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 If you have been on several “social media” platforms as a firm or individual for some time but feel that you’re barely scratching the surface, this guide will help you boost your results significantly because: its goal is to help you develop B2B relationships more efficiently, instead of “selling” yourself and it shows you how to use B2B-oriented platforms in concert to increase leverage. If you would like some background on the profound distinction between “selling” yourself and focusing on relationship, “Social Business Disruption of B2B Sales & Marketing” crystallizes it in 8 minutes. Continue reading B2B Executive’s How-to Guide to Social Business
 For years, now, I have beseeched all the executives and “knowledge workers” I know (that’s thousands) to blog, so please consider this as part of that campaign—with benefits (because this is a how-to post). Here’s why: In the Knowledge Economy’s pervasive digital networks, you are invisible unless you come across people’s screens regularly. And, while you are invisible, your potential business partners are seeing people who do flit across their screens. If you aren’t there, you are in a bloody ocean that gets smaller every year. Don’t go in, the water is not fine. Please understand that I’m stating this as a simple fact. I’m sure you’ve read books like The Long Tail, which describe how we are all publishers now, that is, those of us who decide to use the free tools at our disposal.
Blogging is 21st century thought leadership, which is table stakes in the Knowledge Economy. Your thoughts represent and “scale” you, so they help you to connect with people with whom you can collaborate to do meaningful things. Moreover, blogging software is the ideal heart of your social business ecosystem because blogs’ content is much easier to find than websites’. In addition, all blogging platforms are cloud-based and have RSS feeds for republishing, so it’s super easy and efficient for you to re-share your blog posts elsewhere—on LinkedIn, for example—automatically.
By the way, this post applies equally to individual executives and firms. It’s especially poignant to B2Bs.
Continue reading Three-Step Executive’s Guide to Blogging
How to attract and maintain the attention of Connections you care most about
 Old habits die hard, and so it is with the ingrained assumption that “content sells.” Yes, having a current LinkedIn Profile replete with keyword combinations relevant to your High Interest Connections is very important, but it’s back seat to giving your Connections personal attention. Here I’ll address your protest that “I don’t have time!” by sharing some ultra-efficient processes for interacting on LinkedIn. Read on if you want to outperform 99% of other LinkedIn members. Continue reading Triple the Value of Your LinkedIn Network by Interacting
 Facebook recently released a new control for Pages that acts like blogs’ pre-moderation setting: when a Page admin activates it, Likes’ (Fans’) “organic” posts will not appear on the Page’s Wall until an admin specifically approves them. Read on for how to decide whether to use this control with your Pages as well as my interpretation of how the new control helps to reveal Facebook’s emerging business strategy to maximize the impact of its IPO. Continue reading Analysis: Facebook Pages’ New Pre-Moderation Control
In Mastering The Uncomfortable Art Of Personal Branding, Amber Mac provides some valuable insight into how individuals can engage people by sharing a mix of personal and professional details on their social media profiles. She sites @garyvee. The post could have been more valuable if it had mentioned several use cases and the importance of knowing your audience.
Moreover, individuals engage more effectively when they are clear about whom they’re trying to engage. For example, imagine yourself across the table with two of three of your stakeholders at lunch, what would you talk about? Those are the kind of details to share. Not random things. Another of the post’s valuable points: weave the things together in terms of a story. That will help people relate to what you share and remember you better. We covered this in more detail here: http://bit.ly/blogtwjob2 – see the section under “use [...]
Here is an excellent example of backlash against Google/Google+ from InfoWorld. This post shows how to 1) how to disconnect Google+ from Google search results and 2) configure your browser to default to non-Google search engines. Useful, but assumes 2 things that will be untrue for some people: a) Google+ results “pollute” search results in all cases; b) Yahoo/Bing give better search results. Although all of the above could be true in some cases, the devil is in the details. It is surprising that the post didn’t mention a much better alternative: info.com, whose algorithm sorts results from all three search engines.
Executive’s Guide recommends being aware of the ground shifting under search. Don’t get caught up in religious wars, and try different things. As we have argued in these pages here, Google+ results will enhance certain kinds of searches and will return inferior results in others. As infoworld says, users can “filter out” Google+ [...]
 Everyone wants to know the secret sauce, how to build vibrant communities in digital social venues. Here is a question to a community manager to whom I responded recently in a gated enterprise forum. The question was, “What are some effective ways to improve circle count and follower engagement on google+?” Read on for some general pointers and references for further reading. Continue reading Quick Notes: How to Build a Vibrant Google+ Page
Many employment or career-related discussions contain a feeling of gloom and doom, but I have noticed a paradoxical market development: that the unpredictable and volatile economy that affects all businesses and careers is actually driving more demand for expertise, but the demand doesn’t look the same to companies or workers. Here I’ll explain how this works, but even more important, I’ll give you some practical tips on using the market to your advantage (featuring social technologies).
 Most of us are familiar with Forrester’s Ladder of Participation, but using it to build engagement and community still escapes most individuals and organizations, so here I’ll offer a short treatment within the context of Facebook. The profound insight is that 90% of people in a social venue observe without interacting. 9% are the creators, they tweet, blog and make themselves known. 1% are curators, they sort and categorize content. Whether you are on LinkedIn, Facebook or authoring a blog, you only hear 10% of the people, but you are affecting 100% of the people. If you don’t know that, you might think your online activities were going unnoticed. Now I’ll turn to how this works in Facebook.
Continue reading Using Facebook’s Ladder of Social Actions to Build Community
 Facebook Pages and Groups are rapidly becoming like websites or phone numbers—overwhelmingly banal. Last year, it was still novel for many companies and governments to launch Pages or Groups, but 2010-2011 is proving to be the inflection point: people merely expect Facebook presence because every organization has one. In step with this, the competition for Fans’ (now “Likes”) attention on Facebook is high and will continue to get higher. That said, as difficult as it is, launching and growing a powerful Facebook presence is eminently doable with the right strategy and execution. Here I will share some of my notes with a current engagement for how to grow a quality Fan base by building and leveraging a network around your presence. By the Way, Pages and Groups share similarities but they are distinct in their functionality. This post will focus mostly on Pages, but many of its techniques will work with Groups as well. Continue reading Four Steps to Building Facebook Presence, Network-Style
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Executive’s Guide on Twitter
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