equal Opportunity disclaimers, privacy policies, and final submission confirmations. Sure, they're not all the same; sometimes there are questionnaires and other attempts to dig deeper. But the fact is that again and again I've got to put all notions of efficiency aside and ignore the user experience as I enter the same information again and again and again ad nauseum.

What really gets me is, there has got to be a better way. Several players in the online-career/recruitment-applicant-tracking-solutions game (like Taleo, Brass Ring, Oracle iRecruitment, and iCIMS) provide the back end for hundreds, maybe thousands, of corporate career sites. Have any of these companies spent any time on usability studies? How about applicant research? Is anyone listening to job seekers? Imagine how much easier the application process would be if they did. (Any info on this, let me know - I'll put together a future post on the topic)

I know I've got to suck it up and go through the registration forms and the entry pages and the resume parsing scripts that simply don't work. I know I haven't seen the last of the text boxes with ridiculous limits and the error messages that make no sense. And sad as it is I am sure I'll be timed out of an application and have to do the whole damned thing over again at some point in the next week or two. 

So what's a job seeker to do? Until there's a universal application profile, or a simple way to import your LinkedIn profile or the like, the best you can do is use the system more efficiently. Here are my tips for getting through the application process with as little pain as possible:

1. Prepare a plain text version of every document you ever plan to submit to an employer. You'll inevitably have to cut and paste these into an online application somewhere.
2. Prepare a short version of your cover letter. Some job boards allow you to store as many cover letters as you want - but when it's time to hit the apply button, the cover letter box may be suddenly limited to, oh, say, 1500 characters.
3. Prepare a plain text "Achievements List" that describes your quantifiable achievements for every job you've ever had. Think of this as a resume supplement. Your resume should of course feature specifics about your duties and accomplishments, but it helps to have just the accomplishments listed separately. Trust me on this - cutting and pasting the relevant sections of your resume alone won't cut it.
4. Any time you're asked to write something original, copy and paste your answers into a text file for use at a later date. Here I'm referring to questionnaires that often ask for details about something you've done--a process you've implemented, a project you've run, a problem you've solved, etc.
5. If you really want to mitigate the pain of applications, find another way. It's always better to find a human being you can contact within your target organization. Use your impressive social networking skills to find the right person, if you can. Get introduced. Or pick up the phone.

Any tips you'd like to share?

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I've been playing around with Google Wave for a few months now and I think I'd like it more if the people I actually want to Wave with would give it a go. For the most part those I invited, signed up. They checked in once, maybe I got a "Hey how does this work?" message, then nothing.

Fact is, most of them just forgot about it, or didn't see any immediate value in it, or found the whole thing overwhelming.  It's the latter that concerns me most: I need collaborative tools that make it easy to work my peers, that my peers can in turn work with. Wave is just plain complicated, and unlike other Google applications it leaves a lot to be desired from a usability standpoint (I highly recommend John Furst's Improving the Usability of Google Wave: A Personal Wish List for a thorough review of usability issues. Note that some issues have been resolved, like access management, but Google obviously has a way to go).

Right now I'm involved in a project that's still at the brainstorming stage. My colleagues are spread across several time zones and rarely able to connect during daylight hours. We're a mix of copywriters, TV producers, and marketers and all of us are comfortable with the written word. Several members were once part of an improv comedy troupe. In short we're the kind of loose confederation of miscreants who would use Wave well--were it easier to use.

So I'm looking for suggestions for how to get everyone on board and tolerant of usability issues, at least for the time being. So far I've come up with the following points specifically with my project team in mind:

Google Wave is....

• Your own invite-only conference room: you can chat, hold a meeting, exchange docs and other files, and record everything
• An online whiteboard: write notes or post items for everyone in the Wave to see, in real time.
• An active research stream: you can search public waves to find anything that might be pertinent to what you're doing.
• A communications hub: once everyone on the team is on board, all online discussions take place within the Wave, leaving a record that can be reviewed and tracked. Every file related to the project can also be attached to the ongoing Wave.

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How fitting that 10 days before leaving Oz, I happened to be interviewed for national television. And ended up looking like, in the words of a close friend, a dork.

Yes folks, at around :46 in the accompanying video I appear with my daughter, just a dad and his little girl enjoying a day at the beach. Only on this day the good people from the Sydney Aquarium released 10 Wobbegong sharks (a.k.a. carpet sharks) into the clear waters off Shelley Beach (in Manly, which is a 30-minute ferry ride north of central Sydney). I was standing to be next to a cameraman and he turned and asked me, "So, what do you think?"

I answered in the stilted, blubbering manner now recorded for posterity. What a bonehead. Years of Toastmasters training out the window, all I could come up with was "...a once in a lifetime opportunity." Lame. Believe it or not I actually won some impromptu speaking contests. After this video I may just give the ribbons back.

If this kind of thing should ever happen again, here's what I intend to do:

1. Breathe.
2. Repeat the question to myself.
3. Take 5-10 seconds to think up an answer.
4. Construct the answer in a simple opening-body-closing format.
5. Speak slowly and in complete sentences.

At least no harm was done and I look like a guy having a great day on the beach (which is accurate). Luckily my co-star saved the day.

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