Making It Personal: Automated Emails, Blog Post Content, and Amazon HQ2 Rejection

broken heart game over

Welcome Back to Sunday Links with Social Media ReInvention

I want to thank the new subscribers who decided to receive future posts from Social Media ReInvention. You know who you are, and I’m grateful for your vote of confidence.

Your conscious decision to invest your Sunday time and attention here humbles and inspires me. Thank YOU!

Today’s Sunday Links summaries revolve around a specific storyline — Personalization.

  • Summary 1 — Email Marketing: 1. If You’re Automating Your Emails, Please Personalize Them
  • Summary 2 — Inbound Marketing: 2. Personalized Blog Posts are the New Unique
  • Summary 3 — Strategy: 3. Amazon HQ2 Selection Is Personal for the Cities Who Lost

Please join me. Right now.

If you don’t, I will take it personally …

… let’s get to work.

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Email Personalization Matters, Link Building Tips, Amazon’s Hardware Ecosystem Strategy

Typewriter It's All In The Journey

It’s All In The Journey

A Reboot To Sunday Links With Social Media Reinvention

I’m rebooting my life. I won’t bore you with the details.

Starting over is a painful process. Changes occur in our lives whether we are ready or not. I am re-grouping and re-prioritizing what’s important in my personal and professional life.

Time heals all wounds (well at least some of them). Most of all, it became clear why I started this marketing strategy blog in the first place:

  • I LOVE to write. It EXERCISES my brain.
  • I write for ME.
  • That’s WHY I love it.

I’m also back to regularly working out my body too. It hurts when you’ve haven’t done something consistently for a long time.

Something tells me committing to writing regularly will bring many of the same aches and pains. That’s okay. I can live with that. Baby steps.

So, it’s time to write. But, what do I write about? I’ll figure that out as I go. And, I hope to have fun along the way.

To kickstart things, I’ll curate links from my favorite news sites and marketing strategy blogs and summarize key points from the articles.

The goal: Publish at least two Sunday posts per month. 

These posts will focus on:

  • Email Marketing: Tips and insights on using marketing’s most measurable channel.
  • Inbound Marketing: Writing, writing tools, content marketing topics/trends/tools,  search engine optimization (SEO), and buyer personas.
  • Strategy: Summaries of my favorite strategy articles peppered with commentary from yours truly.

Here are the three topics I will cover in today’s post:

Summary 1 — Email Marketing: Email Personalization Separates You From The Herd

Summary 2 — Inbound Marketing: How To Earn Inbound Links (Especially When People Aren’t Linking To You)

Summary 3 — Strategy: Amazon Knows We Live In A Hardware Ecosystem World

If you’ve made it this far, come read some more. Let’s get to work …

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LinkedIn Mobile App Update: Personalized Invitations Are Here

Personalized invitations in LinkedIn Mobile App went live December 17, 2015

LinkedIn Mobile App Prompt Personalize Invitation

Photo Credit: by Tony Faustino

 

Personalized invitations in LinkedIn’s Mobile App became available on iOS and Android smartphones on December 17, 2015. Yay!

A hat tip and Thank You to Stuart Rosenthal for tweeting me and Imrich Tatiersky when this important LinkedIn Mobile App feature went live!

Tweet Stuart Rosenthal Personalizing LinkedIn Invitations

Tweet From Stuart Rosenthal on LinkedIn’s Mobile App

 

Here are step-by-step instructions for iOS / iPhones when personalizing our LinkedIn Invitations with the latest version of LinkedIn’s Mobile App.

 

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Don’t Invite Reid Hoffman To Connect With LinkedIn’s Mobile App

Latest LinkedIn Mobile App Release Doesn't Allow For Customized Invitations. Yet.

Reid Hoffman LinkedIn App Profile Pic

Photo Credit: Tony Faustino

 

IMPORTANT UPDATE (01/08/16): LinkedIn’s mobile app made personalized invitations available in mid-December 2016.

LinkedIn’s mobile app is much improved.  But, we can’t personalize LinkedIn Invitations in the latest release. Yet.

Didn’t my last post describe step-by-step instructions on personalizing our LinkedIn Connection Requests with LinkedIn’s Mobile App? Yes.

Those instructions are no longer valid. Here’s what I learned from a failed experiment.

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LinkedIn Mobile App Hack: 5 Easy Steps To Personal Connection Requests

How to customize LinkedIn Invitations with LinkedIn's Mobile App

LinkedIn Mobile App CUSTOMIZE INVITE prompt

Photo Credit: by Tony Faustino

 

Around six (6) weeks ago, I published this post criticizing LinkedIn for not updating its Project Voyager Mobile App so LinkedIn members can customize or personalize their LinkedIn Connection Requests / LinkedIn Invitations.

I Made A Mistake. We can customize or personalize our LinkedIn Connection Requests / LinkedIn Invitations from our mobile phones.

Here are step-by-step instructions and screenshots for personalizing our LinkedIn Invitations from LinkedIn’s Mobile App.

 

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Unemployed Attorneys Should Build Online Platforms Not Sue Their Law Schools

Content marketing strategy and tactics for lawyers and law school graduates seeking jobs

Lawyer Shingle

Photo Credit: by Wesley Fryer via flickr

 

Sara Randazzo, a Wall Street Journal reporter, published this article, Jobless Graduates Who Sued Law Schools Find Little Success in Court.

She shares how Law School Class of 2011 and 2012 J.D.’s from New York Law School, Florida Coastal School of Law, Hofstra Law, Cooley Law School, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, DePaul University College of Law, Widener University School of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and others filed class action lawsuits against their their alma maters for consumer fraud.

These unhappy graduates claimed their law schools mislead them about their post-graduation employment prospects (direct article quotes):

Disgruntled law-school graduates who filed suits accusing their alma maters of deceiving them about their chances of landing a well-paying job haven’t had much success in court.

More than a dozen class actions were filed in 2011 and 2012, but courts across the country have knocked out the lawsuits one by one, including a recent dismissal in Florida. Only a few remain.

 

I sense this frustration because the jobless recovery is realStatistical analysis and employment research proves white collar jobs for undergraduates and graduate program students started disappearing in 2002.

There’s Good News. I see opportunity for these unemployed attorneys. I see solo entrepreneurs with legal expertise to offer clients. Here are three (3) online platform ideas so unemployed lawyers as well as practicing ones can land their own clients and market themselves.

 

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Dorie Clark’s Stand Out: THE Career Management Strategy For Thriving 21st Century Careers

Book Review of Stand Out: How To Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It

Cover of Dorie Clark Stand Out BookSocial Media ReInvention Community Members know I value the teachings of Dorie Clark. Her first book, Reinventing YOU: Define Your Brand. Imagine Your Future., continues its profound influence on my own 21st century career management.

Dorie Clark’s Stand Out Is The Defacto 21st Century Career Management Strategy Manual. Dorie’s latest book, Stand Out: How To Find Your Breakthrough Idea And Build A Following Around It, is exceptional. The practical, accessible, and inspiring paths Dorie describes to becoming an industry thought leader are moving. Her actionable advice, superb writing, and real-world profiles are more relevant than ever in our increasingly robot-, algorithm-, outsource-driven world.

Stand Out IS the powerful and practical, how-to, user’s manual to accompany Seth Godin’s visionary ideas from Tribes and Linchpin. If Tribes and Linchpin are our target destinations, Stand Out maps out accessible paths we can choose to take.  (more…)

Five Reasons Why Self-Publishing Exclusively on LinkedIn Is Bad Business

Invest in Yourself. Protect Your Personal Brand. Publish a Self-Hosted Blog.

Runner with LinkedIn Logos

Bolota Asmeron, a member of the Linkedin Elite Centipede outs on a temporary Linkedin tattoo before the start of the 2010 Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco.

Photo Credit: A Name Like Shields Can Make You Defensive

 

Important Note: An intelligent and thought-provoking discussion from The Writing on LinkedIn Group inspired this latest post. Matt Sekol initiated the discussion thread, Where’s The Traditional Blog. It’s people like Matt Sekol (and many others) who reaffirm my belief and commitment to why The Writing on LinkedIn Group is one of the most important, intelligent, and enjoyable communities for engaging with and learning from like-minded individuals within LinkedIn.

Last week, I read Alexandra Samuel’s thoughtful post on Harvard Business ReviewHave LinkedIn and Medium Killed the Old-Fashioned Blog? Almost three years ago and 1 million Linkedin writers later, LinkedIn launched its self-described definitive publishing platform.

I submitted a comment stating why limiting our self-publishing investments to third-party platforms like LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform and Medium without investing in a self-hosted, personal website or personal blog is a career and business mistake.

Here are more detailed thoughts expanding on my comment in Alexandra’s post.  (more…)

Sunday Brunch Reads with Social Media ReInvention: 06/21/15 to 06/27/15

Sunday-Brunch-Newspaper-Large.jpg

Photo Credit: Anton Diaz

 

Please indulge me until Friday, July 31st 12:00 AM Midnight Central Time as I use the introductory paragraph of Sunday Brunch Reads with Social Media ReInvention to promote my nephew’s Kickstarter Campaign for his company, QuadshoX LLC. I wrote about Johnny Morris’ spinal cord injury and remarkable story in this blog post: America’s Gutsiest CEO and His Kickstarter Project Need Your Support.

Here’s the link to QuadshoX’s inspiring YouTube video to promote its Kickstarter Campaign:

The following news organizations wrote these wonderful articles about how Johnny’s and Team QuadshoX’s Corporate Mission is to transform the American wheelchair industry:

Johnny and Team QuadshoX have a limited window to raise $96,000 for the company’s initial inventory. Please join me in financially supporting the Team QuadshoX Kickstarter Campaign and join them in improving the lives of 6 million+ people wheelchair bound Americans.

Your Sunday Brunch Silicon Valley Catchphrase of the Week: Let’s Do Great Things.

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Part 2: Seth Godin’s Professional Freelancer Course

What Do You Provide?

Teacher with Students

Photo Credit: usembassykyiv

 

I’m publicly taking and publishing the required exercises in Seth Godin’s Professional Freelancer Course on Udemy. The required exercises force you to ask: “Am I Taking This Path for The Right Reasons.”

I completed the Lectures Six through Thirteen this morning. It’s great stuff taught by The Godfather Himself: Mr. Seth Godin.

Seth asked his course participants to go all-in and publish their assignments. As I perform the course exercises, I will continue publishing the results. It’s Seth teaching his students to write down, commit to, and deliver on our personal manifestos.

Here’s my continuing public contribution and commitment to Seth’s class:
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