The unemployment rate for the aged 55 and over workforce rose from 5.9% to 6.2%
More than half of workers aged 55 and have been looking for work at least a year
The long term unemployed are at risk of skills erosion (which decreases the probability of finding work)
Table 3 of the Fact Sheet highlights important statistics for both and average duration of unemployment and the long term unemployed for the 55+ and older group:
It Gets Harder Every Year for Unemployed, Older Workers
Last year, AARP Senior Vice President, Jeffrey Davis, released this video statement:
Older Unemployed Workers Must Overcome Multiple Hiring Perceptions
This Phenemenon Has Been Increasing Since 2005. I still have the original May 2005 Fortune Magazine issue to this article: 50 and Fired. The article states how over-50 unemployed workers battle these common hiring objections, perceptions, and responses when searching for jobs:
Out-of-touch with today's technology
Too expensive to hire (a pheneomenon referred to as tenured compensation)
Unable to work for or work with team members half their age (e.g., less flexible)
Invest in Your Personal Brand WHILE YOU'RE EMPLOYED
The Rise of The Temporary Gig Economy. But, it's not all gloom and doom. There's an emerging trend to hire older, over-50 workers (particularly in the white collar executive segment). The Huffington Post published an article titled, Patina: Experience Trumps Youth in This Economy. This Wisconsin-based placement firm specializes in placing older experience executives in temporary global assignments. Patina Solutions recognized an unmet need and opportunity for older executives:
Baby Boomers might approach retirement differently - they prefer to keep working but not necessarily in a part-time job
Older experienced executives are a senior management asset when it comese to overseeing projects
These executives have no desire to be tied down to one company (though many of their clients lost their jobs do to the ongoing recession)
Established firms are moving to on-demand employment models (which allows them to forgo paying health care benefits and vacation packages)
Read These Forbes Magazine Articles By Josh Bersin On Employment Trends. I follow Mr. Bersin because he identifies important patterns in 21st century career management. After reading these articles, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand how The Temporary Gig Economy will become the norm versus the exception:
Start Differentiating Yourself (Especially Online). This means competitive differentiation is vital for older executives. The competition for these temporary assignments will increase.
Building a Personal Brand Involves a Significant Time Investment. I'm entering my third year in blogging. I love writing (which is why I do it for free). And, my passion for writing and sharing is yielding returns in important professional and personal opportunities.
The Paradox of Digital Media Is It's Slow (Not Fast). The results don't happen overnight. Despite a real-time Internet, digital content is an asset that becomes more valuable over time because:
Search engines will index it
Social media sites will share it and spread it
Other websites (including social media networks) will link to it -- which increases your Google Authority
This post focuses on the smart people and the thoughtful comments they share in the thriving Start-Up of You LinkedIn Discussion Group / Community. As of the publication of this post, the community boasts 1,200+ members.
Business Function Demographics Chart (as of 6 AM Central Time, April 5th)
Seniority Demographics Chart (as of 6 AM Central Time, April 5th)
What Differentiates The Start-Up of You LinkedIn Community?
* People Genuinely Do and Want to Help Each Other. This group epitomizes how "giving is better than receiving."
* No Blog Pimping. This unwritten code is enforced by the group and its managers. How? Those who've tried posting links to their posts without contributing something to the group INSTANTLY LOSE CREDIBILITY. Their submitted discussion posts are ignored and buried in the stream.
Start-Up of You Community Members are smart and discerning. They know and identify self-serving BS quickly.
* The Group Practices the IWe (I to the We) Principle (direct quotes from the book):
"The nuanced version of the story of success is that both the individual and team matter. "I" vs. "We" is a false choice. It's both. Your career success depends on both your individual capabilities and your network's ability to magnify them."
"Think of it as IWe. An individual's power is raised exponentially with the help of a team (a network). But just as zero to the one hundredth power is still zero, there's no team without the individual."
"This book is titled The Start-Up of You. Really, the "you" is at once singular and plural."
People To Follow and Learn From. I follow a number of people in this great community. I wish I could highlight them all (but there's only so much time to write).
Here are X people I closely follow within The Start-Up of You LinkedIn Community because they're smart, interesting, helpful, and generous. Every time one of these members submits a comment or discussion topic, I pay closer attention and focus a little harder.
Why? Because I know an opportunity to learn something new and insightful is approaching. And, I don't want to miss it.
Ben is the co-author of The Start-Up of You with Reid Hoffman. He's a successful entrepreneur, New York Times best-selling author, and world-traveler. He's also the owner of The Start-Up of You LinkedIn Discussion Group.
I look forward to his group contributions because of his intelligence and thoughtfulness. This is another way of saying whenever I read one of his comments, I'm always left thinking: "Wow, I wish I would have said that ..."
"To broaden the conversation a bit to how people can learn new skills generally: one model I'm intrigued by is the "coach" model. That is, hiring a coach to work with you intensely to develop a specific skill, like programming or public speaking. Atul Gawande wrote an interesting piece about this topic a few months ago in the New Yorker:http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/03/111003fa_fact_gawande
As he points out, elite athletes and singers have coaches. Tiger Woods is one of the best golfers in the world, yet he still has a swing coach.
Why don't more top-flight professionals have coaches to work with them on specific parts of their skill portfolio? Why don't all of us? How does coaching compare to other models of learning? What's the value of a hired coach vs. informal coaching done through your network? Ruminations..."
Here's a great video of Ben being interviewed about The Start-Up of You. During the interview, he shares personal lessons learned as a lifelong entrepreneur:
Ian is a Start-Up of You marketing team member. He recently hosted the live Q&A webcast with Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha. And, he did a phenomenal job in managing some of the technical problems that arose during the webcast.
In reading and following Ian's discussion group comments, I always think: "This guy is wise beyond his years." He's smart, a talented writer, and always makes me think.
"One thought: if you have difficulty taking small steps toward a new opportunity, it's worth acknowledging this honestly rather than continuing to struggle toward a goal. I spent almost a year wanting to teach myself programming, struggling to make progress, until I discovered another subject that was easy for me to take small steps toward mastering — finance and trading. It's not to say that I couldn't have changed my approach to make learning programming more enjoyable, but my point is small steps aren't always easy but, perhaps, they should be."
"Let me start by saying that I am probably not the best person to be answering this question because I never second-guessed my choice to go to college nor do I have ambitions to start a business.
What I do know is that it's important to get many different perspectives on a question like this and always keep in mind who is giving the advice. I, for example, would probably say that college is a good choice, but I always liked school and didn't have to take on debt to attend a private college. My parents would definitely recommend it, because they are old school and don't realize that these days many of the most sought after skills (eg: programming) aren't even taught in college. Someone who didn't go to college might advise you not to go without even considering how he or she is different from you.
Out of all of this, you'll need to abstract the "objective" benefits and drawbacks of going to college.
Objectively, or at least as objectively as I can, I would say that there is a huge networking benefit to go to college - it's a chance to meet a lot of smart people. But, at the same time, you could go to dozens of conferences a year for less than tuition. Still, it's a built-in network and 4 years provides plenty of time to build lasting relationships.
Those are my somewhat jumbled thoughts. Hope it's helpful!"
Brett is also a Start-Up of You Marketing Team Member. Reid Hoffman cites Brett in The Acknowledgments Section of The Start-Up of You for his contributions in research, content refinement, and organizational support.
"To Ian's first point from the Quora thread, I might recommend a publication that comes out weekly as opposed to daily - like The Economist - which offers analysis as well as the history of what's happened in the previous week.
Another interesting idea I read about in Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From is "deep dive reading vacations," which is something that Bill Gates plans once a year - he goes off the grid and surrounds himself with all the information he can on one topic."
Matt was the first person to contribute to this discussion. His responses demonstrated his smarts, creativity, and technology savvy. If you read his many contributions to other discussion threads, I think you'd conclude (like I do) he's a great guy. He's the type of genuinely good person you'd enjoy talking with over a couple of beers.
Here are some of Matt's thoughts in the aforementioned LinkedIn discussion thread:
"I am building out a series of marketing pieces for myself. I am thinking of it like this: If I had my own marketing department, I would feed them the data and they would make this collateral for me.
I would describe the piece I am working on right now as a high level mailer that gets its own webpage instead of snail mail. Think of it as one of those glossy, multipage advertisements for a new credit card but online with a bit of interactivity.
@Travis - I have been looking at it from the other direction. Up until now my blog has been a place for posting updates and media for my daughters grand parental units. Except for the occasional coding tip or emacs command that I want to remember I haven't put much professional thought out there for public. I have put things there but they are not polished enough that I want to put those, professionally related thoughts out there. If I polish them up and put them out there I can tweak the tags or categories so that it can serve both my personal and professional interests. But it takes time to polish and organize thoughts that bridge the personal and professional divide so I haven't done it.
I have a feeling that the value in soft assets like a blog are a reflection of the amount invested into it. Much like I first noticed that Apple was different - even in the way the packaged the first computer I bought from them (A still running PPC G5 :-), I notice personal site that the author has either put a lot of time into personalizing. I wonder if it is the process of personalizing your site/content/message that is equivalent to submitting a cover letter printed on red paber except that the red cover letter only gets seen by a few people at best and your digital footprint is always there."
Join The Community. The people in this LinkedIn Group share great content, advice, and opinions. Their insightful discussions force me to think differently and open my mind to different solutions and possibilities.
Isn't that what learning is all about?
The people in this community add tremendous value by sharing how they're applying and learning from the book's lessons.
I'm a HUGE FAN of the career management concepts shared in this book. Its teachings and lessons will influence and impact my professional and career management choices forever.
I read / studied The Start-Up of You from cover-to-cover. If I could do it again, I would prioritize reading these five (5) chapters and their related concepts first (in the following suggested order):
* Chapter 6: Take Intelligent Risks -- The Volatility Paradox: Small Fires Prevent the Big Burn
* Chapter 7: Who You Know is What You Know -- Synthesize Information Into Actionable Intelligence
* Chapter 1: All Humans Are Entrepreneurs -- The Start-Up of You Mindset: Permanent Beta
* Chapter 5: Pursue Breakout Opportunities -- Court Serendipity and Good Randomness
* Chapter 3: Plan To Adapt -- Maintain an Identity Separate from Specific Employers
You Might Want To Grab Some Coffee. The following chapters and their verbatim quotes are the concepts I found most inspiring. Sometimes, I provide only the quotes because the words alone inspired me. In other sections, I include my point-of-view.
Buy and Read This Book. Most of all, I hope sharing these five (5) game changer concepts from the book will motivate you to buy and read it.
If you're still here, I suggest grabbing that cup of coffee (or maybe two).
1. Chapter 6: Take Intelligent Risks
Read This Chapter First. Beginning with Chapter 6 is the only thing I would have done differently. I suggest starting with the section of the book titled, The Volatility Paradox: Small Fires Prevent the Big Burn.
These passages represent my "eureka moment."
"Without frequent, contained risk taking, you are setting yourself up for a major dislocation at some point in the future. Inoculating yourself to big risks is like inoculating yourself to big risks is like inoculating yourself against the flu virus. By injecting a small bit of flu into your body in the form of a vaccination, you make a big flu outbreak survivable. By introducing regular volatility into your career, you make surprise survivable. You gain the ability to absorb shocks gracefully."
"Opportunity and risk are two sides of the same coin, after all: join and create groups, be in motion, take on side projects, hustle. In a phrase, say 'yes' more."
"Pretending you can avoid risk causes you to miss opportunities that can change your life. It also lulls you into a dangerously fragile life pattern, leaving you exposed to a huge blow-up in the future."
"When you're resilient, you can play for big opportunities with less worry about the possible consequences of unanticipated hiccups. For the start-up of you, the only long-term answer to risk is resilience."
"Remember: If you don't find risk, risk will find you."
Companies and Individuals Who Don't Take Intelligent Risks Marginalize Themselves Over Time. Here's a video of Reid discussing the importance of intelligent risk taking:
Previously, I Said "No" More. I said no to additional career-related opportunities because of the additional time commitments. I'm not talking about the "traditional" internal company, career-related opportunities (i.e., accepting high profile internal projects to increase exposure to senior management, etc.).
I'm referring to externally focused opportunities beyond the significant time already devoted to this personal blog. These opportunities will consume additional time next to an already consuming and stressful full-time job and family duties.
Focus On The Upside. But, Chapter 6 convinced me to start focusing on the upside. These are investments in my "soft assets" (i.e., cultivating new contacts, learning new skills, expanding the reach of my network intelligence, acquiring actionable knowledge). Dwelling on the potential downside is counter-productive (e.g., the time demands).
A Counter-Intuitive Approach. For someone in their mid-forties balancing demands of a young family and a full-time job involving travel, "taking on more" seems counter-intuitive. But, The Start-Up of You makes the case for constant investment in activities building our "soft assets."
Investing in yourself requires significant time and commitment. Plus, it's especially important to make those investments while gainfully employed.
Safe is Risky. Seth Godin says it best and simply from his classic book, Purple Cow:
(page 30) "My goal in Purple Cow is to make it clear that it's safer to be risky--to fortify your desire to do truly amazing things."
Synthesize Information Into Actionable Intelligence. It's not enough to have great connections with a diverse set of skills, industries, and professions. Your network must inform your decision making with excellent data. But, "what do I do next with that data" is a determining factor in driving your success:
Here are my favorite book passages describing the importance of synthesizing information or "connecting the dots:"
"So far we've talked about the first step -- pulling information from multiple people from multiple people in your network. Once you have gathered information, the next step is to analze the validity, helpfulness, and relevance of what each person has said. Remember, that everyone has biases -- even your parents or best friend. It's not that they are trying to manipulate you. It's just the nature of being a human with personal experiences and self-interests. Bias can be obvious or nonobvious."
"As you pull information and advice from various sources, think about how the person's personal goals, ambitions, and experience might have colored their position. Bias is not reason to dismiss information or advice altogether; just account for it in your analysis."
"Synthesis is the important final step. If you don't step back and take in the big picture of all you've learned, it will feel like you're worming your way through a cocktail party hearing bits and pieces of several different conversations but not able to make out anything of substance."
"Synthesizing what you learn involves reconciling contradictory advice and information (which is inevitable if you're pulling multiple streams from diverse people), ignoring information you believe is completely off base, and weighing each person's information differently. This is a complex cognitive process."
"For now, we'll just say that when it comes to intelligence, good synthesis is what makes the whole worth more than the sum of the parts."
"Network intelligence is the advanced game: if you do it well, it'll give you a competitive edge."
"IWe means your network can help you decide on a direction and then help you move quickly, but only YOU can drive the process forward."
Connect the Dots, Commit to a Personal Strategy, and Have the Courage to Ship: Connect. Commit. Ship. Any action answers "what do I do next." That's why I altered the final quote to emphasize YOU.
Don't listen to your lizard brain (e.g., don't give into the fear of failure)
Start something (e.g., commit to your decision)
Pick yourself (e.g., be the initiator)
Ship (e.g., get it out the door, finish)
3. Chapter 1: All Humans Are Entrepreneurs
The Start-Up of You Mind-set: Permanent Beta. Permanent beta is a lifelong commitment to continuous personal growth. This concept is analogous to how technology companies keep iterating and testing software after the official launch so the software can be continuously improved.
Our careers are much the same way:
"For entrepreneurs, finished is an F-word. They know that great companies are always evolving."
"Finished ought to be an F-word for all of us. We are all works in progress. Each day presents an opportunity to learn more, do more, be more, grow more in our lives and careers.
"Keeping your career in permanent beta forces you to acknowledge that you have bugs, that there's new development to do on yourself, that you will need to adapt and evolve."
"But, it's still a mind-set brimming with optimism because it celebrates the fact that you have the power to improve yourself and, as important, improve the world around you."
Reid Describes Permanent Beta and Learning To Improve Every Month. In the first video, he explains the concept of permanent beta. In the second video, he talks about when he interviews people. During those interviews, he wants to understand how people grow their capabilities on a monthly basis.
4. Chapter 5: Pursue Breakout Opportunities
Court Serendipity and Good Randomness. What I enjoy most about this concept is "proactively making our own luck." And, the best way to achieve serendipity (e.g., accidental good fortune) is to be doing something.You have to be in motion.
"Serendipity involves being alert to potential opportunity and acting on it."
"You won't encounter accidental good fortune--you won't stumble upon opportunities that rocket career forward--if you're lying in bed. When you do something, you stir the pot and introduce the possibility that random ideas, people, and places will collide and form new combinations and opportunities."
"By being in motion, you are spinning a web as wide and tall as possible in order to catch any interesting opportunities that come your way."
"As entrepreneur Bo Peabody says, "The best way to ensure that lucky things happen is to make sure a lot of things happen." Make things happen, and in the long run, you'll design your own serendipity, and make your own opportunities."
You Have to Be Playing in the Game. You can't make your own luck or court serendipity and good randomness while sitting on the couch watching tv. Here's a short video with Reid talking about how sitting on the sidelines means missing out on breakout opportunities:
5. Chapter 3: Plan to Adapt
Maintain an Identity Separate from Specific Employers. This book section focuses on personal branding. Here are some important direct quotes:
"Start a personal blog and begin developing a public reputation and public portfolio of work that's not tied to your employer. This way you'll have a professional identity that you can carry with you as you shift jobs."
1. Showing how you think 2. Demonstrating your individual creativity 3. Making it easy for a potential employer / great connection to find you (e.g., SEO benefits) 4. Giving you practice in an important and portable business skill set -- writing 5. Proving you're technology and Internet savvy 6. Informing people first-hand how you're driven to learn new skills
Seth Godin and Tom Peters Says A Personal Blog Matters. In this video, they both discuss how a personal blog is the best personal marketing tool.
And, Remember The Brand of You is Just One Part of the Start-Up of You. Here's Reid Hoffman's take on personal branding. Pay close not to his point that a brand must be backed by substance if you want it to be relevant.
Closing Thoughts
What Were Your Favorite Concepts From The Start-Up of You? Have you read this important book? Take time to invest in yourself by reading it.
Reading The Start-Up of You will make a significant difference in your life. It's already changed mine.
And, it will have a lasting personal impact and influence for many future years.
The Premise / Goal / Timing of This Weekly Feature
Premise. If you like the content in this blog, maybe you'll also like the content I regularly read, study, and curate from the Web.
Goal. On a weekly basis, I'm going to publish links to three (3) articles I find interesting. I'll include a brief explanation why I decided to curate them.
The article describes the trend to move manage, share, and secure more applications / conten within the cloud.
Five (5) Megatrends are driving this phenomenon:
Consumerization -- You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
Visualization -- Changing How the Game is Played
"App-ification" -- Changing from Appications to Apps
The Ever-Available Self-Service Cloud
The Mobility Shift -- Wherever and Whenever You Want
2. For Young Workers, the Future is Here Already (Fortune).Today's young workers, "the digital natives," are driving the aforementioned consumerization megatrend. This younger demographic communicates with multiple devices. They're entering the workforce in droves so enterprises must deal with this demographic's communication needs to maximize their productivity.
This development is driving the phenemomenon of "unified communications" (direct quote from the article):
"One area which enterprises have begun exploring in recent years is the concept of unified communications – the process of turning multiple channels of communication into a single, seamless conversation. Unified communications uses the concept of presence to help assess which way is best for one user to reach another. It then translates messages and directs them to whichever device the end user is most likely to be using at that time."
It's a special book that will have a lasting influence on how I manage and approach my professional career AND personal choices FOREVER.
You Were Born an Entrepreneur. This is the book's stated mantra and working hypothesis. But, the book seeks to fulfill a higher mission (more on that later).
I think I've been relatively savvy in managing my professional career. But, the book identified multple gaps in my approach I must address NOW.
The book does reinforce and validates the activities driving my personal reinvention process (which started around three years ago):
1. Immersing myself in all things relevant to digital and social media
2. Participating actively and building relationships via digital and social technologies
3. Starting, writing, and sticking with this personal blog
4. Re-discovering a love for reading and building knowledge
5. Remembering how "giving is better than receiving"
And, the book points out the importance of constantly iterating and improving ourselves by being in "permanent beta" (e.g., adopting a continuous innovation attitude to adapt to a dynamicly changing workplace).
An Inspiring Message of Opportunity in Today's Ambiguous and Uncertain Economy
Invest In Yourself, Invest in Your Network, and Invest in Society. There are many important Start-Up of You concepts which I'll share in this post. In my next post, I will explore in greater detail specific ideas from the book.
This book is special because it delivers more than pragmatic career management advice.
"What that something special is" can be found in these inspiring direct quotes from the book's Conclusion:
"For Ben and me, this book is one our gifts back to society. We think the tools in this book can improve both your life and society. Sometimes giving back can be simply spreading ideas that matter."
"Invest in yourself, invest in your network, and invest in society. When you invest in all three, you have the best shot at reaching your highest professional potential. As important, you also have the best shot at changing the world."
Critics Say Those Statements are Presumptuous, Arrogant, and Idealistic
A Quick Note To Critics of The Start-Up of You. The book's critics believe that. In addition, they dismiss this book as nothing more than "mass-targeted content supplying fluff we've all heard before." Or, "it's nothing more than a 250+ page LinkedIn advertisement."
Those critics are flat-out wrong.
The book's mission, principles, and message to "invest in all three" are timely and important.
Timing Is Everything. Or paraphrasing Reid and Ben: "there's a way to court serendipity and good randomness." When I read the following articles from reputable and credible sources, it strengthens my resolve that The Start-Up of You'sprinciples and values matter:
A Four-Post Blog Series on The Start-Up of You Book and The LinkedIn Start-Up of You Community
This book's mission, pragmatic career management content, and thriving LinkedIn community are why I've decided to publish this review as a multiple-post series. This book and its growing movement are that important.
Here are the working themes:
Part 1, Invest in Yourself, Invest in Your Network, AND Invest in Society
* People Genuinely Do and Want to Help Each Other. This group epitomizes how "giving is better than receiving."
* No Blog Pimping. This unwritten code is enforced by the group and its managers. How? Those who've tried posting links to their posts without giving something to the group INSTANTLY LOSE CREDIBLITY. Their submitted discussion posts are ignored and buried in the stream.
Start-Up of You Community Members are smart and discerning. They know and identify self-serving BS quickly.
* The Group Practices the IWe (I to the We) Principle (direct quotes):
"The nuanced version of the story of success is that both the individual and team matter. "I" vs. "We" is a false choice. It's both. Your career success depends on both your individual capabilities and your network's ability to magnify them."
"Think of it as IWe. An individual's power is raised exponentially with the help of a team (a network). But just as zero to the one hundredth power is still zero, there's no team without the individual."
"This book is titled The Start-Up of You. Really, the "you" is at once singular and plural."
Closing Thoughts
Thank you for reading this far! I hope you'll stick with me for a little longer ...
Have You Read The Start-Up of You? What did you think of it? How will this book influence your career management approach? Please me know with your comments.
Here's a direct quote and Key Conclusion #5 from the 2012 State of Inbound Marketing Report:
Businesses are increasingly aware their blog is highly valuable. 81% of businesses rated their company blogs as “useful,” “important” or “critical.” An impressive 25% rated their company blog as “critical” to their business.
And, there are more fact-based conclusions in the 2012 State of Inbound Marketing Report. Here are seven (7) reasons from HubSpot's data supporting the continuing relevance of blogging.
1. Blogs Are and Remain the Most Important Marketing Channel
Look Who's The #1 Social Media Channel in Terms of Importance. It's Blogs! LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter all ranked in lesser importance. The hub-and-spoke social media strategy model works with a website or your blog as the center. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are short-from outposts guiding customers back to your website or blog (the long-form hub).
3. Blogs Have the Lowest Cost-Per-Lead of Any Marketing Channel
52% of Respondents Say blogs are "Below Average" in Cost Per Lead. Blogs are the most cost efficient lead generation channel (inbound or outbound). Not surprisingly, trade shows are considered the most expensive.
Here's a direct quote from the respondent survey:
"The worst thing we did in marketing last year was attend several trade shows and events with low yield and ROI."
4. Blogs are Second Only to LinkedIn In Acquiring Customers
57% of Respondents Say Their Company Blog Acquired Customers. LinkedIn ranked first in customer acquistion. 62% of respondents validated its effectiveness. Interesting how "the two least sexy social media channels" ranked first and second respectively.
And, Speaking of Social Media Sexy - Blogs and LinkedIn Outdistanced Facebook and Twitter in Customer Acquisition. Don't believe the hype that long form content is dead. Or, consumer attention spans last only 140 characters or less.
HubSpot's 2012 Data Shows a Direct Correlation Between Post Frequency and Customer Acquisition. At a minimum, post at least once-per-week. But, increasing post frequency from weekly to twice per month provides significant benefits:
50 posts a year goes to 100 posts (that's the equivalent of 100 indexed web pages in Google)
An extra 50 posts, means double the number of keywords increasing SEO relevance
50 more web pages mean 5o more opportunities to earn inbound links (and increase Google authority)
6. Blogs Are Consistently Effective for Either B2B or B2C Companies
At a Minimum, Your Social Media Strategy MUST Include a Blog. The data shows blogs rank second in customer acquisition for either B2B or B2C companies. Number 1 for customer acquisition depended on business-type:
B2B: LinkedIn
B2C: Facebook
A Killer Social Media Strategy Incorporates at Least Three Customer Acquisition Platforms. The companies succeeding in social media are the ones who view these channels as customer acquisition weapons. Based on this data, a three-channel approach geared to customer acquistion by business-type would look like the following:
B2B: LinkedIn, Company Blog, Facebook or Twitter
B2C: Facebook, Company Blog, Twitter
7. Blogs Level the Playing Field for Small Companies
Small Companies Allocate Almost 4x the Marketing Budget to Blogs Versus Large Companies. Social media or inbound marketing channels are where small companies invest their marketing budget (i.e., social, SEO or organic search, and blogs). Large companies prefer outbound channels (i.e., trade shows, PPC or paid search, or direct mail).
I want to thank Social Media ReInvention Blog Community members for poking around the content in this five-post blog series (sorry if that sounded like an Academy Awards acceptance speech).
Google Analytics and Feedburner show this series generated noticeable traffic. Thank you for stopping by -- it means a lot to me!
3 Qualities of a Great LinkedIn Answer
I participated in answering the following question on LinkedIn Answers: What Would Be Your Suggestions for a New Joinee of LinkedIn. Take a look at the first two replies. Both answers share the following qualities of a helpful and thoughtful response:
1. Be Helpful. Be Nice. The conversational tone you choose to take is extremely important. Your tone is just as important as your answer's substance. I've participated in answering a number of LinkedIn questions. And, some of the submitted responses I've seen are self-serving, flippant, and condescending (sometimes bordering on mean-spirited).
That unfortunate behavior is why I think LinkedIn Answers is an often underlooked / undervalued LinkedIn asset. People are afraid to pose questions because they're scared someone will "call them out."
Don't be one of those people who takes a know-it-all tone. Be Exceptional. Be Helpful. Be Nice.
2. High Level of Detail. Both responses share concrete details and examples driving specific actions. These substantive answers are the exception (not the norm) in most LinkedIn Q&A forums.
3. Share Links and Additional Resources to Support Your Answer. Whenever possible, provide links to articles, blog posts, Slideshare content, press releases, etc. to support your point-of-view. Providing additional content reinforces how you're trying to share knowledge (not just your own). And, that attitude lends more credibility to your response.
6 Benefits of Submitting Great LinkedIn Answers
1. Increasing Your Personal Credibility, Authority, and Visibility. LinkedIn Answers is a great place to start to increase your online visibility and authority in a specific industry or subject. Make it a personal goal to follow through on a daily or weekly basis to answer questions in your chosen categories.
2. Earning Expertise and Trust Via Best Answer Designations.LinkedIn Answers is a great example of gamification. LinkedIn members posing questions have the option to award Best Answer Designations. Best Answers are social proofpersonified.
3. Gaining New Social Media Followers (i.e., Blog Subsribers, Twitter Followers, etc.). When you answer a LinkedIn question, you share personal insights and knowledge. Crafting and submitting thoughtful LinkedIn Answers (without blatantly selling) is a proven inbound marketing tactic. It's a classic social media example of giving to receive.
4. Earning a New LinkedIn Connection -- Validation From The Person Asking a Question. Why? Because, you earn that person's individual trust. A person posing questions on LinkedIn Answers will usually evaluate both your answer and your LinkedIn Profile (especially if he / she found your response helpful). The quality of your answer determines if you receive an invite to join his / her network.
5.Earning a New LinkedIn Connection -- Validation From The People Who Answered the Same Question. Why? Awarding of a "Best Answer" promotes friendly competition among the respondents. Remember, the answers are public to all LinkedIn members. Therefore, the people who who answer questions on LinkedIn Answers are also evaluating both your answer and your LinkedIn Profile (especially if you are awarded the Best Answer). If you impressed one of the responders, you may also receive a LinkedIn invite from him / her.
An Important, Daily Habit. Every day, look for LinkedIn Questions reflecting your personal or professional interests. You don't always have to answer a question. But, a daily monitoring habit (i.e., 5 to 10 minutes of review every morning) can help you gradually and continuously build your online reputation and personal brand within specific topics.
A Two-Phase Process. The process for efficiently monitoring questions in LinkedIn Answers requires two (2) tools:
A LinkedIn RSS Feed for Your Favorite LinkedIn Question & Answer (Q&A) Categories
A Dedicated iGoogle Tab Centralizing Your Multiple LinkedIn Q&A RSS Feeds
The time investment for building this process is less than 15 minutes.
The Multiple Benefits of RSS Feed Subscriptions
Turn Your iGoogle Home Page Into a Custom Content Dashboard. RSS feeds enable you to create personalized content or news dashboards. When you set up your RSS subscriptions, you'll realize multiple benefits:
Time Efficiency: Centralized content from multiple sources is easier to find and consume
Fewer Emails:Multiple RSS feeds allow you to receive updated content without email notifications
Content Customization: Your RSS feeds subscriptions reflect only the content / knowledge you choose to receive
Here's an example of how my LinkedIn Question & Answer RSS Feeds for multiple categories look in my iGoogle Page:
Subscribing to the LinkedIn Questions & Answers RSS Feed
How to Get Started. Here are the steps, you need to follow so you can set up the LinkedIn RSS Feed:
1. From your LinkedIn Home Page, highlight the "More" link in the top, right-hand corner. You'll see a prompt for "Answers":
2. After clicking on the "Answers" link, you should arrive at the LinkedIn Question & Answers Home Page. It looks like this:
3. The next step is to select a category you find interesting. The "Recommended Categories For You" is LinkedIn's custom feature offers suggestions based on your LinkedIn Profile. You can also select a category by selecting one of the categories on the far, right-hand side under "Browse":
4. In this example, I selected the "Blogging" Category. To subscribe to the RSS Feed for "Blogging," click on the orange RSS icon on the bottom, right-hand corner:
5. Copy the hyperlink highlighted in the text box where it says "or copy the RSS link:"
Creating a LinkedIn Answers Tab in Your iGoogle Home Page
Hold on to the RSS link you just copied! We're not going to paste the LinkedIn RSS hyperlink just yet.
1. Opena new tabin your Internet browser. In this new tab, please select your iGoogle Home Page.
2. Click on your "Google Home" tab. You should see a "little down arrow / toggle switch" to the right-hand side of "Google Home."
3. Click on "the little down arrow." You should be prompted with a command that says "Add a Tab."
4. After clicking on "Add a Tab," the following screen should appear:
5. Fill in the name of your new tab and click on "Ok"
6. I named my new tab "test tab." Your new tab should look something like this (but with the name you selected for your tab):
7. In your new tab, click the prompt on the top, left hand-side that says "Add gadgets"
8. After clicking on "Add gadgets," you should see a prompt at the bottom, left-hand side of your screen that says "Add feed or gadget"
9. Click on this link and you should get a screen that looks like this:
10. Now, remember that RSS Link you copied earlier from Step 5 from Subscribing to the LinkedIn Question & Answers RSS Feed so you could be alerted to any new questions in the Blogging Category?
That box above is where you're going to paste that RSS Link. After pasting in the RSS Link, click Add.
11. If the RSS feed is added correctly, you should now see a prompt that looks like this:
12. To make sure the LinkedIn Answers Blogging Category Feed is added correctly, you'll want to click the prompt on the top, left-hand side that says "Back to iGoogle"
13. Voila, your new RSS Feed is captured in your iGoogle tab. Now, you can add multiple LinkedIn Answer Categories to this iGoogle tab to monitor several types of LinkedIn Questions -- a big time saver.
14. Adding Multiple RSS Feeds to Your Custom iGoogle Tab is Now Super-Easy. You might be thinking that sure was a ton of steps to follow! Well, you're right. But, you've done the hard part -- creating your customized iGoogle tab.
From this point forward, whenever you want to add a new LinkedIn Answers Category to your custom iGoogle tab, repeat steps 7 through 12 of Creating a LinkedIn Answers Tab in Your iGoogle Home Page.
The Premise / Goal / Timing of This Weekly Feature
Premise. If you like the content in this blog, you may like the type of content I regularly read and study on the Web.
Goal. On a weekly basis, I'm going to publish links to three (3) articles I find interesting. I'll include a brief summary with some bullet points explaining why I think the content is worth consuming.
Timing. I'll publish this content every Wednesday / Thursday.
2. The Three Laws of Future Employment by Daniel Jelski: This is a THOUGHT-PROVOKING article commenting on individual competitiveness in today's dynamic employment market. Jelski's three (3) laws and subsequent conclusions are important:
Law #1: People will get jobs doing things that computers can't do (i.e., jobs requiring human-human interaction)
Law #2: A global market place will result in lower pay and future opportunities for many careers (but also in cheaper and better products and a higher standard of living for American consumers)
Law #3: Professional people will more likely be freelancers and less likely to have a steady job
The Wall Street Journal Careers Section published the following articles on January 24th describing the challenges and sense of futility job candidates encounter when applying to a prospective employer:
Both articles highlight relevanttrends in personal brand differentiation and demonstrating digital strategy / digital marketing expertise.
Bottom Line. Becoming an expert is one thing. Demonstrating that expertise online to a potential client or employer is another. Because, it doesn't matter if you're trying to earn a digital marketing or social media marketing position or another position in an unrelated industry.
Either way, your online presence must be FINDABLE and HUGE.
Clients or Employers Conduct Online Due Diligence
Is Your Online Presence Visible or Invisible? Clients and employers use online search and social networks in hiring evaluations. Key themes emphasized in both Wall Street Journal articles included:
How The Internet Reinforces a "Show-Me-What-You-Got" Mindset
Why Clients and Employers Want to Understand How You Think
Too Many Job Candidates / Self-Proclaimed Experts, So Little Time
How Employers / Clients are Using the Internet Evaluate Talents and Skills
Your Online Activity Represents How You Think. Your resume does not. The opening paragraphs of the No More Resumes, Say Some Firms article reinforce this growing notion especially among employers:
"Union Square Ventures recently posted an opening for an investment analyst. Instead of asking for résumés, the New York venture-capital firm—which has invested in Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga and other technology companies—asked applicants to send links representing their "Web presence," such as a Twitter account or Tumblr blog. Applicants also had to submit short videos demonstrating their interest in the position."
"Union Square says its process nets better-quality candidates —especially for a venture-capital operation that invests heavily in the Internet and social-media—and the firm plans to use it going forward to fill analyst positions and other jobs."
"Companies are increasingly relying on social networks such as LinkedIn, video profiles and online quizzes to gauge candidates' suitability for a job. While most still request a résumé as part of the application package, some are bypassing the staid requirement altogether."
"A résumé doesn't provide much depth about a candidate, says Christina Cacioppo, an associate at Union Square Ventures who blogs about the hiring process on the company's website and was herself hired after she compiled a profile comprising her personal blog, Twitter feed, LinkedIn profile, and links to social-media sites Delicious and Dopplr, which showed places where she had traveled."
"We are most interested in what people are like, what they are like to work with, how they think," she says."
Rage Against the Machine
A Two-Front War: Other Candidates and the Company's Online Applicant Tracking System. The accompanying WSJ video shares why optimizing a resume for keywords is vital. Your resume can be unfairly weeded out by a machine's keyword algorithm (even with internal referrals).
Show Clients and Employers Differentiating Content
"A friend of mine Eric Friedman tells the tale of his job interview with renowned VC firm Union Square Ventures in New York. During a pivotal second round interview Eric sat down with one of the partners, Brad Burnham and presented his resume. Brad told Eric to hang on to it as he just wanted to chat. When Eric pressed him as to why, Brad responded with something remarkable which went like this: “You can work really hard on crafting a well written, organized, resume with bullet points of accomplishments – but you can’t fake 500 blog posts.” On the web, it’s “show me, don’t tell me.”
Therefore, achieving this goal requires more effort. And, I'm reminding myself to focus on one thing at time.
Because, starting is everything.
Your Turn. How are you going to show your expertise / your art to a potential employer or client? How are you going to differentiate yourself among the masses?
Please share your thoughts in the comments. And, I hope you'll return next week for Part 3.
The opinions blogged herein represent only those of Tony Faustino and do not reflect those of his employer, persons or companies mentioned herein, or anyone else. The posts on this blog are provided "as is" with no warranties and confer no rights.
Subscribe to My Blog
You can subscribe to my blog by either clicking on the bright, orange widget for my RSS Feed OR by providing your email address in the form box below.
