Tag: social-networking

(Originally tweeted here and here – Not on twitter? Join and Follow me!)

Just watched a brief two minute Q&A from Seth Godin, marketing guru. Godin answers a question from an audience member about social networking and small business. His response indicts social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter as potentially “fake networking.” And it’s hard to dispute his simple argument: if you have 5,000 facebook friends or 20,000 twitter followers, does it really matter if none of these people will go to bat for you when you really need them to? Networking has (traditionally) implied that a relationship translates into real action.

Godin is asking an important question: where does the rubber meet the road on social networking? It’s hard to say. The same criticism is levied by David Wong in his piece on 7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable. Sure you’ve got a bunch of internet “friends,” but if all they are doing is sending you wall posts on your birthday and are otherwise nowhere to be found in your life, does it really matter?

I’ll save the flipside to this argument for another time. Here’s two quotes from the clip from Seth Godin:

Networking is always important when its real and it’s always a useless distraction when it’s fake. …

The internet has allowed an enormous amount of fake networking to take place.

Ok I have one more thought I want to share: my facebook/twitter policy: I keep my facebook profile somewhat elite and restricted to friends in realspace or internet-friends with whom I’ve had extensive interactions. With twitter, on the other hand, anything goes. I think social networking on twitter, as “fake” or cheap as it may be, still can serve a purpose. More on this later.

Also see my brief explanation of the difference between Facebook and Twitter.

Tags cyberspace, facebook, happiness, internet, misery, networking, realspace, realspace-vs-cyberspace, relationships, seth-godin, social-networking, twitter

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10 Steps to getting a job through Twitter

Post author By Justin
Post date February 26, 2009
No Comments on 10 Steps to getting a job through Twitter

http://mapping.path101.co…gh-twitter.html

Some advice on using twitter to secure a job. Some of the advice is obvious, even as it probably needs to be said — i.e. remember that your tweets are public, so think before you tweet. I’ve also now signed up with Mr Tweet, which has opened my eyes that I probably link too much.

It’s intriguing to see over and over again that:

Celebrities use twitter
Tweeting celebrities often interact with followers

I wouldn’t have expected that, but maybe twitter gives celebrities the opportunity to achieve a semblance of normal human interaction. This could happen as followers on twitter are removed enough (thanks to physical distance) to keep the celebrities’ walls/bubble intact while enabling followers to remain composed (even when a famous person is interacting with them). Hmm.

4. Ask people who to follow. Poke around the people that your friends follow. One person you should definitely ask is Mr. Tweet. By following the Mr. Tweet account, you’ll get a customized recommendation list based on the people in your network. This works if you know a lot of people in your industry, but probably won’t be as good if you’re a student or you’re looking to break out of what you’re doing. That’s why I suggested Twellow first. Just don’t follow too many people, though. When I see someone following 6,000 people, I automatically think they’re trying to just gain followers to sell something or they’re a bit too much of a self promoter–because clearly you can’t listen to 6,000 people. If you’re not really listening, I don’t have much interest in speaking with you.

5. On that note, listen! Yes, that’s right. Before you go blabbing your mouth off about all your brilliant insights, listen to what the people who work in the kinds of places you want to work and who are doing what you want to do are talking about. What articles are they reading? What events are they going to? This is the pulse of the most innovative part of the community. Look up what you don’t know and make sure you’re on top of this.

6. Use search creatively. Is anyone looking for someone with marketing experience? How about a product manager? Is anyone hiring?? Tweetdeck lets you create several saved searches that update live, so you can see up to the minute updates about your topics of interest. You can also feed them into a reader using RSS.

7. Cross-pollinate. Create thoughtful presentations on Slideshare about some research or thinking you did. Write blog posts about your take on what others are talking about. Create links for them on bit.ly (so you know how many clicks you got) and share them on Twitter. Use creative and compelling titles like, “What you didn’t know about SEO” or “Buying drugs in the year 2020” versus boring ones like “My post about SEO” or “A presentation on the future of pharmaceuticals.”

8. Get in conversations. Ask questions directly to people, in public, about something they posted. You’d be surprised about how accessible some really high level people are on Twitter. Even celebrities seem to be pretty responsive. This is where your links to other places come in handy. When someone new responds to something I say, I generally check them out to see who they are. Don’t comment just to comment, but when you have something interesting to say or a good question, don’t be afraid to participate! One of the best ways to engage with people is to talk to the people already following you that you don’t know. They came in somehow–ask them about their jobs, their companies. Call out their interesting blog posts or things you like that their company does. It shows you’re paying attention.

(H/T Gary)

Tags celebrities, fame, social-networking, tweets, twitter